The best plane for a TIGHT BUDGET!? Piper Archer II Walkaround & Flight

so today you've got me michael to walk you through this beautiful archer two normally ash would do these walk-arounds but the lucky guy after four years of instructing has scored a job in america flying regional jets a little bit jealous but also super stoked for him so make sure you stay tuned to the channel because we're going to be showcasing some of the general aviation scene in america once ash gets over there and set up it's going to be a lot more comfortable you probably score on other points down there so this aircraft's been around murray bridge for about 15 years and the reason i love it so much is it's a really useful general aviation airplane we're talking a 330 kilo cabin lift so you can actually put four people in it two heavier guys or girls in the front and then two lighter geyser girls in the back and full tanks which is fantastic the other thing is it does 120 knots taz so it hops along pretty fast on only 36 liters an hour so what we'll do is we'll take a look at this archer too we'll take it for a bit of a fly and what we're going to do is compare it to the 235 video we did a couple of months ago make sure you check it out make sure you also check out the video that we did with the 337 and the video with the 172 xp that was pretty special so this aircraft is a really great example of an original archer 2 now the reason why these are so great is because they were penned the original design was penned by john thorpe now john thorpe designed the t-18 he had a bunch of different aircraft one of the most famous was the t-18 so piper enjoyed a lot of success in the 1960s with these aircraft the original cherokee 150 and 160 with those numbers of course corresponding to the horsepower of the engine in 1962 they added the 0360 to the cherokee which became the cherokee 180 and enjoyed solid sails as the challenger so in the early 1970s piper had a smash hit on their hand with the cherokee with 180 horse motor what they then did was expanded the cabin lengthened it by five inches to give you more legroom in the back and they also added this tapered wing and thus the archer was born so originally the 180 was powered by the o360 a3a now these engines suffered a bit because they only had a tbo or time before overhaul of 1200 hours and that was because they put 7 16 inch exhaust valves in it not one of leica ming's best efforts however they upgraded them later to the a4m version which is what mic alpha uniform has and that's got your standard 2000 hour tbo now that tbo that engine actually is in the tbo hall of fame because they regularly run on condition well over 2000 hours so on a cherokee you've got a nice hinged cowl one of the downsides of the archer is you can't actually lift this cowl during your pre-flight so what you have to do is pop open the oil door and peer in so this is me inspecting the engine on a pre-flight i've got this tiny little door to look through i can't see much but it looks okay so this one is great it's got a really fast cruise because it's got these wheel pants which are good for about an extra two to three knots unfortunately up the back there you can see she looks a bit naked because the rear ones have been removed for repair so this one's also got the gap seals which are really really nice they're good for another two to three knots what that does is stops the high pressure air from the top of the wing coming through to the low pressure side on the bottom of the wing so the wheel pants and the gap seals mean that this aircraft's good for a taz of about 120 knots so this aircraft's now 44 years old it's on its original paint and because it's been hanged all of its life there's no corrosion and everything feels nice and tight it hasn't been aged by the sun so it's a really nice example of an archer too admittedly the paint is starting to get a little bit tired but we're looking for a repaint fairly soon for this one one thing you've got to watch for on a pre-buy of these arches is cracking of the skins forward of the wing walk area they are prone to it so here we are at the back of the plane it's got this all-flying tail or stabilator what this does is changes its angle of attack in the airflow as opposed to say the hinge design on a cessna it's also got this anti-servo tab on the rear stabilizer what that does is provide some resistance on the control column in flight which minimizes over controlling so this stabilizator or all flying tail allows about a 25 smaller horizontal tail surface and this is one of the designs that was patented by john thorpe when he was at lockheed and you'll see it on all of the thorpe designs so here we are in the back of the archer now it's pretty comfortable i'm six foot and i can sit here fairly comfortably what's nice is i can also reach in the back into the baggage area for any gear that we need during the flight i have heard and you can imagine that with an extra five inches on this fuselage it's going to be a lot more comfortable than the pre-1973 models or the cherokees so with that 330 kilo useful load you can realistically get 200 kilo people in the front and 265 kilo people in the back now i'd definitely take somebody who's six foot but i probably wouldn't take somebody who's fatter than 65 kilos what's nice about the archer is it's got this nice wide comfortable cockpit now they ran the split windscreen as well all the way through to current model so here we've got the garmin g5 which replaces the artificial horizon it's really really good for night work and it's got a battery backup in case of an electrical failure and here's all the gas gauges and engine instruments they're right in a row for you and they're very very easy to see and scan during your checks and here you've got your throttle quadrant really easy and ergonomic easy to actuate the throttle if you fly any piper it's going to be the same it's just got more levers down on the floor you've got your fuel selector you've only got a left and a right unlike a cessna where you've also got an off position and a both position so it does mean when you're flying one of these you have to balance your left and your right tanks you probably score another point for sets down there and