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This is one of the Piper Tomahawks located at Zweibruecken Airport available for charter - if there is such a thing as a "low budget" charter aircraft, this is the best of them.

Piper, in designing this aircraft back in the seventies, did a survey amongst thousands of flying instructors. What characteristics would they like a trainer to have? The Tomahawk was the cumulative result. The Tomahawk, when you start reading up on the aircraft, has a relatively high incidence of accidents. As a trainer, it's not as forgiving as the ubiquitous Cessna 150... it'll stall quicker, takes longer to recover, it doesn't do well at low speed generally, and it's not licensed for any kind of acrobatics at all. You can't spin it unless you're up in the higher levels of the stratosphere - it takes an awful lot of altitude to collect it back. It hates wind from the side, and a gusty crosswind landing will keep you sweating and struggling until you're down and braking. A crosswind takeoff works best if you can keep the nose wheel pressed down hard until you're ready to rotate off the runway. A high speed stall puts the tail in the wind shade, not a funny state. The T-tail takes a while to get wind traveling over it, unlike most small aircraft that blast it with prop wash as soon as the engine runs - this makes for a longish take-off run before the elevators react well.

So why, if it's supposedly so horrible to fly, is it so popular as a trainer? I believe it's because an easy trainer makes for sloppy pilots, and a finicky trainer with real teeth that will really bite you will teach you more and quicker. My instructor told me if I could learn to fly this, I could handle pretty much anything. That did a lot for my confidence, and I could give myself a pat on the back for every smooth landing!

After training on the Tomahawk, the bigger PA-28 Warrior is laughably easy to fly - gentle, predictable, well mannered.

I started flying gliders back in 1991, and I'd logged about a hundred hours (ASK-21, Ka-7, Ka-6, Ka-8) or so before graduating to powered flight. A friend of mine gave me some stick time on a Piper Warrior, and I soon got the hang of it. Compared to the finger-tip precision of a glider's controls, the PA-28 is a clumsy brute of a thing. Later, the flying school in Zweibruecken had three PA-38 Tomahawks for flight training, and I began to trust the aircraft. Knowing she could bite you, it encourages you to fly carefully to make sure she doesn't! Unlike the Warrior, she's very lively in the air, and likes to bounce a wing up at the slightest breath of a thermal. Visibility is fantastic, and this is one of the few planes allowing you to actually see behind you.

There was a minor model change around 1980, and later Tomahawks have slightly larger wheels and some minimal airframe tuning. The older, small-wheeled model can be a pig to taxi, the least inattention to your pedal dancing can have you off the taxiway and into the grass in seconds flat!

112 horsepower isn't a whole lot, and there's a noticeable difference in performance flying solo. One passenger reduces the rate of climb quite a bit, but also makes the Tomahawk more stable in level flight. On my 300km cross country solo (from Zweibruecken to Koblenz to Worms and back to Zweibruecken) I proved that less than 112 HP will also get you off the ground! Sitting on the runway at Koblenz, I did my engine checks - RPM up to 1800, right magneto... check. Left magneto, check. Both back on, or so I thought. Delta- Alpha- Alpha, cleared for takeoff - throttle full forward and I watched the needle climb gradually around the airspeed indicator. 55, 57, 58 - damn, this is taking a long time - at last, the magic 60 knots and three for luck and - rotate! Right at the end of the runway, with little or no margin for error, the Tomahawk was airborne - just. I squeezed the yoke forward a touch to let the speed build up, and started to check what had gone wrong. My rate of climb was minimal - why? Carburetor heat was off, as it was supposed to be. So was pitot heat, mixture was full rich, flaps were set right, it didn't feel like anything had fallen off... ah! The ignition switch! I hadn't clicked it over properly from "RIGHT" to "BOTH", leaving half the available spark plugs sparkless! That, on a shorter runway, could have been noisy and uncomfortable!

Would I personally buy a Tomahawk? Absolutely! It took me a while to trust it, but within its safe limits it's a superb aircraft. There's plenty of space in the cockpit, so you never feel cramped, unlike the little Cessna 150's claustrophobic sardine-can feeling. The outstanding visibility is a huge safety factor. I like the control layout with the fuel tank selector switch in the middle so that both crew can reach it. The seats will adjust to suit everybody from Roger Rabbit to The Incredible Hulk, and a long flight leaves you relaxed and comfortable with no lower back problems.

And, anyway, why should an aeroplane necessarily be labeled "bad" just because it's a bit more demanding to fly? Is a P-51 bad? Or a Spitfire, a Hurricane or a Messerschmidt BF 109? Any hugely overpowered warbird will reward a careless pilot for his mistake with instant death, yet hundreds of perfectly sane enthusiasts fly them... I would, given the chance!

Getting it right... a Piper Cherokee with passengers, on final approach at Zweibruecken. We're 20 feet off runway 21, an eight knot crosswind from the right. Touchdown in five seconds...

... and safely on the ground! Colleagues Rich and Russ spent most of the flight to Lahr and back whining about the lack of in-flight movies, stewardesses and complimentary drinks. Oddly, I find most passengers tend to get quieter the closer they get to the ground.

They say we should learn from the mistakes of others, because we won't live long enough to make them all ourselves! There I was...

Tomahawk Safety Review