AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2014 - 70

value. It's also important that flying clubs
are able to get no-recourse loans so that the
principals don't have to cosign, and we've
done that."
More than 16,000 Cessna 150s and
152s are registered in North America. By
comparison, U.S. manufacturers built just
255 new single-engine piston aircraft last
year.
"There's a void in the marketplace for
a rebuilt, high-quality trainer for under
$100,000," Baker said. "AOPA doesn't make
any money on this program, and we're not
going to get into the aircraft restoration
business. But we are going to make people
aware of what it's possible to do with the
existing fleet of trainers, and we're going
to get pilots access to them on favorable
terms," he said.
"Cessna 150s and 152s are the best
trainers ever been built. They're the Piper
J-3 Cubs of our generation-and their time
has come, again."
FLYING N152UC

Seeing N152UC after its restoration evokes
a powerful sense of déjà vu.
70 | AOPA PILOT October 2014

Virtually all U.S. pilots have been
around Cessna 150s and 152s before, and
many of us who began our flight training in
them know them intimately. Relatively few
of us, however, have ever stepped inside a
new 152 before (or a bright yellow one)-
and if we have, it's been a very long time.
And the airplane's newness makes the
familiar surroundings feel novel.
Poking your head inside the cabin, the
pervasive new-car smell of the interior is
at odds with memory. The pungent smell
of old, hard-flown trainers-an instantly
identifiable mix of sweat, avgas, spilled oil,
leaky brake fluid, and upholstery cleaner-
is conspicuously absent. The newly
re-covered woven seats seem impossibly
narrow but fit like a familiar glove. A yellowed, plastic-covered checklist is the only
tactile carryover from the original airplane.
On the panel, there are hints of modern.
A Garmin GDL 39 on the glareshield provides FIS-B weather to a Garmin aera 560
GPS in the panel, the sole means of navigation. Plastic headliners are new, but the
decorative material harkens to the disco era
in which Cessna 152s were originally made.

The preflight inspection ritual of climbing onto the steps on the fuselage and wing
struts to visual check the fuel quantity
seems almost quaint.
I'm going solo on this brief, get-reacquainted flight, but I don't feel alone.
Getting in, closing the door with the unceremonious slam it demands, and starting the
Lycoming O-235 engine conjures memories of my primary instructor, Steve Pirani,
a broad-shouldered former national armwrestling champion who had to fly with
his left arm slung over my seatback just to
wedge himself inside. I can almost see my
then-20-something wife, Martha, my first
passenger, trustingly seated in that nowvacant space.
A normal (no flaps) takeoff on a muggy
day with full tanks (26 gallons) results
in an 800-foot ground roll. At 70 KIAS,
the airplane settles into an 800 fpm climb
at 2,400 rpm. At an altitude of 2,000
feet, I level off and let the airplane accelerate to 115 KIAS-and that's as fast as
it will go.
I pitch up 30 degrees with the throttle
wide open and let the airplane slow until it
AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2014

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