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This week I earned a new endorsement in my logbook to fly High Performance airplanes, aka over 200 horsepower! I learned to fly a Cessna 182 Skylane - 235 horsepower, max cruise 145 kias, strikingly similar to the model 172 that I learned to fly in with only a few exceptions.
It has much bigger gas tanks and a 900+ mile range that’s really pretty excessive, so most folks just take less gas so they can haul more people. It goes about 20 knots faster, has cowl flaps to regulate cooling air to the engine, and a variable pitch three blade propeller.
The 172 has a fixed pitch prop - you just push the throttle in to control power to the engine and it spins as fast as it can. The 182 adds a knob for the prop pitch, so you set the power, tell it how fast to spin, and the prop governor twists the propeller blades to work that hard.
This results in several efficiencies, but the people I fly with love it for stability. Flying a fixed pitch prop in turbulent air you’re always adjusting the throttle, every time you hit a bump in air your airplane doesn’t change either your speed or altitude change. If autopilot is trying to hold altitude on a hot bumpy day, you’re constantly messing with power to avoid over/under speeding your plane. It’s almost easier to turn autopilot off and just bounce up and down with the turbulence, hoping that nobody judges you for being a sloppy pilot who can’t stick to the +/-200 ft window.
With variable pitch, the feedback loop to the prop governor results in the pitch reacting to those changes, and we just fly happily along.
I had to remember where the cowl flap ever was a few times - my instructor said “can you say cowl flaps CONFIDENTLY without looking for it everywhere in the cockpit when it comes up on a checklist?”
And then here was my dumbest mistake - before landing we always do the GUMPS check. Gas, Undercarriage, Mixture, Props, Switches, Seat Belts! You say all those things and touch the knobs. Even though our “undercarriage” (aka landing gear) is fixed, someday I will fly a retractable gear plane, and it won’t be, so we include it always. Same with prop - nothing to change on a 172, but we say it anyway for practice.
Well in the 182, I do need to push the prop RPM all the way forward when I say “Props”. But I did not. I said “Mixture!” and pushed mixture to full rich, “Props!” and waved at nothing, “Switches!” and touched my landing light switch… that is my habit. Bad habit! It’s forgivable, basically preparing for a go-around, just sloppy.
The landing gear on the other hand - I’m still not in a plane where the gear CAN go up. But if I ever am, that “undercarriage!” check is not one to be overlooked!
It has much bigger gas tanks and a 900+ mile range that’s really pretty excessive, so most folks just take less gas so they can haul more people. It goes about 20 knots faster, has cowl flaps to regulate cooling air to the engine, and a variable pitch three blade propeller.
The 172 has a fixed pitch prop - you just push the throttle in to control power to the engine and it spins as fast as it can. The 182 adds a knob for the prop pitch, so you set the power, tell it how fast to spin, and the prop governor twists the propeller blades to work that hard.
This results in several efficiencies, but the people I fly with love it for stability. Flying a fixed pitch prop in turbulent air you’re always adjusting the throttle, every time you hit a bump in air your airplane doesn’t change either your speed or altitude change. If autopilot is trying to hold altitude on a hot bumpy day, you’re constantly messing with power to avoid over/under speeding your plane. It’s almost easier to turn autopilot off and just bounce up and down with the turbulence, hoping that nobody judges you for being a sloppy pilot who can’t stick to the +/-200 ft window.
With variable pitch, the feedback loop to the prop governor results in the pitch reacting to those changes, and we just fly happily along.
I had to remember where the cowl flap ever was a few times - my instructor said “can you say cowl flaps CONFIDENTLY without looking for it everywhere in the cockpit when it comes up on a checklist?”
And then here was my dumbest mistake - before landing we always do the GUMPS check. Gas, Undercarriage, Mixture, Props, Switches, Seat Belts! You say all those things and touch the knobs. Even though our “undercarriage” (aka landing gear) is fixed, someday I will fly a retractable gear plane, and it won’t be, so we include it always. Same with prop - nothing to change on a 172, but we say it anyway for practice.
Well in the 182, I do need to push the prop RPM all the way forward when I say “Props”. But I did not. I said “Mixture!” and pushed mixture to full rich, “Props!” and waved at nothing, “Switches!” and touched my landing light switch… that is my habit. Bad habit! It’s forgivable, basically preparing for a go-around, just sloppy.
The landing gear on the other hand - I’m still not in a plane where the gear CAN go up. But if I ever am, that “undercarriage!” check is not one to be overlooked!