Why the Grumman American 1978 AA5A Cheetah is one of the best aircraft to fly.

[Music] [Music] what's up buddy i like this how is it it's good it's busy today you got steps over there yeah yeah i figured that it's a little busy today it's a little bit i've watched like three helicopters just depart west this thing's sick right i could see you from a lot always wait yeah yeah matt do your thing what year is this thing 77 1977. yeah was it ever weird to you that you're just out flying a plane by yourself totally hit me on the lane today it it's a crazy concept isn't it yeah i still get that feeling some days you're like i'm in a freaking airplane by myself that's it just buy it just by myself somebody trusted you good to see you like the faa the government was like different yeah yeah i know still sketches me out [Music] this one i think it's 150 that's still that's pretty good up here yeah yeah full tanks i mean your time rate is like on today maybe like i did like 2 300 feet a minute yeah crazy no well what's your burn rate max 10 gallons i'm usually at like 8.7 that's not bad yeah yeah it's only cruising at i mean most of the time you're cruising within the flaps range which is but with a good tail when like we're going out to lyman then you're covering looking at like 134 knots over the ground so like yeah yeah it gets up and goes that's sweet how many gallons of fuel uh 19 a side this thing will hold almost 40 gallons and the other one the blue one three two meter papa has extended tanks they're 23 gallons each side yeah man you're not getting [Music] that's pretty good yeah i mean when i was doing the flight plan to bozeman it was like 433 knots or 333 miles yeah and suggested one stop probably just halfway through it like gillette and then just fill up and be good to go what yeah now granted it's going to take you like four and a half five hours the range is still pretty good the range is still pretty good yeah well you want to go fly i want to go flying all right let's do it love the sliding canopy you got space behind you and stuff sweet what a sweet little point i see why your appeal is with these now yeah and you can taxi around like this too look at the vehicle i know what oh yeah it's like a convertible the v8 speed for the canopy is 112 miles are you serious yeah yeah wow mixture full rich off fuel selector tank with the most fuel prime shouldn't need much but we'll go with one flaps are up and checked these electric flaps yeah whoa oh yeah which is weird because i fly the 2021 um [Music] clear clear [Music] usually they should have a hiccup of some sort so it's pretty well that's why you fly at flying club that's hilarious so today's adventure was with my good friend craig he actually just recently got his private pilot's license in this particular aircraft and i in fact was his very first passenger on this adventure the plan was to leave kbjc which is broomfield colorado known as rocky mountain airport it's located in western colorado and truly yields one of the best views around our intended adventure route was to a small little airport northeast of this location known as platte valley now the particular aircraft we were flying was a 1978 grumman cheetah this variant was 150 horsepower in two seats at a range about 450 miles and cruised at about 100 knots i really wanted to showcase this particular aircraft because for me it was very unique what i mean by unique is that it's very pilot oriented about the closest that this aircraft represented to a new aircraft was a diamond da20 and i really like this plane because a it had a sliding canopy which was really cool but the overall visibility of the aircraft was very refreshing to see typical 172 has a good overall visibility for the pilot but this was next level it truly was feeling like it was in a sports car with a convertible top i really liked the gauge layouts and i really liked the uh feel of the aircraft and its visibility around me after doing a quick run up we are ready to park kbjc now you get a rough idea of how wide this runway is in comparative to other runways this is a major airport hub for a lot of corporate jets and for us this little plane uh really gives you a perspective of how big this runway truly is i was really curious how this aircraft would perform today because it was quite a hot day and we're at altitude and the density altitude of this particular day was nearly 8 500 feet so i'm curious what essentially 320 pounds of payload i had 150 horse would yield for a takeoff role and to my surprise the aircraft actually performed quite impressively for how hot it was that day you can kind of get a great perspective of how beautiful this particular location at the airport is with the rocky mountains in the distance right there it's it doesn't get really getting much better than that now one neat feature about this plane was you can essentially open the canopy while in flight and you'll see coming up here there's actually a max speed rating for the canopy to be open and on a hot day when there's not much airflow through the aircraft opening this canopy and getting an even better view around you and getting all that fresh air was i don't know something that's really neat from an aircraft from this era [Music] i was really impressed by this particular plane with the control services and what i mean by control services is that the response in the controls almost felt like a sports car the aileron roll was phenomenal it was very responsive the elevator you could trim the aircraft out go hands-free and it flew straight as an arrow one of the points that i appreciate about this aircraft is it's really a good cross-country aircraft now keep in mind it's only doing about 100 knots it's happy cruise speed is about 100 knots but for the performance that we were getting at a burn rate about 8.2 gallons per hour it was wonderful now we're arriving to platte valley here and i didn't tell craig that it's one of the most narrow runways around and uh you could tell by his reaction that he was in for a treat trying to put this plane down on this narrow runway but i like practicing at this particular airport because a it's got very low traffic so your pilot can really focus in on the aircraft and hone his or her skills undoing touch and goes and landings and takeoff performance and you know without their distractions of everything else around you as you're coming in here you can get a great perspective of how truly narrow this runway is i would practice over here with my tail wheel airplane and you know probably the first 10 landings here i was like wow this is this is going to be tight but i always say if you can get good at practicing on a narrow runway like this you fly back to kbjc or centennial k-a-p-a you'll be uh it'll be absolute cake putting the plane down on that big of a runway speed of the grumman here is about 70 and uh he rotates about 60 65 for uh touchdown and there's uh funny fact is these are electric flaps on this particular plane and of course the canopy comes open all the way and we're back in convertible mode which to me is can't get much cooler than that if you're interested in this particular aircraft i i would highly recommend it if you're learning to fly on one or you see people teaching in one of these i think it's a great airplane to learn how to fly in but if you're also interested in buying one i absolutely recommend it the price range of these is about the same as a cessna 150 or 172 in my opinion is way cooler and still performs the same if not better and it's just a very unique aircraft price range of these i've seen them range from 20k to 50 000 for a really really nice one and like i said there's multiple variants there's some with 180 horsepower four seats and uh better range this one like i said was 150 horsepower 40 gallons 450 mile range as we were taxing back here this piper one for a cessna 140 and this pits biplane had to move to the side of us so we could taxi and i had to laugh because this aircraft this airport is so small that there are no areas to move over you just have to pull over in the grass to let aircraft by and i kind of like that hopefully you enjoyed this video and it gave you some insight what the grumman cheetah is all about and i really approve this aircraft overall for learning owning and just general it's a really neat pilot friendly aircraft thanks for watching

Channel: Sir Drifto

Views: 28,924

Keywords: grumman tiger, grumman cheetah, grumman aa5, general aviation, grumman yankee, why the grumman aa5a is a great plane to buy, cheap planes, affordable aircraft, pilot vlog, aviation vlog, cool cheap airplanes to own, best plane to learn to fly on, easiest aircraft to fly, 70s aircraft to fly, best vintage airplane to own, grumman aircraft, cessna aircraft, what is the best plane to learn to fly, easiest plane to land, sirdrifto vlog, aviation, aviation101, grumman traveler

Id: TnaUdxOcLLg

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 01 2022