October 2012
With 150 hp (the original had just 108 hp) Piper’s rag-and-tube nosewheel classic is a “no-worries airplane”
Frank Rothera would be the first to admit that his Piper Colt has a look that is…. well, let’s say striking. “The paint scheme was the previous owner’s,” he says. “And I didn’t feel like changing it, since all the fabric and paint work had just been done when I bought the airplane.”
It seems that the previous owner was a sales representative for a company selling house paint. “No doubt that explains the bizarre colors,” says Rothera.
Rothera is retired now—he used to be a mining engineer—and the Colt was in pieces when he bought it. That was eight years ago. The previous owner had been working on restoring the airplane for 10 years, then decided to sell up. Rothera paid $5,000 for work on the airframe and $7,500 for the engine and propeller overhaul.
“The airplane ended up costing a lot more than if I’d bought a Colt that was already flying,” he admits, “but this way I figured I wouldn’t have to pay any big maintenance bills for the next 10 years or so. Take that into account, and I consider that it was a good investment.”
A practical tourer
Rothera is very pleased with his Colt, and finds it a practical tourer. He says, “I normally cruise at 105 mph. Like many Colts, this one has been fitted with the 150 hp engine, rather than the 108 hp one, which means overload it. I know I can safely carry 100 pounds of luggage and two adults and still fill the tanks. The fuel burn at 105 mph is seven to eight gallons an hour.”
I ask him to sum up the character of the Colt and what drew him to it. “It’s a bit like an old Volkswagen Beetle,” he says. “Perhaps a little ugly, but unusual enough to get noticed. It’s easy to fly—and above all, it’s reliable.
“It’s a no-worries airplane.”
The sheer practicality of his Colt gets Rothera flying when a lot of others stay grounded and he averages 100 hours flying a year. “Most of the time I’m alone in the aircraft, but probably 15 of those hours is with a friend or family member in the other seat,” he says.
He explains why he chose the Colt. “I could have played it safe and gone for a PA-28 or Cessna 152, but I wanted something a bit more adventurous. On the other hand, I didn’t want a rare airplane that might cause problems with spares, just something a bit out of the ordinary.
“Actually there are a lot of Colts around and spares can be bought off the shelf. Usually people come up to me at airfields and say, ‘That’s a Colt, isn’t it?’ and we get into conversation. It’s an icebreaker. As often as not, if they’re older, they say, ‘I learned to fly in one of those.’”
The other consideration was the nosewheel. “I don’t consider myself a hot pilot,” Rothera admits, “and I’d heard the Colt was easy to fly. I feel more relaxed landing on concrete in a stiff crosswind with the third wheel up front. The Colt has a faster approach speed than the Cub, which makes it less of a handful on breezy days.”
Comparing the Pacer, Colt and Tri-Pacer
The Colt has an interesting history. In 1949, Piper introduced the PA-20 Pacer. This was supposedly a four-seater (but only if you had a long runway and everyone was slim). It had a tailwheel and power was in the 115 to 135 hp range.
To keep up with fashion, a nosewheel version, the PA-22 Tri-Pacer, came out in 1950. The PA-22-108 Colt came on the market 10 years later in 1960 as a two-seat variant of the Tri-Pacer aimed at the training market. It had essentially the same airframe as the Tri-Pacer, although the wingspan (at 30 feet) was eight inches longer, presumably to make the Colt easier to fly. The fuselage was six inches shorter, since there were two seats instead of four.
Among other differences, the Colt had only one door, whereas the Tri-Pacer had two; the Tri-Pacer had a rear window and held more fuel. The Colt had only 108 hp, making it cheaper to buy and to run, as against the Tri-Pacer, which had a choice of power from 125 to 160 hp. The Colt was highly successful: almost 2,000 of them were manufactured in the four years before it was made redundant by the introduction of the Cherokee, and Colt production ceased.
