Skylune wrote:

On the flight training biz: Thanx for the advice. One of the local
schools trains on Pipers, another Cessnas. I'm over 6' too, and the old
152 i trained in years back doesn't leave an awful lot of head room or leg
room. I've never been in a Piper before. Cessna bills its Skylane as a
"stable, easy to fly" machine. Do you think that's true, and how would
the Piper compare?

Consider then a 172 for training rather than a 150. It likely isn't
much more costly than a Cherokee.

Pipers are as easy to fly as the 1xx Cessnas, probably easier as they
don't really stall and you can see the runway while flying the pattern.
Some people seem to need to be able to do that, but I never could
figure out why as the runway isn't moving so when I roll out of my turn
it will be right where I expect it to be based on where I started my turn.

I'd much rather be able to easily see down while flying so that I can
keep an eye on emergency landing sites, than be able to see the runway
during a normal approach. I find emergency landing site selection much
more difficult in the Arrow I now fly as compared to the 182 I formerly
owned. The 182 also had a much better glide ratio, landed more easily,
took off more easily (the Arrow will over rotate, so you have to relax
pitch as soon as the wheels break ground), and was more responsive in
all axes of control. It also had much more rudder authority for forward
slips and side slips for cross wind landings. I rarely had to use full
rudder on the Skylane, but it isn't hard to run out of rudder on the
Arrow. I think a lot of the issue with the Arrow is that it seems to
have a lot more friction in the control system than the Cessnas, so if
you don't keep things lubed up often, the control column gets pretty
sticky, especially in pitch.

Having said that, the Arrow is much better than not flying at all, but
I'll take a Cessna any day ... especially a rainy day. :-)

Matt