What sucks about your airplane?

flyingcheesehead

flyingcheesehead

Touchdown! Greaser!
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iMooniac
OK, we all know that no airplane is perfect. The engineers who came up with the design had to make some trade-offs here and there, and that's why the perfect airplane doesn't exist.

So, we're all rampant fanboys of the aircraft types we fly, but it's time to be brutally honest: What sucks about your airplane?

I'll start. My Mooney M20R has the turning radius of the Titanic. Nosewheel travel is just 12º one side of center and 9º on the other side.
 
ktup-flyer said:
It’s slow. I get like 148KTAS at ~7500-8500 with it firewalled. I want a F33 Bonanza with a Cirrus sized cabin and 182 useful load
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Me too, only I want mine to be an F33C (Aerobatic Bonanza).

Is that a 182 you're flying right now? 148 is actually pretty impressive if you've got the stock engine. But yeah, speed per gallon is the one achilles heel of the 182.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Me too, only I want mine to be an F33C (Aerobatic Bonanza).

Is that a 182 you're flying right now? 148 is actually pretty impressive if you've got the stock engine. But yeah, speed per gallon is the one achilles heel of the 182.
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Yep. It’s a good compromise between speed and useful load.
 
Man, I gotta say....not much honestly. I have a 177 RG. It's quite possibly the best balance/bang-for-your buck airplane I have ever flown. Roomier than a 182, faster, and hauls 980-ish useful.

If there was ANYTHING I hated about it...it would have to be that its a bit nose heavy with a chubby pilot, but lets he honest.. a chubby pilot isn't the fault of the airplane
 
Lynn Dixon said:
Man, I gotta say....not much honestly. I have a 177 RG. It's quite possibly the best balance/bang-for-your buck airplane I have ever flown. Roomier than a 182, faster, and hauls 980-ish useful.

If there was ANYTHING I hated about it...it would have to be that its a bit nose heavy with a chubby pilot, but lets he honest.. a chubby pilot isn't the fault of the airplane
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I have 320lbs of useful load on you to balance out the extra speed :D
 
ktup-flyer said:
I have 320lbs of useful load on you to balance out the extra speed :D
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But that 320 lbs doesn't do any good for me and my mission profiles :) . I have a 3 person family: Me, my wife and my daughter. My wife is tiny, 5 foot 120 lbs. My daughter is 3 years old. But lets say she turns out like my wife and is tiny when she gets older.... 120 lbs.

I weigh 260. So, thats 500 lbs for all three of us. I can carry full fuel of 60 gallons, and still have 120 lbs of payload left. Thats more than enough for our baggage. I don't want to go slower, and burn WAY more fuel just to have an extra 320 lbs of useful, that I would never use. :)

Plus, my cabin is much more roomy than a 182. It surprised me, as I thought the 182 was a "bigger" airplane. Even my tiny wife said "our airplane has more elbow room in it than your friends airplane" when she flew in a friends 182 with us.

Besides, a 177RG with its gear up in flight is the most sexy bird in the sky, IMHO. Oh, I also don't have big ole struts or gear hanging out there blocking my gorgeous views. And, my doors actually open and are comfortable to use. Not like the 1*2 doors that only go 45 degrees, making you have to do the Cessna dance around the wheel pants/struts/gear legs and climb up on steps to get in.

But you know what they say...the prettiest girl at the prom is the one you brought.
 
My Commander 112A - It sucks that it's sitting in the hangar waiting to get in the air. My transition training is finally getting rescheduled.

I do have a *****; the boarding steps are a bit to high, not as easy as the Deb, and with all my leg injuries it makes it a litter harder. I wish it did have more useful load, but it works fine for my bride and I.
 
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My propeller, doesn’t do well IMC in the rain.
 
If you scratch the paint off the aluminum, there’s a Coors logo underneath. OK, maybe not quite that bad, but to make LSA weight with reasonable payload they had to make the skins fairly thin. Gotta be really careful to make sure passenger feet stay on the marked wing step area.
 
