Ferry pilot

[Illya Kuryakin]

Nothing ventured, nothing learned. Off you go. Let us know how it goes. The main thing is, and most lose touch with this, is to have fun. Your airplane is NOT underpowered. It's just not a 757! In the old days, I'd go through the States.....today though, the paper work would kill you. Hop in it and go, young grasshopper!
Illya

[iflyforpie]

I'd figure out insurance first... then decide a course of action from there.

If they are fine insuring you as-is... just take the airplane. No big deal... and Illya is a good guy to have on your side to consult with--as gruff as he is on the boards sometimes. Pick good days, wait out bad ones... make it an adventure.

If you require a certain amount of dual on-type with an instructor, then kill two birds with one stone and hire a qualified instructor to ferry the aircraft with you. $150/day is too low... you don't want to fly with anyone who thinks their time is only worth that. $300/day + expenses is about right.

For the aircraft... if you've only ever flown 172s/152s or even the PA-28, you are in for a treat. Just remember that it is heavier than a 172 on the same power and the wing doesn't like going as slow as the 172... The control response is amazing in comparison... but the forward visibility is poor during the flare and the tail can lose authority at low speeds--as lots of firewall repairs on these planes can tell.

[Lurch]

Anyone warning you against a Cardinal has never flown one. They are great planes and my favourite Cessna to fly.

The Cardinal is an airplane and flies like an airplane, I have checked out several pilots on Cardinals and the only thing they have had difficulty with was landing, it does land differently from the 172.

Insurance is going to be the one who decides for you what you need to do to get the plane home. They will tell you how many hours you require on type before you are insured. You can find an instructor and have them train you in Sudbury then afterwards you can fly home by yourself. Or you can hire a pilot to fly home with you and complete your training enroute.

Do not get a pilot who has never flown a Cardinal before. You are paying them to train you how to fly it not figure out how to fly it. Do not use an instructor from your school they obviously have no experiance with Cardinals.

Don't decide by how much they charge, but by what they have to offer, 500 hours of instruction and never left the airport is not who you want.

Everyone I know who flies a Cardinal loves them and everyone I have delivered Cardinals to, still are flying them.

Good Luck and let us know how you make out.

[frog]

This is the flight to do by yourself before x country flying becomes a routine !
Go by yourself and enjoy the excitement ! (With proper planning of course).

[Rookie50]

I'll offer some thoughts on your original concept.

There are a couple of factors at play here, skill, cross country experience and personal comfort level.

I bought a plane in Toronto and moved it to Winnipeg through the US. At the time I had over 300 hours, but most of it local flying with the max cross country on a single flight 3 hours. Could I have done the flight myself? Absolutely! Did I feel comfortable doing so ... Nope. So I did as you originally proposed, I took a friend (who happened to be my flight instructor) with me. I logged the time as dual which satisfied my insurance requirements (10 hours on type). After the first leg, I realized that, yes I could have done it alone, but it was a) nice to have the company, b) a great opportunity to pick the brain of a very good flight instructor, and c) it was nice to be able to hand off control for a break from time to time (no autopilot) and while tuning VOR's/radio's, reading the map, nav log, etc. While I had planned to take as much time as needed for the flight if weather became an issue, a nice bonus was that my friend is instrument rated, so on the one leg that had a low ceiling in the morning, we were able to be on our way.

I paid for my friends ticket, meals and hotels. He was nice enough to not charge me for the flight hours, but I did give him some cash anyway.

Assess your own skill and comfort level and do what you think is right.

Above all fly safe.

I tend to agree with these comments the most. Do part of it like to winnipeg dual with an experienced Cardinal pilot, then it satisfies insurance, plus a learning experience on both the cardinal and somewhat remote (north of superior) CC considerations.

[Illya Kuryakin]

Reading some of this, you'd think the guy was flying a DC6 to Cape Town, via England, Europe and all the way down Africa with one feathered. It's Sudbury to somewhere in the prairies in a strut less 172. It'll be way harder to get a Buick out of Toronto to Sudbury in the first place! I swear, some of you could pontificate over the proper way to make Kraft Dinner!
Illya

[CFR]

Reading some of this, you'd think the guy was flying a DC6 to Cape Town, via England, Europe and all the way down Africa with one feathered. It's Sudbury to somewhere in the prairies in a strut less 172. It'll be way harder to get a Buick out of Toronto to Sudbury in the first place! I swear, some of you could pontificate over the proper way to make Kraft Dinner!
Illya

Ah finally something we can agree on, I think you think yours is the only valid opinion here and so do you!

PS

Kraft dinner made with real butter is better than with margarine,
don't follow the directions, the amount of milk they want is more than required and makes it soupy,
never ever put ketchup on it, it's best with sausages and
the version they had 20 years ago is much better than today ... kids won't appreciate the small size of the current noodles and the fact that we had to pump and carry our own water the the wood fired stove.

Note to bognostroclom - make damn certain you fly by yourself on this trip, less you suffer the ridicule of the AVCANADA "wise men"

[Shiny Side Up]

Ok so I have have never really looked up anything about the 177 before but just taking a quick look over anything can anyone explain to me why the heck Cessna isn't making these as brand new aircraft over 172's.?????

