Is the Cessna 172 BETTER than the Piper Cherokee? (The Shocking Truth)

the Cessna 172 may very well be the most famous general aviation aircraft of all time but isn't really that much better than all those other GA aircraft today we're going to take a closer look at the old Skyhawk and see how it really Stacks up against one of its fiercest competitors the Piper Cherokee the Cessna 172 or Skyhawk has been in production for nearly 70 years this single-engine 4C aircraft was first flown in 1955 but because of its incredible design and durability this aircraft remains in production because of its popularity in fact the Skyhawk is the most produced aircraft of all time there were more than 44 000 variants produced by Cessna and its partners and even though there are many new aircraft designs this icon remains but isn't really that much better than the competition in the last few years other aircraft manufacturers like Cirrus have begun to finally gain a foothold in the industry but in the last 70 years only one airplane has come close to the fame and popularity of the Cessna 172 the Piper Cherokee in 1961 the Piper Aircraft Company decided that they wanted a piece of the action they originally produced two models of the Cherokee the pa-28150 and the pa-28160 the designators won 50 and 160 referred to the horsepower of the engine and by 1962 they introduced the Piper Cherokee 180 which was powered by 180 horsepower Lycoming 0360 engine but the company wasn't completely satisfied with the success of these models in 1964 they decided that they wanted to produce an aircraft that would challenge the venerable Cessna 150 which was also an icon in the aviation training community and thus the Piper Cherokee 140 was born the pa-28140 it was originally designed as a 140 horsepower training aircraft with two seats but soon after production Piper modified the Lycoming 0320 to produce 150 horsepower and rear seats could be added which would allow Pilots to carry up to three passengers if they were light enough the Piper Cherokee 140 never surpassed the popularity of the Cessna 150 or the 172 Skyhawk but the company did grab up a huge part of the market more than 32 000 variants of the Piper Cherokee have been produced with more than 10 000 of them being Cherokee 140s even though the Cherokee 140 was originally designed to compete with the Cessna 150 most experts agree that the aircraft is a better rival to the Cessna 172 and while it never gained the popularity of the Skyhawk many would argue that it is a superior aircraft even though Piper cease production of the 140 in 1977 but is the Cessna 172 a better aircraft than the Cherokee 140. let's take a look at some of the features of both of these aircraft and I'll let you decide for yourself let's start by comparing the obvious as you probably already noticed the system 172 is a high Wing aircraft while the Cherokee is a low Wing design both designs had their advantages High Wing aircraft are often favored because the Pilot's view of the ground is not obstructed by the wings but many pilots who have flown both types will agree that the scenery you miss just below the wings is very minimal most people tend to look straight ahead during the majority of the flight and when they do look out to the side they tend to focus on things that are being there aircraft and not directly below it and if you do need to see something below the aircraft in a low Wing you can simply Bank the aircraft to get eyes on it and that's where a low Wing aircraft really shines as a general rule High wings are a little more stable but aircraft stability comes at a cost aircraft that are stable tend to be less maneuverable because of that the Cherokee feels more responsive to control inputs from the pilot new pilots tend to favor airframes that are more forgiving which is why the Skyhawk is such a popular design but as a pilot develops their skill the low Wing becomes an excellent choice since these aircraft are so agile increased maneuverability is an obvious Advantage but oddly enough the Cherokee is still an extremely stable aircraft many will argue that it's even more stable than the Skyhawk one of its distinct characteristics is how difficult it is to get the plane to stall experts often contribute the stability to the Hershey bar Wing design Wing design is an important consideration when it comes to aircraft stability maneuverability speed and lots of other flight characteristics there are quite a few different Wing designs and this is a key difference between the Cherokee and the Skyhawk the Piper Cherokee has a regular or rectangular Wing design and as you can see it literally looks like a Hershey bar then the Cessna has more of a tapered Wing now the rectangular Wing design has one distinct Advantage it is extremely stable this stability is probably why the Cherokee is known by many aviators to be stable as a table yet Nimble and maneuverable but Cessna Engineers knew what they were doing when they tapered the wings on their design most of the time tapering the wings on an aircraft decreases the drag and it actually increases the lift this increase in lift is very noticeable and an experienced pilot will notice the difference in the amount of lift that the Skyhawks Wing produces versus the Cherokee 140. now there are a bunch of different engine options when it comes to both of these aircraft but these climb charts both come from aircraft that were built with a Lycoming 0320 which is 150 horsepower engine and what you'll find when you look at these charts is that the Cessna has much better climb performance at 2 150 pounds on the standard day at sea level the Piper Cherokee climbs about 650 to 660 feet per minute I had to interpolate a little bit but if the Skyhawk is at that way Cessna