Death Cruiser Flight Crew
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Vaucluse, France.
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[QUOTE=treadigraph;10856325]A fine legacy indeed. If a lottery win comes up, I'd certainly have a DR400 for touring.
Yes, we had a DR400/180 on trial for a week or so at the British Airways Flying Club in May 1973. We were looking at it as a tourer and not for ab initio instruction, having already decided that yer bog-standard Lock-Haven spam can PA28-140 was better suited to withstand the mistreatment involved in that. We came away with the impression of a delightful, nice handling, sporty aeroplane, with splendid visibility out of that sliding canopy. Yes please, we'll have one!
However, before we could take things further, along came the 1973/4 Oil Crisis with all that queuing up for half a gallon of petrol for the car - "Regular Customers Only" - light aviation in particular seemed doomed, and Messrs. Frank Bough and co. on the BBC were telling us in complete authority that the future lay in riding around on bicycles. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
It didn't happen of course, but neither did the DR400/180 for our club. However, a quick look at FR24 shows it still happily bimbling around the sky down at Lasham.