here's the manual flaps i reckon every small aviation airplane should have manual flaps score another point for piper on that one the other thing this aircraft's got is a trim wheel on the floor which makes it really easy to drop your hand from the control column straight down and pull some trim when you need it now talking about the flight characteristics of the archer one of the great things with these is they have this really wide main gear which is really good for stability when you're on the runway it doesn't feel like it's tippy the other thing of course is with the low wing it feels like it punches into a crosswind a lot better and it's not unheard of for people in cherokees or arches to land in a 35 knot crosswind all right we're good to go let's go flying [Music] traffic piper archer mike alpha uniform is taxiing for bravo bridge one of the nice things about these arches one of the things i love is the direct linkage nose wheel steering that means that the the nose wheel is directly linked to the rudder pedal so when you push on the rudder pedal the nose wheel turns which means you get really good response on the ground also makes it a lot easier to land in a crosswind because you know that the nose wheel is straight when your runner is straight rubbish traffic gently there's 40 knots there's 50 knots there's 55 rotate and we're away in about a third of the runway distance and then she's straight into ground effect just get that trimming we're climbing it's about 72 73 knots here going about 500 feet a minute better get a little bit more 75 knots 600 feet a minute 700 feet a minute here we go so we're about 700 feet a minute with two people on board here we are climbing out of the circuit area at 80 knots and what you can see is we're just passing a thousand feet and we're showing 800 feet a minute on climb so it's pretty damn good performance and that's at full power rubbish traffic path archer mike alpha uniform departs upwind passing 1 300 on climb 2500 for the northern training area murray bridge [Music] so what we're looking at here is the nice g5 in here which is great for not vfr work or any work that we do because it's got a battery back up just in case the uh just in case the electronic power and electric power in the aircraft fails fairly basic six pack avionics like we talked about the oil uh oil gauges and the fuel and engine gauges are right here which is really nice and then of course we've got the taco now i don't like the placement of the taco in this aircraft but there's really no other place to put it this one's got a really nice transponder it's got that adsb out transponder and then of course we'll continue heading through let's ignore those radios that particular radio there the com one but the cop2 is really nice and icon one on the right hand side and then of course you've got your gps up here the old standby 89b which is still a pretty good gps easy enough to use it doesn't have some of the modern features but hey get you there so here we are on cruise we're showing about 25 50 rpm and we're looking at about 113 knots indicated we could go to parafield if we like today of course we've got a base at parafield come on fly training operates out of murray bridge and our new base at parafield with a couple of aircraft a couple of instructors down there but we're not what we're going to do is turn around and go to murray bridge and let's have a look at how she cruises you can see we're cruising on into murray bridge here we're grounding 149 knots which is pretty nice got a bit of a northerly tailwind today and of course if we come over here to tas just under 120 knots taz so she's cruising along nicely 120 knots tas for 40 liters an hour that is my kind of airplane rubbish traffic mic alpha uniform 7 to the north inbound descending 2 500 estimate circuit 46 murray bridge another thing i love is those flaps we talked about those flaps earlier i just love it you reach down you go you pull it up and click one click is first stage of flat so easy to control so easy to use now let's see we'll get it into ground effect and see how she goes 65 knots over the fence powers away and get her into ground effect there's ground effect feels like a balloon and just touch it down mary there we go we played the waiting game and we're rewarded with the gracer flaps away and get the power on so let's have a think about the archer versus the 235 video that we did a couple of months ago so in that pathfinder the 235 235 horse versus 180 horse you're going to be burning more fuel in the pathfinder with 235 horsepower you're burning 65 liters an hour and for that you're getting 135 knots taz not bad compare it to the archer though with 180 horsepower in which you're burning 36 liters an hour in the cruise and you're getting 120 knots taz so essentially what that means is on your standard three hour leg in ga i only do three hours because that's about as much as my bladder can hold when you're doing three hours in the pathfinder you're gonna get there the same distance you're going to get there in 2 hours and 40 minutes whereas the archer you're going to get there in three hours so with that extra fuel burn you're paying 200 extra to get there 20 minutes earlier i'm not sure i can make that calculus i think that archer's got it and that's the reason why it's my favorite ga airplane so that's the venerable archer 2 my favorite ga aeroplane do you agree do you disagree leave a comment tell me why stay tuned for some of our upcoming adventures we're going to walk around our brand new archer over in sydney so stay tuned and check that out [Music] so on that last touch and go i saw a gala sitting on the runway i wasn't exactly sure what he was doing i was holding off for a bit trying to keep that nose keep that propeller away from him i thought we might have picked him up but i didn't see him go through the prop what i did see was he got caught there he is sorry gala poor little bugger

Channel: Deadstick Adventures

Views: 50,093

Keywords: aviation, cessna, generalaviation, flying, films, travel, adventure, southaustralia, australianaviation, beechcraft, textron, piper, pilots

Id: AmIhSSN3UgU

Length: 11min 43sec (703 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 03 2022