The Colt is a rag-and-tube airplane in a long Piper tradition and it does have rather a quaint appearance (even without any unusual paint colors). The main undercarriage is sprung internally with bungee loops and the tail surfaces are wire braced. However, there are no jury struts to brace the V-struts under the wing, the engine cowling is the low-drag kind that ejects hot air at its base and not out the sides, and the airframe is quite streamlined.
One oddity is the large step on the right undercarriage legs. This is effective in helping you climb aboard, though. The door can be left behind for photo shoots and other missions. (Someone, somewhere is bound to have parachuted from the right seat.) As a trainer, having a single door has its disadvantages, although at least when the student first meets the aircraft, he or she will be in the right-hand seat. It’s only later that they’ll find themselves sliding across two seats to get in and having an instructor blocking the only exit.
Stronger than it looks
The door feels quite high off the ground for such a small airplane, and I find entry a little like climbing stairs: one foot on the wheel, the next on the footstep and then some bending and squirming to get my pants-seat and legs through the slightly small doorway. The door is held by a clip on the V-strut, so at least I don’t have to hold it open myself.
To reach the left seat, you have to shuffle sideways while sitting, but since the controls are yokes there are no joysticks to pass. The yokes are cute—rather on the small side—and in Rothera’s 6,200-hour Colt, rather on the wobbly side too. The bearings they turn in have worn a bit over the years, but not enough to matter. Though the right yoke is banked five degrees right when the left is centered!
Back in 1960 when the Colt first appeared, men and their wives expected to be able to keep their hats on when flying, so the Colt has lots of headroom. There is a chrome winding handle in the roof for elevator trim. Also in the roof are the original ceiling light and loudspeaker grill. Few pilots wore headphones in the 1960s; radio operation was through the loudspeaker and with a hand mic with a push-to-transmit button. These reminders of earlier times give added pleasure to flying an oldster like the Colt.
You can solo from either seat, since there are full dual controls. However, the start button and master switch are under the left seat and can’t really be reached from the right.
By the standards of later aircraft, the window area is a little small and there are a lot of blind spots to make it possible for other aircraft to creep up, unseen, in the pattern. The multitude of blind spots are also going to make it a little awkward flying in close formation with the camera plane, so I’m making life a little easier by taking the right seat. (Keith Wilson, the cameraman, prefers to shoot to his left.)
The Colt’s structural tubing is rather more evident than in modern aircraft, and some of it looks a little thin. The two diagonal tubes that hold up the wing might tempt occupants to use them as handholds for hoisting themselves aboard, but I do wonder if they’d take the strain. They’re straight now (bearing in mind that this Colt served at a flying school) so they must be stronger than they look.
Door closure is by slamming, as with autos, which seems a little careless in an airplane. Also automotive in style are the plastic-tipped rods under the seats, for sliding them backward and forward. This Colt has a four-point harness for each occupant.
Start-up and taxiing considerations
Rothera, being in the left seat, runs through the start-up procedure, which in this Colt is to give three strokes of the throttle plunger to prime the engine, shout “Clear prop!” through the sliding storm window on the left, and press the start button.
He hands over to me to taxi, pointing out the lack of toe or heel brakes. “If you want to slow down,” he says, “pull on the parking brake.” The black-and-yellow striped lever under the panel operates the hydraulic disk brakes on both main wheels together. Steering is entirely through the nosewheel.
There is a parking tap with a placarded warning: it must be turned off before taxiing, or the brakes don’t work. “Once I found myself heading towards parked airplanes and tugging away at the brake,” Rothera recalls. “I only just remembered the tap in time. It holds hydraulic pressure to make sure the brake stays on while the airplane is parked.”
The turning circle when taxiing isn’t all that tight—something you need to remember when moving close to parked aircraft. On the plus side, the view out is good, and you can see the wingtips without craning your neck.
