Well, I got to fly the new C172 that the airport I fly out of just got and let's just say it was an interesting flight. First, I had to get briefed on everything that was wrong with it, half of the radios don't work, and most interesting was that the airspeed indicator would, on average, read 20 kts over actual airspeed, making climb-out at 93 kts and final approach speed was a healthy 85 kts. When I started it up, I brought the throttle to idle and it seemed like it would almost quit, which I asked about and was told to keep the RPM's around 800 when I was on the ground so it would run smoother, in the air it would windmill enough to keep the RPM's up at idle. So, on my take-off roll, the passenger side window popped open and I decided that I should continue taking off and fix it once I was climbing out. I reached out into the 80 mph wind to close the darn thing while trying to climb-out, then a little while later, while I was just cruising around, the window popped open again so I had to do the same thing again. I decided that was a good time to head back so I came back to land in a good 10-15 kt direct crosswind right behind a C152 and while we were taxiing back, I had to keep the RPM's up while going slow enough to not run into the guy in front of me. After all that I decided to do another landing for some more x-wind practice and then I parked it and decided it wasn't really that bad of an airplane.
by Mobius » Wed Oct 05, 2005 2:17 am 
