Wings Over Kansas

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Cessna 172 in flight

Cessna 172RG

Cessna 172 instrument panel

1964 Cessna 172E

1965 Cessna F172G

1971 Cessna 172

The 1957 model Cessna 172 Skyhawk had no rear window and featured a “square” fin design

The Cessna 172 Skyhawk is a four-seat, single-engine, high-wing airplane.
It is likely the most popular flight training aircraft in the world. The first
production models were delivered in 1957 and it is still in production in 2006;
more than 35,000 have been built. The Skyhawk’s main competitors have been the
popular Piper Cherokee, the Beechcraft Musketeer and Grumman Cheetah (both no
longer in production), and, more recently, the Diamond Aircraft DA40 Star. The
Skyhawk is ubiquitous throughout the Americas, Europe and parts of Asia; it
is the aircraft most people visualize when they hear the words “small plane”.
More people probably know the name Piper Cub, but the Skyhawk’s shape is far
more familiar.

The 172 is a direct descendant of the Cessna 170, which has conventional landing
gear landing gear instead of the 172’s tricycle gear.

Early 172s looked almost identical to the 170, with the same straight aft fuselage
and tall gear legs, but later versions incorporated revised landing gear, a
lowered rear deck, and an aft window. Cessna advertised this added rear visibility
as “Omnivision”. The final structural development, in the mid-1960s, was the
sweptback tail still used today. The airframe has remained almost unchanged
since then, with updates to avionics and engines including (most recently) the
Garmin G1000 glass cockpit. Production ended in the mid-1980s, but was resumed
in 1996 with the 160 hp (120kW) Cessna 172R and 180 hp (135kW) Cessna
172SP.

The older Skyhawks shipped with a 145 horsepower (110 kW) engine; later planes
shipped with engines up to 180 horsepower (135 kW), though 150 or 160 hp (110
or 120 kW) is more common. A rare modification of engines allowed the installation
of a 220 hp Franklin engine. Cessna produced a retractable-gear version of the
172 named the Cutlass 172RG and also produced versions on floats. The
172RG additionally had a variable pitch, constant speed propeller and more powerful
stock engine as did the more spartan militarized Cessna 172E that was
sold to the US Army as a spotter plane. The Reims Rocket, designated
FR172J was produced by Reims Aviation from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s,
and was powered by a Rolls-Royce built fuel-injected Continental IO-360D producing
210HP, and driving a constant speed prop. This led to the R172K Hawk XP
which was produced from 1977 to 1979 in both Wichita and Reims, and this featured
a fuel injected Continental IO-360K (later IO-360KB), derated to 195hp, driving
a two bladed constant speed prop. This aircraft is capable of 131 knot cruise
speed, and performs similarly to the Cessna 182.

The normal cruising speed for a fixed-gear 172 ranges from about 105 to 125
knots, depending on the engine and vintage.

The Skyhawk is part of a large family of high-wing, tricycle-gear, single-engine
Cessna planes, ranging from the two-seater 150/152 (no longer in production)
to the more powerful 182 Skylane, the six-seat 206 Stationair, and the fourteen-seat
turboprop 208 Caravan, along with several other models no longer produced.

Specifications (172R)

Data from Quest for Performance

General characteristics

Crew: One
Capacity: 3 passengers
Length: 27 ft 2 in (8.28 m)
Wingspan: 36 ft 1 in (11.0 m)
Height: 8 ft 11 in (2.72 m)
Wing area: 174 ft