PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Best 2 seater and 4 seater training aircraft
Old 13th September 2009 | 10:46
  #18 (permalink)  
A and C
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Joined: Jan 1999
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From: north of barlu
Socata TB9/10
The lower powered TB's are a bit of a disapointment mainly because the parts supply is expensive/erratic and corossion is an issue with older aircraft, If i was going to recoment a French aircraft for this mission it would be the Robin DR400-140 the parts supply may be bad from Robin but at least you can buy the airframe parts from a good wood yard!

Grob 115
An aircraft of PA38 like performance but with a slightly better criuse speed but it falls out of the spin if you just let go of the controls, In fact it is very hard to get a quicker recovery even with rapid spin recovery control input.
I cant comment on parts supply but we have had no problems from Grob with glider parts.
Please don't think that the G115 is the same aircraft as the G115 Tutor that the RAF use, the military airframe uses lots of Carbon & some Kevlar to reduce weight and beef up the aircraft for Aerobatics.

SR20

A very nice aircraft but I am so disapointed with the construction, The construction technques are about 30 years adrift of the best German gliders.

The "dogtooth" leading edge is an add on that hints the wing was not very good intialy. I would guess that if the same aircraft was built by the Germans it would be 200lb lighter.

DA20

I am putting an engine back in one of these at the moment and the Rotax instalation has very bad access for maintenance, parts also seem to be a bit of an issue with the wrong bits being sent by the factory, this will all put the hourly rate on the aircraft up.

The up side to the Rotax instalation is that Mogas should be used this will keep the cost down (rotax fuel burn is good anyway), using Avgas will result in lead deposits in the engine that will result in maintenance issues.

I have yet to fly the aircraft but it seems popular with club members, however most of the training seems to go to the clubs C152,s
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