Unrelated response to your specific question.... do they have a dual
com/nav stack in the 152? I ask, because all the 152 trainers I've seen
at
my FBO only have one com and one nav. I would think that adding another
stack would only serve to further reduce the marginally okay max load capy
of the 152?

Hi Cecil - the plane is 65610 with West Valley out of Palo Alto (
http://www.wvfc.org/craft/65610.html ), and it does have dual nav/com with
glideslope and an inop ADF. All this adds about 80 or so pounds to the
empty weight. The max load is decreased, but the performance is more than
compensated for by the sparrowhawk conversion. I'm a fair bit lighter than
the FAA "standard passenger" - so I can barely fly with my instructor and
full fuel.

After doing my PP in 152's, I had originally planned on doing my instrument
in 172SPs in order to become proficient with the autopilot and GPS
approaches - which I figure I'll be much more likely to use in 'real life'
IFR flight. However, I'm a grad student with a pretty tight budget - and
there's a $50/hour wet difference between the 152 and 172SPs. I told my
instructor that I wanted to spend at least some of my instrument training in
the cheaper 152, and his response was basically "why not do all of it in the
152, after you finish the checkride it'll only take a couple lessons for you
to learn the GPS and autopilot, and this will save you thousands of
dollars." Sound's good to me!

- Ray