When people first see a Colt, they sometimes comment on how close the propeller seems to the nosewheel. The nosewheel and main wheels also seem to have relatively little distance between them, especially since the undercarriage legs are so long in relation to the aircraft’s size. A nickname for the Colt is “the flying milk stool.” This probably dates back to its introduction, when a nosewheel must have looked out of place in a rag-and-tube airplane. (Milk stools have three legs instead of four to give them added stability.)
We take off in formation with the camera plane, a de Havilland Chipmunk, which is a taildragger. When I see its tail come up, I almost forget I’m in a nosewheel airplane and push the yoke forward to raise the Colt’s tail—such is the powerful association of sitting in a rag-and-tube fuselage. When, instead I lift the nosewheel, I’m surprised by a rather sensitive rudder control and squirrel a bit before settling down.
Getting comfortable on the “milk stool”
The two aircraft break ground at the same moment and I allow the camera plane to draw ahead rather than immediately coming alongside as I would usually do. I feel slightly uneasy, partly because the yoke feels so small and a little loose, and partly because my view of the camera plane is so restricted. As I gain confidence, though, I draw closer.
After a few minutes I realize that the view isn’t actually that bad, especially if I keep the camera plane slightly underneath the Colt. Also the controls, while they aren’t crisp, aren’t all that woolly, either. The ailerons are quite powerful and light and well matched to the elevator. I find that it pays to lead slightly with rudder when banking, so there must be some adverse yaw.
One surprise is how slow the Colt is to draw back from the camera plane when I close the throttle. The Colt is obviously a well-streamlined little ship—the cowling and lack of jury struts under the wings must compensate for the out-of-scale undercarriage and rather draggy high-lift wing section. Also, this airplane has a lot less surface area than a Cub or Super Cub (shorter wingspan and shorter fuselage) which must help to reduce drag.
As we climb the temperature drops, so I sample the cabin heat, a knob on the instrument panel. This produces an impressive blast of heat and is obviously efficient. In fact, it’s a bit much, so I also sample the cold air vent, which is equally efficient. Now, with the two together, that’s perfect!
Another second impression is that the cabin is roomier than I first thought. It’s cozy, certainly, but not oppressively so. However, my concerns about the rather limited view out return after I bank away to give the cameraman a shot of the Colt’s belly. Banking back to return to the camera ship I find the roof cutting off my view. I eventually find the other airplane—it appears just forward of the roof in the top of the windshield—but by now I’m banking steeply, pulling hard on the yoke and craning my neck to see.
Maneuvers and performance notes
We reach the end of the photo shoot safely, the camera ship banks away to return to the airfield, and Rothera and I are left alone in the sky. I sample the stall, beginning with wings level, slip ball centered, throttle closed and gradually easing back on the yoke to maintain altitude.
Despite all my care, there is no nose-drop, just a gentle descent with the engine burbling away at idle. Since this airplane has a bigger engine than the one it began with, it probably has a forward center of gravity, so this might be a factor. Certainly, its level stall is more docile than the Cherokee’s, the Colt’s replacement as a trainer.
The same applies to the turning stall: where the Cherokee can be made to rotate smartly, dropping its nose, all that I can get the 150 hp Colt to do is mush downward. It doesn’t roll one way or the other, even with the nose well up and giving a burst of throttle.
I liked to fly the Cub and Super Cub I used to own in the manner of wartime spotter planes, and both were superb at circling low over a ground feature at slow airspeeds. However, when I try this in the Colt, it isn’t really comfortable at anything below 80 mph… although with care you can maintain height circling at speeds as low as 60 mph. To stay pinned in the sky at this lower speed requires just 1,800 rpm.
Another maneuver I used to enjoy in Cubs was figures-of-eight with a bank angle of around 60 degrees. They took a little muscle to bank from 60 degrees one way to 60 degrees the other and you had to lead with rudder to keep the ball centered. The same is true of the Colt, which flies the maneuver quite well, with a brisker roll rate than the Cub’s. It’s not quite as good a performer in this respect as the Cherokee, but close.
