As the 'zomg its made in chinas!' thread was hogjacked, I'm starting one about the plane itself.
So... Cessna's LSA plane is coming, but I have some doubts about it. I'm curious what other folks think. Instead of a general unfocused rant (like we get in most of the Airbus/Boeing threads) I'll present a few specific items:
1. The cost. At over $111,500, it's pretty dang expensive. Sure, it's half what a 172 costs, but there's a lot less capability, and this is a lot of money compared to some of the other LSAs. Maybe this is a non-issue, it's not my biggest problem with this plane.
2. I'm not wild about production being moved to China. Not because of quality concerns (It'll be fine, there's way too much scrutiny in this industry for another 'lead paint' style defect), but because I'd like to see more domestic jobs, but that's a market forces issue so we'll see what happens.
3. This is the real problem. Useful load. The 162 has a max gross of 1,320lbs of course, that's the LSA maximum and plenty of planes do fine with that restriction. The problem is the empty weight of 830lbs dry. 490lbs of useful load. A skinny 152 has a useful load of 520lbs for comparison. Certainly the plane can be loaded more heavily, the placarded gross is an LSA restriction, but does this mean there'll be a generation of students significantly more likely to disregard loading because their instructors said "it's ok"?
Some of the good points:
1. Match hole drilling. Lots of kitplane builders have been doing this for a while, like Vans RV. Great way to cut production costs, maybe they'll start doing this w/ the 172 sometime.
2. Nice avionics. The Garmin G300 EFIS plus nice radio and transponder beats the panel that shipped in the 152 pretty handily.
3. Good sized cabin @ 44" wide.
4. Floor mounted control stick instead of panel mounted yoke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_162Talk amongst yourselves.
