A Piper Cherokee 140... good first plane?

Cecil Chapman wrote:
: I'm beginning the process of looking for my own plane and have heard lots of
: advice. Most have advised against getting something like a Cherokee 140 and
: opt instead for something like a Cessna 172 or a Cherokee 180. Now, most
: 172 N's that I've flown have a 160 HP engine. It is my understanding that
: the Cherokee 140 has a 150 HP engine (about comparable to the engine size of
: a 172M). Will I really miss out on the extra 10 hp difference between the
: C172N and the Cherokee 140?

: Confused....

I've posted a bunch of stuff in the past few days for another guy under
the thread "Which airplane." I did my PPSEL in a rented '66 172 with a 145hp
Continental. I then bought (with two other partners) a Cherokee 140 that had been
upgraded to a 180hp engine. A friend of mine has a Cherokee 150, though, so I'm
familar with a 150 hp Cherokee. (Just for the record, Cherokee 150's are a bit
unusual... they're basically 160's with the full backseat and baggage compartment, but
with the 150hp low-compression engine).

A -140 with 150 hp engines can be relatively easily converted to a 160hp by
swapping out pistons as others have mentioned. There's an inexpensive STC and some
labor involved, but I would think it could be done for $500-$1000 depending on how
much work you did yourself. You will likely lose the ability to run autofuel (and if
you *can* do it, it's an expensive STC for a 140/160 vs. a cheap one for a 140/150).
The low-compression cherokees are quite happy on autofuel.

As far as will you "miss" the 10hp vs. a 172, I'd say the much bigger factor
will be the difference in how the planes handle. A Cherokee has a more forgiving
airfoil (very benign stall), but at the expense of a higher sink rate than a 172. I
think the 172 loads a little more "linearly"... in other words, the performance goes
down fairly consistently as you get closer to gross. On the Cherokees, it goes down
fairly slowly until you get to a certain point, and then it falls off quickly. In
general, the cherokee will take a bit more runway to takeoff and land, and cruise very
slightly faster.

Better bang-for-the-buck IMO. I think Pipers are engineered with a little
less "optimization" than Cessnas. They reused lots of parts for different airframes,
and they're more solid and heavier than the Cessnas. As such, they probably break a
bit less often and have a slight advantage of volume parts. No doubt others would
disagree...

-Cory


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* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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