The Perfect Budget Airplane Piper Tomahawk

[Music] the piper tomahawk ladies and gentlemen this plane is almost never talked about when you talk about trainer aircraft and that's partly because of the stigma that's surrounding the tomahawk which i think a lot of it is not so much of a reality okay if you know the story behind pipers they generally build personal planes for civil aviation um but back in the 70s they tried to get into the trainer market which was dominated by cessna and still is and this was the price this is this is what they came up with okay and the tomahawk has been around since 78 i believe they made they the production version came out in 1978 and this one here in front of me is a 1979 model and guys i personally for whatever reason i have a thing for this beat uh not veto the tea tale i love the look of this thing and for all of you who followed my journey as a student pilot you know i trained a diamond d840 and it had a similar design with the t-tail and i think and let me back up a little bit this thing just makes planes look majestic on the ramp i don't know what it is and so that's one of the reasons why i like the look and finish of the piper tomahawk but anyway let me go around it for you as you can see it's a low wing it is fixed landing gear because this was a trainer although the owner of this aircraft does not use it for training this is their personal plane and i'll tell you a little bit more about what this airplane is used for but you can see the paint and finish on this plane it still looks amazing and this paint is at least 12 years old when i walked in here before we pulled the plane out i'm like how long ago did you get this paint plane it painted because i thought for a 30 40 year old plane this looks like a new paint job and he told me 2008 and guess what also this plant was sitting out on the ramp for a few years so whoever did the paint work on this uh kudos to them because it still looks amazing and so you've got the paint scheme you've got red on the tip of the wing white and some nice uh gold or platinum design here but guys the tomahawk it's a low wing and that's why i have a preference for it and truth be told i was actually looking hard at this plane before i ever decided to buy a sling tsi or build a sling tsi because i wanted something proven so to speak and one of the great things about the piper tomahawk is again because of the stigma around it you can actually pick these up for a very very affordable price and we'll talk about that in a bit but first let me tell you about the power plant so standard you get 112 horsepower with the piper tomahawk but you can always upgrade it to 125 horsepower and that's with the lycoming o320 which is what this plane has and it also has as you can see a two bladed prop and so with that in performance you get a little bit more uh in your get up and go and you cruise tomahawks they cruise around the same numbers as the 152 i think is the more comparable aircraft and so in this plane you're doing 105 knots so 120 miles 125 miles ish per hour which is pretty good and you only burn about six gallons of fuel but let me show you the magic to me the true magic of the piper tomahawk we're gonna get in the interior space first before i even go in you can see that this plane has two doors this is unique for its time okay for a 79 uh model plan you look at for example the piper cherokee even some of the moonies all of the moonies that came out around the same time you've got just one door and this is a smaller plane trainer you've got wide open big doors on both sides so to get in and out is very very easy and i'll do that right now so you've got the step up and you just grab on this and go in the interior look at this beauty now you can tell that this is not your typical proper tomahawk this one has been recently upgraded so you've got glass instrument here and so this airplane is fully certified for instrument flying and if i scroll around i love that i came at this time because this thing is completely naked the owner is actually getting the interior redone so you can see the shell of this plane and see all the control cables and also the wiring and how neatly it's done okay but this is something that i personally appreciate about the piper tomahawk when i was looking at all the trainers or older planes uh to build time because that's really why you're looking at a plane like this you're either new a new pilot a student pilot or you're looking to build time and this plane will do that job but before i get into all that let me tell you the upgrades that's been done so you look right in front you've got two g5s okay and that's because that's the only thing really you can fit into uh easily fit into this pockets so you still got your analog air speed indicator there but this does a lot more and this is all glass and if you know anything about the g5 it's also great because it has its own independent battery that could run for another 40-45 minutes you know just in case you lose your electric power so you've got two here and on that side this is the beast that turns this baby into an ifr platform that's a gtn 650xi which is the newest model for the garmin gtn 650 and you've got also your radios there and ergonomically guys this is this is again what i think makes the tomahawk stand out no matter what stigma or criticism you've heard about this plane ergonomically i think the designers for this plane did a great job so by that look at this okay it's a two-seater all right you've got one and two there this almost feels like you're in a car the setup in here so you've got a a small let me move this so you can see all of it you've got a small or i guess standard size middle console here and you see there's nothing here so all you got you can rest your hand if you need to and the beautiful thing is you've got about 44 inches of room in the cabin so even sizable people that are on the bigger side can fit very comfortably in this plane as a matter of fact let me sit and show you what i mean all right we are in the piper tomahawk honestly when you compare this plane again to the closest competition is the cessna 150 or 152 you can even compare this to some monies or some even the the cherokee you can't you can't compare the the space that you have in here honestly when any of those planes that i listed the 152 even the piper cherokee the room that you get in the uh the tomahawk is to me it's it's uncomparable look how i'm sitting guys i am sitting low and one thing i do like about this