The problem with the Cardinal was that inspite of some flashier looks and a lot of work trying to make it a better airplane, it just doesn't outperform the 172 by a significant margin to bother with the trouble of making one. The reason is that when you want to make an airplane with a wing as strong as a Cessna, you have to make it pretty fat to avoid using a strut. A fat wing has more drag. Take a look at the two airplanes and compare. In Cessna's marketing scheme it was supposed to be a step up, but it just didn't find enough of a niche.

That said, Cardinals aren't some fire breathing dragon, if you can fly a Cessna, you can fly a Cessna. The only thing that gets 172 pilots is that it just doesn't fly exactly like a 172. Part of why it didn't sell well. Most of the customers wanted a flashier, faster airplane that flew exactly like a 172, and like the ill fated (but wonderful flying) 175, not enough people could get their brains around that for Cessna to keep marketing them.

The 177A ain't really underpowered, its just underwelming if you're expecting a step up. Otherwise its performance is almost identical to the 172 (though speeds are different - so again, you can't just fly it like a 172, just like lots of other perfectly good airplanes.)

Just go fly it.

[Illya Kuryakin]

CFR, I've never met anybody who doesn't like Kraft Dinner! Bizarre, but true. You're correct about the old stuff being better than the new stuff.....and about the butter. YUM. It's still best with tube steak though!
Illya

[5400AirportRdSouth]

El Dente.
NO milk.
Real Butter.


Oh, right, fly the trip yourself if insurance lets you, otherwise take an instructor along for the required portion to give them what they want for time on type and then the rest yourself. That's my take.

[Colonel Sanders]

Free advice, worth what you paid me for it:

1) know your fuel burn (gph) and know how
many useable gallons you have on board. A
fuel totalizer is $600 and is worth every penny.

2) get an aviation GPS with a current database
and power it off the aircraft and bring two sets
of spare batteries for it. Or a motorcycle battery.
Hopefully it teaches you to hold a heading, and
to look down at your ETA.

3) flying someplace is easy if the weather is good,
and the aircraft is running well, and you have lots
of fuel. Always land with an hour of fuel remaining.

4) weather is what makes flying interesting. As a
junior pilot, you won't have much knowledge of
the weather, and you need to work on that. Learn
to watch the lows/highs and associated fronts. How
fast are they moving? Learn to look at the GFA's,
and the radar animation, and the TAFs and METARs.
Be skeptical. Look for AMD in the TAF.

5) don't take off until you have:

i) no cloud 1500 AGL above the highest terrain you are going to fly over,
ii) at least a 3 degree dewpoint spread that is opening instead of closing,
iii) at least 5 miles vis.
iv) no precip on the radar animation

6) be aware of the effect that terrain has on wx. I
like to get to the lowest terrain if I can. I did a fairly
challenging VFR x/c yesterday with no gyros through
some wx and hills, and this philosophy served me well.

7) I mentioned dewpoint spread. The Great Lakes are
awesome weather-making machines, pumping moisture
into the air. I have the greatest respect for lake effect
(eg Georgian Bay) unlike many dead pilots. Lake Superior
in particular is very humbling for a VFR pilot. My son
delivered a cub to Calgary last summer and watched it
rain in Wawa for 5 days. When it's clear over Lake Superior,
expect a 40 knot wind.

8) Bring a few crucial engine and airframe-specific
spare parts. Resist the temptation to carry 100 lbs
of tools, which everyone has, everywhere, and you
can get at any CT.

I am sure the AvCan Four Bar Smooth Cheeked Brain
Trust (tm), whom have been flying for all of 10 years,
will sh1t all over me for daring to give this advice to a
newbie, but I have been flying VFR and IFR for 40 years
now, and am still alive, and have never dinged an airplane.

[Shiny Side Up]

i) no cloud 1500 AGL above the highest terrain you are going to fly over,
ii) at least a 3 degree dewpoint spread that is opening instead of closing,
iii) at least 5 miles vis.
iv) no precip on the radar animation

This sort of personal limitation I find is the hardest thing new pilots have trouble with. After all, they know that legal VFR is somewhat less than this. I would personally add to also give yourself lots of time to get on the ground before dark even if you have a night rating, until you get more familiar toodling around at night.

Personally I only wander around at VFR mins when I'm already familiar with the terrain. Long distance VFR you want better weather forecast since it has a bad tendency to have a higher probability of it turning south the farther you go.

[iflyforpie]

Ok so I have have never really looked up anything about the 177 before but just taking a quick look over anything can anyone explain to me why the heck Cessna isn't making these as brand new aircraft over 172's.?????

First, it is in a category of aircraft that never really took off.. a high performance four cylinder light aircraft. The Piper Arrows and Archers, the Beech Sierras and Sundowners--even early M20s... they were all chicken feed compared to the staple light trainers (152, Tomahawk), the bigger trainers and four place aircraft (172, Cherokee, Musketeer), and the larger high performance aircraft (210, Bonanza, Commanche, Malibu).

