Airplane Review: Cessna 150

welcome to the airplane today we're flying a 1963 C model Cessna 150 this is a really fantastic airplane it's small it's fun to fly it's cheap to fly it does have a few limitations because of its size mainly in weight carrying capacity and also the cabin is fairly small so to large individuals can be a pretty tough squeeze from a maintenance perspective obviously there's a lot of similarities in the airframe to a 172 and it's a simple fixed gear aircraft with a four-cylinder this time a Continental engine and a fixed pitch prop so about as basic as you can get really other than unlike an Aeronca you've added an electrical system and some radios to it as well big maintenance items with this airplane to watch for as the fleet starts to age is corrosion like all other metal aircraft other thing to watch for is a lot of Cessna 150s were used as training aircraft so they could have a lot of hours on them and they may have had a pretty rough life with the students and instructors that were flying them once they finish their life as a training aircraft quite a lot of them were then bought as time builders for the private world and because of their cheap cost a lot of them were not treated very well after the fact either they were bought someone would use the or a lot of time building and then the aircraft would just sort of deteriorate into a pretty poor state so if you're looking at buying one you've got to be really careful that you're not buying one that's got a completely worn out engine brakes and tires all completely clapped-out interior destroy paint falling off because you can fix it all but you'll far exceed the value of the airplane even in an excellent condition so that is something to be cautious of unfortunately there's a lot of bad maintenance out there there's a lot of annuals and maintenance practices that are occurring that just do not meet the standards at all and while it's kind of good to know that the airplane is being simple and tough are kind of taking it it's not a reason to follow bad practices or to end up purchasing an airplane that's been badly looked after insurance is generally cheaper than four-seat aircraft simply due to the fact that there's two less passenger seats to insure and the hull value being lower means lower insurance premium when you're fully insuring the aircraft so you're probably looking at the 700 to 800 dollar range but with that being said huge changes going on with insurance right now and well just a few weeks ago we were looking at a 172 around the $1,100 range those 172 seem to be renewing around the 14 to $1,500 range this year so I would expect to see a similar you know two to three hundred dollar increase in premiums for the 150 as well in talking with an insurance broker they indicated that a amphibious 185 customer had seen their insurance premiums more than double and had had over a four thousand dollar increase to their policy so that's not good news at all now this model has a pretty low useful load most of the 150s do have a pretty low useful load and we're like 450 pounds so by the time you put 22 and a half gallons of usable fuel just over a hundred and thirty six pounds there and then you know 200 pound person and some baggage and things like that you can run out a useful load in a hurry so two big individuals you're not going to be able to take much fuel and no baggage two small people just fine this early model has the same fuselage of the Cessna 140 it doesn't have the bowed doors and the big doors that they had on later models so the cabin is very narrow and that means that when you know you have two reasonable sized individuals in here there's not a lot of space between the two of you so you can end up having to put an arm around someone to give yourselves a little bit of shoulder room so you know you've got a smaller aircraft a cheaper aircraft to operate and you pay for that a little bit with the loud carrying and and size of the airplane inside performance-wise the 150s you know if they're in good shape they're great planes I look after a number of Cessna 150s and there's some really great performing airplanes out there I was unfortunate enough to do a flight in one I didn't look after doing a bit of instruction and it was not in good condition at all and boy it didn't climb and it just was a complete dog so you know condition of the airplane condition of the engine how it's been rigged all will affect the performance now the early models C models and earlier they don't have a rear window and they've got a vertical tail straight up and down like a 180 or 185 and and they have a lot more cruise they're much more aerodynamic that's they got a better aerodynamic properties than the later bottles with the rear window and swept tail so they're generally about ten miles an hour faster and they perform better, the narrow fuselage also helps them not be too draggy so you know I can see even today at close to gross weight and an outside temperature of six seven degrees I can see a thousand feet a minute climb in this thing at VX and I can easily be looking at 110 mile an hour cruise if I push it along, we are just sort of bumbling along a little slower right now and we're sitting just about a hundred miles an hour so most M model 150's are probably gonna sit around the 90 mile an hour mark Fuel burn, i burning about five gallons an hour the way it's set up right now if I push the power up pick this up you will get five and a half gallons an hour if we were to climb up to seven seven and a half thousand feet if we were really going somewhere far full throttle and you could get it down to like just under four gallons an hour and I've done that on lots of trips I have done long trips in this I've done over nine hours of flying in a day the Kapuskasing and back I've taken it to Boston and while it is a small airplane you know it still works very well I've even met and spoke with a gentleman he and his wife took they're M model 150 all the way down and out to the Bahamas for a few weeks vacation so it's still faster than driving and it's a lot of fun so basically you pay for the small engine and the cheap operating costs and the cheaper purchase price in being a little slower little more confined little less useful load and carrying capacity but if you're looking at you know Cessna called it the commuter for a reason, if you're looking for just enjoying flying and not breaking the bank it's a really wonderful plane to do it and the advantage it has over J3, Champs, Chiefs things like that is it has an electrical system it's a metal airplane it can sit outside and take it a little better it it has radios we can fly in control their space so it's a little more versatile but at the same time it performs very well and we can still get in and out of small grass runways and things like that you have to be careful its just like anything, you gotta be careful it's not a cub you know it needs a lot more runway than a cub and the later models need even more runway again but but you can take them in and out of you know 2,000 feet should never be a problem for one I hope you enjoyed the video and if you're looking for some enjoyable cheap flying Cessna 150 certainly provide that for you and not only gonna provide cheap flying but it still has the versatility to allow for day and night VFR flying don't forget to subscribe to learn about new videos that we've got coming up and please check out the rest of our content happy tailwinds we'll talk to you all soon

Channel: Fastback Flying

Views: 6,732

Rating: 4.9111109 out of 5

Keywords: commuter, cessna150, aircraft review, aircraft

Id: 3PuIucY6kMk

Length: 9min 23sec (563 seconds)

Published: Sat May 23 2020