airplane if you look in front of me as i'm looking right now i can see over the dash even though i'm sitting low but ergonomically man it's it's just there's a lot of room in here so again i don't have to like bump you know the next person because i'm not the biggest guy okay i'm 5 10 175 180 ish pounds so but some someone even bigger than me can fit in here really really well and then you look at the leg room so look at how much room i have guys the leg room is just again i don't think i can see any airplane in the same category to compare this this cabin space to so you've got a ton of leg room these seats will scroll back and forth and so if you're on the shorter or the taller side you can always move your stuff uh move your seat back and forth and then back there although you can't put seats there but you've got a good amount of room now speaking of that the tomahawk you've got a little bit over 500 pounds probably even closer to 600 pounds of useful load and once you fill up your tanks you've got 30 gallons total for your fuel so 15 on each tanks and so which once you fill that up you still got a good amount of payload to use at least for two adults two people to sit and go places and with that 30 gallons you can go up to 400 500 miles all right but let me show you one more thing so since we're still on the ergonomics of this interior space and i'm really doing this in-depth review for anybody who's looking to get an affordable plane because this plane is is affordable okay this plane is affordable you can get it for even less than you pay for a honda accord all right so ergonomically again you sit in nice and upright you've got your trim scroll here and look look where my hands is like right there within reach you've got your throttle you've got your mixture it's a fixed pitch prop so there's no prop lever to bother with and then also your fuel selector right there in front of you okay and everything in terms of your avionics obviously uh depending if you have the analog screen now most of the piper tomahawk you will see in the market is probably not upgraded as this one but even with that you know how to fly a plane you can use your analog screen but i just love the ergonomics of this thing how it's well designed and the the room is just you can't compare anything to it i'm sitting real low i still got like a good amount of space you know between me and the ceiling like the head room is crazy and then also another cool feature is this you see once this door closes i mentioned that you've got about 44 inches so and 44 inches is right from the outside and you see how curved they made the door that design was done on purpose again so you have the width you have that room so you're not stealing so if this if this wasn't curved in you would probably take a few inches off off of your cabin with but it is and you've got an arm rest through the door so i think the design of this thing you know they put a lot of time and effort into it now i will tell you some of the downside of the tomahawk but that's outside but let me show you so over the years you've had ads for the piper tomahawk and that is to the wings and to this tail here for the tail every 3000 hours you got to get it inspected and if you have any breakage or cuts in the in the material then you have to change it out and for the wings every 11 000 hours the wings is it's pretty much considered useless so you got to change it out but again depending on how long you own and fly this thing you can still stay within those times um and my rule of thumb is you know just don't get in a stall any airplane that you fly don't don't stall it and that way you don't have to deal with having to recover uh from a stall but really that's the only downside of this airplane the pilot who owns and fly this thing loves it he's had had it now for almost 10 years almost 10 years so much so that he's willing to spend even more money to upgrade it and so all this nice instrumentation you see in here this cost even more than the airplane so and now let's talk about price because i mentioned that this is one of the most affordable planes you can get your hands on for me the look finish design performance i don't think you can go wrong with this just accept you love high wings or your die die-hard cessna fan i love low wings and to me this is the ultimate entry level lowing airplane for 20 grand you can get your hands on a bird similar to this now i may not have all the upgrades that you want but for a nice flying machine you can get a piper tomahawk anywhere between twenty thousand dollars and thirty thousand dollars that same price you would pay for a car okay and so and obviously depending on how long you own it for this is an airplane that you not only can use for your training you can get your private in it you can if it's instrument rated you can also get your instrument certificate in it so i think for the price that you pay for this thing it pays for itself over the years okay don't be like me where i went and paid thousands of dollars to get a license and then i didn't have a plane at the end of the day so for all my pilots out there or anybody who's interested in getting into flying i think this is a legitimate legitimate option for you to get into it's cheaper to run it only burns six gallons of fuel per hour and you can still own it even after you're done with with your training and again with this particular one they've upgraded quite a bit i didn't show you earlier if you go around the airplane you can see that all the lights also have been upgraded to leds so it makes for a really nice airplane in terms of range what you can do with it you can go 400 500 miles okay and for most people that's plenty you know depending on how much your bladder can take all right so this is my review of the piper tomahawk i hope you all enjoyed it this is one plant actually that i was excited to feature because i wanted one once upon a time alright if you enjoyed the video make sure you give it a thumbs up and if this is your first time be sure to subscribe with the notification bell on thank you all so much for watching a great way to support module grip is by becoming an mvp member go on to modulegrip.net forward slash mvp and sign up there and i will catch you all on the next video peace you

Channel: MojoGrip

Views: 146,008

Keywords: aircraft, private pilot, piper, piper tomahawk, piper cherokee, cessna 150, cessna 152, cessna 172, grumman tiger, airplane

Id: n-lrVuUASbw

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2020