Second, the process to re-certify them would be exhaustive. Cessna wanted to bring back the 210 with the restart aircraft, but faced clean-sheeting the design due to the cantilever wings not meeting current certification standards. I would imagine it was the same with the 177.

Finally, the failure of the 177 as a basic four place aircraft. The Cardinal is like the Musketeer in that is was a response to the Piper Cherokee being a more modern, all-metal, sleek aircraft with a laminar flow cantilever wing and all-moving stabilator. Both the Cessna and Beech offerings were much heavier and underpowered in comparison to the Cherokee... and were actually slower and draggier because the laminar flow wings were working too hard to keep the planes airborne (the Musketeer, for example, has a smaller wing area than a Cessna 152 and PA-28).

The Cardinal only shone when it was given more power and a retractable gear.. but for not much more you could get a 182 that would haul a lot more for nearly the same performance and no headaches with movable gear.

The Cardinal actually used the same airfoil initially as the Commanche, Twin Commanche, and T-28 Trojan (NACA 64A215), but at the slow speeds 150HP produced, it could not maintain laminar flow and was actually more draggier than the staple NACA 2412 airfoil Cessna has used for years. There was also a massive amount of drag from the exposed tubular landing gear struts. The bandaid fix was to put a leading edge cuff on to approximate a NACA 2415 airfoil, put fairings over the gear legs, and put slots in the stabilator to solve problems with tail authority near the ground.

[photofly]

I think Cessna sold about 2,000 Cardinals, which for most aircraft manufacturers would be a respectable number. But only 5% of the number of 172's sold.

[Colonel Sanders]

People say strange things about the Cessna
Cardinal, but take it from me that it is no
"fire-breathing dragon".

Gentle airplane with good visibility in the
turns, which is a rarity for high-wing aircraft.

Doors open wide, too. Easy to get in and out.

Anybody that tells you that a Cardinal is a
"bucking bronco" is full of sh1t. Easy to fly.
No check-out required, IMHO.

If you can't read the POH/AFM, and get in
it and fly, you should seriously consider
surrending your pilot's licence. It's a Cessna
for God's sake, not a Gee Bee Racer, ok?



The above is NOT you, getting into a Cardinal.

[Pop n Fresh]

I'd do it for a bus ticket bottled water and sandwiches if I could find someone to fill in for me at work here. ( watch my kids. )

[piperdriver]

Reading some of this, you'd think the guy was flying a DC6 to Cape Town, via England, Europe and all the way down Africa with one feathered. It's Sudbury to somewhere in the prairies in a strut less 172. It'll be way harder to get a Buick out of Toronto to Sudbury in the first place! I swear, some of you could pontificate over the proper way to make Kraft Dinner!
Illya

I could not agree more.

On another note, a fuel totalizer is $600 and is a waste of every penny, use that money purchase avgas instead.

[Cat Driver]

On another note, a fuel totalizer is $600 and is a waste of every penny, use that money purchase avgas instead.

This statement is very misleading.

For local flying a fuel totalizer is not needed.

For serious cross country a fuel totalizer is one of the best safety devices you can have in an airplane.

[lost in the north]

Don't need a fuel totalizer, good fuel gauges, a dipstick, know your plane and fuel burn. All I ever used cross country for the last 28 years.

[piperdriver]

True, a serious cross country pilot ferrying an aircraft from North America over to Europe may find a fuel totalizer a useful and essential tool. But for the average weekend warrior who does not plan on leaving the country and lands with their legal half hour reserve or more, I find it hard to justify the cost for this piece of equipment. Just my 2 cents.

[Rookie50]

True, a serious cross country pilot ferrying an aircraft from North America over to Europe may find a fuel totalizer a useful and essential tool. But for the average weekend warrior who does not plan on leaving the country and lands with their legal half hour reserve or more, I find it hard to justify the cost for this piece of equipment. Just my 2 cents.

Some of the best money I ever spent. (along with several other tools -- hint not 1 acre of glass). I'm glad you trust your fuel gauges right down to a half hour reserve. I fly long legs in northern Ontario, having a very accurate tool is money well invested. Just my thoughts.

[Illya Kuryakin]

You know your fuel burn? You start with full fuel. You own a watch? Jesus, you guys.
Illya

[Shiny Side Up]

On another note, a fuel totalizer is $600 and is a waste of every penny, use that money purchase avgas instead.

This statement is very misleading.

For local flying a fuel totalizer is not needed.

For serious cross country a fuel totalizer is one of the best safety devices you can have in an airplane.

I would add that its a godsend to have when you got something that has more than two fuel tanks.

[Illya Kuryakin]

Guy wants to fly a perfectly good 150 horse power, fixed pitch single a few hundred miles in VFR weather. Let's just let him do just that. Has nobody heard of KISS? Thought not.
Illya

[Illya Kuryakin]

On another note, a fuel totalizer is $600 and is a waste of every penny, use that money purchase avgas instead.

This statement is very misleading.

For local flying a fuel totalizer is not needed.

For serious cross country a fuel totalizer is one of the best safety devices you can have in an airplane.

I would add that its a godsend to have when you got something that has more than two fuel tanks.

I'll go with the "spend the $600 on avgas" line of thinking. Again, fill it and use a Timex!
Illya