claims that you can get 742.5 feet per minute that's almost 100 feet per minute more that's a big deal my system 172h has an o300 and in it which is 145 horsepower engine and I feel like it still has better climb performance than the Cherokee so as you can see it appears as if the high Wing tapered design of the Cessna has a much better lift to drag ratio than the low Wing Hershey bar Cherokee but one way we could confirm this is to look at the glide ratio for both of these aircraft pilots who have flown both aircraft are likely to be shocked by these charts I know I was when I first looked at them but as you can see Piper actually claims that their aircraft has a better glide ratio according to the poh at an altitude of 5000 feet AGL the Cherokee is capable of gliding 10 statute miles but the 172 has to start at an altitude of 6 000 feet in order to travel the same distance now I'll be the first to admit that I'm a little bit skeptical about these numbers I've always said that the Cherokee Glides like a potato and the 172 seems to Glide forever this might actually be something worth testing in a future video because I'm pretty certain that sessions are capable of gliding much further in fact that's one of the things I love about the Cherokee it doesn't matter how high I am on an approach it's super easy to lose a lot of altitude quickly if I need to do that for some reason the ability to control the airplane and make it do what you want really make airplanes like the 140 a joy to fly in fact this gives the Cherokee an advantage in this area in older Cessna 172s the poh actually prohibits the pilot from performing a forward slip with full flaps extended apparently those big flaps are in the perfect position on an approach to disrupt the airflow and cause the nose of the aircraft to drop in certain conditions I actually believe that that's why they eventually got rid of the 40 degree flat position because Pilots were still slipping with 40 degrees of flaps and crashing their airplane on final but I have no proof to back that up the Cherokees on the other hand have no such warning at least I haven't seen one on any of the pohs I've looked at and that really gives you a lot of options when you need to lose altitude on approach or for some other reason but that's not to say that the tail cannot be blanked out on the Piper aircraft if the wind conditions are right it is possible to lose wind over the tail on one of these as well it is rare but not impossible I scared myself pretty good A few months ago because I didn't know this I was making an approach with a direct crosswind and I actually wasn't even using flaps I had the airplane in a pretty aggressive forward slip and the nose pitched down on me so I released the slip and recovered it definitely was not an enjoyable experience but I did learn a valuable lesson that day just because you can do something doesn't mean you always should with that in mind I'm still going to slip with full Flaps in the Cherokee but I'll definitely be paying way more attention when I do that but that little bit of extra capability can be such an advantage in this aircraft as you gain skill and experience as a pilot you'll start to notice all these little extra design features that allow you to have more control over the airplane another example of this is the flap limiting speed or vfe as you can see here you can lower the flaps at 115 miles per hour which is right at 100 knots on the Cherokee Cessna says in their poh that you need to be less than 100 miles per hour or 87 knots before lowering the flaps in that aircraft now I know that we're talking about a difference of 13 knots but sometimes you need to get those flaps down and this little bit of extra capability can be really valuable in certain situations I'm sure that part of this ability is because most Cherokees have manual flaps while the majority of Skyhawks have electric flaps electric stuff is super nice but it's also something that could break and if you need to turn off the electric for some kind of emergency you still have flaps in the Cherokee if you fly an older 172 with manual flaps it's clear why Cessna moved to the electric flaps it's kind of a pain to reach down and grab that flap lever but in the 140 it's super convenient to reach down and grab the flap handle because you sit on the floor in that aircraft it kind of feels like a go-kart but I'll admit the Cessna 172 is a lot easier to get in and out of because you sit up in a normal seated position and there are doors on both sides but once you get used to it it's not that much harder getting into the Cherokee and it does feel kind of cool sitting on the floor now I do want to show you a few more design feature that are important considerations when you're looking at these aircraft but before we do that let's take a side-by-side comparison of a few more performance numbers once again you do kind of have to take these numbers with a grain of salt because we're comparing airframes from two different years but both of these models I'm comparing have 150 horsepower engines so I personally feel that this is the most accurate comparison between these two airplanes probably the first thing you'll notice is that the useful load of the Cherokee is about 50 pounds less than the Skyhawk if you don't ever carry passengers this might not seem like a big deal but you have to pay a lot closer attention to your weight in a Cherokee because most of them have 50 gallon fuel tanks while there are some Cessna models that were produced with 52 gallon tanks they're quite a bit more rare and most Skyhawks have 42 gallon tanks which leaves you roughly 38 gallons of usable fuel depending on the model you have now this might seem like a huge Advantage for the Cherokee as