The Piper Pipersport

The New Piper Aircraft Company (Are they still called that?) dropped a Top Gear style bombshell when they announced that they were going to market the CZAW SportCruiser under the Piper badge.
A few words about the SportCruiser as it was on 1/1/10:

The airplane was available as S-LSA or an E-LSA kit, and in either case the plane had a pretty awesome feature list. Like, this airplane can hold it's own against comparable certified airplanes.

Where to begin? Oh I know, to begin, it looks like this:
It's drop dead gorgeous. It looks like a Liberty XL2 and a Diamond DA-20 had a really hot daughter.

It's all aluminum construction, wings and fuselage. It hit the market in 2006, and I think it's age and construction come together to give it it's classic yet contemporary lines. It looks right at home standing on the ramp in between a Cessna 350 and a Cirrus SR-20, even if it is made of metal.

Yes, that is a Rotax 912ULS under that cowling, churning out 100 brake horsepower. Yes, those grey spots on the wings are gas caps. Each wing tank holds 15 gallons for a total of 30. It has normal fuel tanks. Something else that you can't see in that photograph are the wing lockers.

WING. LOCKERS. I first came across that term while reading a multi-engine textbook and here a light sport airplane's got 'em. Each wing locker holds 44 pounds of things IN ADDITION to the 40 pounds that can fit on the shelf in the cabin behind the seat. That's 128 pounds of baggage. That's 8 pounds more than a C172 holds between it's two baggage compartments.

Original trim levels were pitot/static, six-pack, and Dynon glass cockpit. It comes with leather seats colored to match the paint (Seats are fixed, the rudder pedals are adjustable and can apparently accommodate anyone between 5 and 6 feet tall), dual center sticks with center throttle, rudder pedals with differential toe brakes (brake steering, castering nosewheel), two-place intercom, electric Fowler flaps, electric elevator and aileron trim (given the wing lockers, aileron trim on such a small plane makes sense), and so forth.

Check out the panel:


The problem with the plane is that it had distribution and support problems. Like most start-ups into the LSA market, "Dealership" or "Importer" was singular in this case.

Then the tenth rolled around and Piper announced they decided to import, distribute and support the airplane under the Piper badge. They called it: The PiperSport.

So now, when someone asks you the make and model, you have to tell them it's a Piper PiperSport. They didn't think the name through very well.

Piper repainted the bird, scrapped the kit version for the USA, scrapped the pitot/static only version, added a Dynon EFIS-only panel in it's place, and gave it a silly name. It will still be made in the same factory in the Czech Republic, have the word "Piper" painted on it in about 20 places, and shipped across the Atlantic.

Now, my opinions:

As stated earlier, it's a work of art. And I know that I compared it to four of the most attractive certified airplanes available new today. Now stand it next to the Evektor SportStar, the Flight Design CT, and the Cessna CessnaSport (er, Skycatcher). Even the Allegro's lines aren't as attractive. the PiperSport doesn't look like an LSA. The interior is finished as good or better than a Cessna Skyhawk (It isn't as car-like and posh as a Cirrus interior, but I actively don't like Cirrus). If an LSA school happened to have all the sport planes I just listed, I bet most people will point at the PiperSport and ask to fly that one.

Which means it's got built-in marketing. If there are three schools in the area, one with CTs, one with Skycatchers, and one with PiperSports, people will want to fly the sexy little Piper.

I also love how typical it is. The Allegro makes a good trainer in that it has all the right bad habits. Allegro has textbook adverse yaw, left turning tendencies, and so forth. But there's one control stick and two throttles, and there's one brake, and it's got a silly fuel system and the switches are labelled with the wrong words (reflector=landing light apparently).

Not the PiperSport. Take another look at that panel up there. Toggle switches, real circuit breakers, and that key switch says OFF, L, R, BOTH, START just like it should. It's got toe brakes, a normal airplane fuel system and so forth. That's gonna make it brilliant for training; it's such a typical airplane. A pilot brought up on Cessnas and Pipers will be right at home.

Also, you can now actually get one. Well, not yet, they'll start deliveries in April. But It's been picked up by Piper, so you can figure out where to get one, and no worries about whether you can get parts for it next year.

What a stroke of genius on Piper's part. Look at Cessna. When they announced the LSA feasibility project, the entire GA world chanted in unison "Oh Father, who art in Wichita, Textron be thy name. Thy airplane come..." Then they got egg in their face when they announced it was going to be built by communists. Then they got egg in their face when the first prototype crashed. Then they got egg in their face when they delayed the launch. Then they got a robin egg in their face when they announced that it would be Continental powered. Then they got an emu egg in their face when they cancelled the Citation Columbus. Then they got egg on their face when the other 162 prototype crashed. Now they've managed to get one delivered--To the wife of Cessna's CEO. Ya get that? They sold one to themselves.

They've dumped hundreds of thousands--maybe millions--of dollars into the 162 for research and development, and gotten tons of bad press about it. Then, a few years later, Piper finds a great airplane that's already built, proven and flying, slaps their badge on it, and turns GA on it's ear.

Something I'm hoping that both Piper and Cessna do is write useful POH's. I've read stories about pilots operating LSA's getting killed because the aircraft's handbook was unclear. Poor translations, missing or incomplete performance charts or straight up wrongness (I've read one that declared VFE to be 65 and 70 MPH on the same page!) lead to a pilot operating the bird incorrectly. That's one thing about Cessna building theirs from the ground up; they'll write a Cessna POH.

Now before Piper ever touched the SportCruiser, the SC's POH was pretty good for an LSA, including comprehensible weight and balance info, climb performance charts, cruise performance charts for several altitudes, and even an airspeed calibration chart! Here's hoping Piper will make it even better.

On a related note, Piper is the only company that currently manufactures a complete training fleet. With the PiperSport, Warrior, Arrow, and Seminole, you can now go from sport pilot through private, instrument, commercial and multi-engine, all under the Piper badge.

I have four complaints about the PiperSport. First is the poorly thought out name. Piper SportCruiser--while even lazier--would have been a better name than Piper PiperSport. It's still got a capital letter in the middle of two words jammed together. Second is the electric trim. It's not like there's a trim wheel and the buttons on the stick turn it for you; there is no wheel. you trim with the buttons, so if you lose the electronics you lose trim. Third, the choke lever is right next to the throttle, almost to the point of being underneath it. I would have used a plunger-type thing and put it on the instrument panel near the ignition key the way older airplane primers were. I haven't taken a very good look at the current setup, but I can see scraping a knuckle on the existing choke lever. Or I may just be an idiot. And fourth is the parachute. Yes it comes with a ballistic parachute. Hopefully it can be ordered without. If it can, this complaint goes away.

So, I'm not fond of the name, it's like a supermodel named Gladys Gladysson. Please to give manual trim. Please to move choke, and please to keep parachute. And then I'll start lobbying for the State of North Carolina to make it legal to marry an airplane.