Beech Sport. Slow, underpowered, poor useful load. I paid cash so no payments. it's comfortable, fun to fly and works well for my wife and I..:)
 
Cessna 180... It's pretty perfect. 140ktas, fixed gear for easy mx, massive useful load, can land pretty much anywhere. Tailwheel so turn radius is about 0. I can outrun any bush plane and land shorter than any go-place plane.

The downsides I guess are the massive acquisition cost and mine specifically is still undergoing a complete restoration and costs a ton of money as a result, but those aren't the fault of the engineers at Cessna.
 
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The flimsy nosegear strut. If you don’t treat it nice, it treats you real bad. RV “A” models have been known To flip over due to the nose gear digging in and bending if you don’t land on the mains on grass. It’s just a steel rod. Gives you a bit of a pucker factor landing on rough grass. There’s a saying.....the nosegear is there to hold the nose up only when it’s parked.
 
Restrictive center of gravity. Can't do 4 adults with bags. But it has only been an issue on paper, it hasn't actually impacted any operations. Yet.
 
$$$$$$$ And my autopilot is broke. :(
 
What sux about my plane is the ole' 140's endurance is longer than that of my bladder
 
On my 7ECA, it isn't a great cross-country machine. It requires constant attention to maintain course and altitude. Of course thats what makes it fun to fly, but I don't travel in it.

On the PA24 I fly regularly, just the fact that Piper doesn't make them or support them anymore. They are a great aircraft and a great airframe, but they are getting many are getting long in the tooth and certain parts are getting harder and harder to find.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
OK, we all know that no airplane is perfect. The engineers who came up with the design had to make some trade-offs here and there, and that's why the perfect airplane doesn't exist.

So, we're all rampant fanboys of the aircraft types we fly, but it's time to be brutally honest: What sucks about your airplane?

I'll start. My Mooney M20R has the turning radius of the Titanic. Nosewheel travel is just 12º one side of center and 9º on the other side.
Click to expand...

My plane is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW
 
It doesn't belong to me any more.:(
 
Only issue is it doesn't fly often enough. Not really its fault.

Although I do lament not spending for the engine monitor when I redid the panel.
 
Smaller baggage door and cramped baggage area. Wish it was stretched a bit more. Beech took care of that with later models so it was a conscious decision on my part when I bought it and I've learned to live with it for all the other good.

Brian
 
Useful load of 1,280 on my Bonanza, but it's hard to actually use it with the CG.
 
My seat hurts.
After 30 minutes, it is like it’s reaching up to my ass with monster diesel-mechanic’s fingers to twist my butt skin into Twizzlers. It’s got this cluster of 1/2” hardened steel chisels that it pounds into my coccyx with a 10 pound mallet, in sync with the firing of the #1 cylinder. It’s like there is a huge steel vice.....
(Well, I got me a foam cushion and it helps)
 
Lack of speed, and baggage door. Other than that, it's perfect for what it does.
 
It costs insane amount of money to upgrade.

Wait that’s not the engineers fault either.
 
Frankly? They put too little HP on my go-kart. That's pretty much it, all the suckage I could list (cruise and climb rate at gross weight) is merely and directly attributable to having the wrong HP installed. If it had a 230-260HP varirant Lyco 540, it'd be the perfect airplane for me right now. Of course, if it was indeed -540 equipped, it'd probably be Dakota/Lance priced and would no longer be a good bang for the buck. Catch-22.


charheep said:
Ruddervators made out of magnesium that corrode that are only available from one source, and that source is being iffy on making more
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No not "Iffy", AOG. Not trying to be flippant. I think the 33 and 36 are perfectly fine choices if one is looking at Beech for a single. The market spoke and Beechcraft pivoted to the aluminum skinnable 33/36 tails a loooong time ago. Don't shoot the messenger.
 
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