N25ES has now been determined by the insurance assessor as a total loss and the club is in the process of finding a replacement 172. Steve was supportive when I asked if I could fly the club’s 1981 Cessna 152 (N6475Q) in the interest of staying in touch with my flying skills. I flew the 152 for the first time on July 24 to get a feel for the plane. I had not remembered to charge the batteries on my GoPro the previous night so there is no video archive from that first-time experience.

N6475Q is different from N25ES in many ways. For starters, it is a 2-seater aircraft (vs. 4-seat) and has a significantly lighter empty weight of 1165lbs (vs. 1459lbs). The plane is very sensitive to control inputs because of its light weight and the ride is also bumpier as it is easily tossed around by wind. The seats feel like they are almost at floor level with the legs pretty much extended straight ahead to the rudder pedals. I found it harder to get in and out of the plane. Seats slide front-to-back and the backrest has a single reclining position flopping flat on the seat in order to reach the luggage compartment. Front seats on the 172 have height adjustment, seat back reclining angle adjustment and they slide front-to back. The engine is a 115hp Lycoming 0-235 (vs. 180hp Lycoming 0-320 series). The most noticeable difference was during climb outs after takeoff due to the weaker engine. I’m used to a regular climb on the 172 but the angle of attack has to be much shallower on the 152 in order to avoid a power-on stall. Roughly 67-70 kts Vy for the climb (vs. roughly 76-80 kts) and 60 kts on the landing approach (vs. 65 kts). Right after takeoff, we needed to level off to gain airspeed before climbing out.

I’m flying 75Q today again and we did a bunch of touch-and-go at Livermore. Towards the end we were switched to runway 25L and on the last approach, I was way too high and too fast so I did a go-around and requested tower to switch us to 25R for a full-stop.