it can give you almost an hour and a half more play time than the Cessna but in reality if the density altitude is high and I have someone else with me I never fill up all the way to 50 gallons I typically only fill it up to the Taz which are 18 gallons per tank oh yeah that is something kind of nice on these low Wings though you can just look down into the tank without climbing up on top of stuff but anyway the Cherokee gives you a little bit more leeway when it comes to making decisions but I like to tell my students that that leeway is also a little bit more rope to hang yourself with just be cautious if you use those 50 gallon tanks in addition to the higher useful load the Skyhawk cruises a little faster as well if we look back at the charts you'll notice that the Cherokee gives us these numbers at a Max gross weight of 2 150 pounds and Cessna gives us their numbers at 2 300 so we're not really comparing Apples to Apples but if we pick an altitude of 5000 feet and look at 75 percent power for both aircraft you'll notice that the 172 trues out about 128 miles per hour while the Cherokee chews out somewhere around 123 that's a five mile an hour difference in addition to all that you may also be wondering about Landing distance once again we're kind of comparing apples to oranges here because both of these charts were made at different Max gross weights but if we choose a density altitude of zero for both of these aircraft and compare the difference it appears as if they can land about the same distance I don't know the Cherokee may be closer to 530 or 540 feet here and while I would never reduce the landing distance if these charts were all I had to look at I think if I dropped 150 pounds to match the Cherokee we'd have a definite winner in a short field Landing competition okay here are a couple other features that you'll want to know about when you look at these aircraft I saved these for last because they're not really important to Performance but they are important things to consider first things first most Piper Cherokee 140s do not have foot brakes on the co-pilot's side while cessna's due if this is your first time hearing about this you may be thinking that this is a deal breaker I'll admit it was kind of weird when I first started teaching out of the right seat in the Cherokee but I've actually gotten used to using the handbrake when I need to stop the airplane supposedly there are a couple stcs you can get for the Cherokee to get brakes added to the right side but I really don't know if it's worth the money unless you're going to be doing a lot of flying from the right seat and you don't like to use a handbrake so that's one design point for the Cessna 172 the trim is another point of contention for these two aircraft I think everyone here is familiar with the old trim wheel on the Skyhawk it's probably the most natural way to trim the control pressures off during different phases of flight and then most Cherokees have this weird thing on the ceiling not the most user-friendly design but here's something you may not be aware of unlike the 172 the Cherokee has a stabilator back here instead of an elevator and the main difference is that the tail moves in two parts As you move the Yoke forward and aft while the elevator on the Cessna moves as one piece the stabilator is a very cool design because it actually reduces the need for trim it does not eliminate the need for trim but it reduces it quite a bit I find myself trimming way less in the Cherokee than in the Skyhawk so that's super nice but in addition to that there are a ton of Cherokees that have electric trim added to the Yoke so you don't have to go through the agony of reaching above your head when you need to trim the airplane let's call this one a tie because I like the stabilator it's an awesome design but once again Cherokees are kind of low to the ground and that makes them a little bit tougher to get in and out of and having only one door doesn't help too much either but in addition to that there's no baggage door on the 140. so if that one door is stuck closed during an emergency you're going to have to break out the side glass or something else in order to egress the aircraft not a deal breaker but that's definitely another point for the old Skyhawk overall I do believe that the Cessna 172 is a better aircraft when it comes to Performance this airframe actually performs quite a bit better than the Cherokee but the Piper Cherokee does have its advantages at the time of this video the average price for a Piper Cherokee 140 is somewhere around sixty thousand dollars whereas a Skyhawk of the same caliber will set you back closer to ninety thousand dollars and while you can find airplanes above and below these price ranges you're going to be paying roughly 50 percent more for a Cessna 172. so is 172 a better aircraft yes it is but it's not 50 percent better so if you're looking for a better value you should consider the Piper Cherokee 140 instead of the 172. in terms of performance it may fall just a little short of the old Skyhawk but I guarantee you that you will not be disappointed by the extra maneuverability and control that this aircraft gives you as a pilot yes it lacks a few small features but I do believe that the value you get in return is well worth it thanks for watching free pilot training I've wanted to create this video for a long time because I think you can learn a lot about aerodynamics when you compare two great aircraft learned something today or you just enjoyed it because you love airplanes please smash that like button and I'll see you in the next video see ya [Music]

Channel: Free Pilot Training

Views: 105,827

Keywords:

Id: K_LCDoFFxIk

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 09 2023