Next I open the throttle and hold altitude to find the maximum level speed. The Colt accelerates and eventually settles at a steady 120 mph, but it’s a lot noisier and feels a little stiff and unhappy, whereas at Rothera’s chosen cruise speed—throttled back to 2,200 rpm and at 105 mph—the airplane feels comfortable again.
This little two-seater rides smoothly through the slightly turbulent air, is reasonably stable and affords a good view of the passing countryside, so despite a slightly tight cabin by today’s standards, I imagine it makes a good tourer. As it’s now getting warm again, I open the sliding storm window on the left side a little and let in some fresh air.
Landing considerations
Back at the Colt’s base airfield there is little I have to think about before joining downwind. There’s only the single fuel tank (in the top wing) and no flaps to set.
The only complication is that every time I make a turn to the left, the cabin roof gets in my line of sight because I’m sitting in the right-hand seat. So turning from downwind to left base and from left base to line up on the runway is down to guesswork and timing… or I could ask Rothera to tell me when it’s time to straighten up and level the wings, since presumably he can see more than I can. Instead, I rock the wings once or twice during the turn to see where I’m going. Although I’m in the wrong seat for a left-hand circuit, someone flying the Colt solo would have the same problem arriving somewhere with a right-hand circuit.
“I’d recommend 80 for the approach,” says Rothera, helpfully. This seems fast for a light two-seater with a natural cruise speed of just 105 mph until I consider its rather heavy engine in relation to wing area.
“What’s the minimum approach speed in this ship?” I ask.
“On a day with no wind, coming into a short field, a practiced pilot would probably come in at 70 mph,” says Rothera.
The elevator control in the Colt isn’t particularly light and I find it’s helpful to use the winding handle in the roof to trim the bird. The handle connects via cables to a winding jack that raises and lowers the leading edge of the tailplane, the same system as in a Cub, and it’s very effective.
Even at the higher speed of 80, we are dropping toward the runway at a steepish angle, so although I’ve come in high, planning to sideslip, it turns out to be the right approach position for a wings-level descent. Also, this airplane gives a good view over the nose, whereas in the back seat of a Cub, I’d be blind without slipping in.
Paying close attention
The Colt has me on my mettle during the final stages of the approach. Although stable and smooth, you can let a situation build up on you. I feel the nibble of one when I glance at the ASI as we’re about to cross the boundary fence and see the needle at 75 mph. I ease the nose down and we lose a noticeable amount of height getting that five miles an hour back. We still clear the fence by a good margin when it passes under our wheels a moment later, though.
Still, I can see that in the wrong hands, the Colt (especially this one, with a heavier engine) could fall into the “low-and-slow” trap, getting on the wrong side of the drag curve and being dropped heavily onto the runway, or even short of the runway.
Now that we’re over the runway threshold, I close the throttle and let the speed decay. This part of the landing is easy and we float a short distance down the runway before touching down smoothly on the main wheels. A second or two later, the nosewheel seems ready to come down too and I ease it onto the runway. Again I am aware of being slightly on my mettle in touching down on the mains, without either getting the nose too high and dragging the tailskid, or arriving on all three wheels together. This is because of the rather short fuselage and the relatively small distance between the main wheels and the nosewheel.
I reach for the brake lever and with its help we reach a full stop within 230 yards of our touchdown. Opening the throttle from a standing start gets the wheels off the runway and the Colt climbing within just 200 yards and we’re showing a climb rate of 900 fpm. I make a circuit and a slipping turn from base to final—which means I can see where I’m going this time—and keep the airplane in slip right down to the runway.
For this final approach, I come in rather slower at 75 mph, to see if I can bring off a short landing. At the slower speed the Colt is a touch more sluggish on the controls and I do need to concentrate to keep a steady approach speed.
The forgiving trainer
My final landing isn’t one of my best—though quite safe—because the wheels touch a little early, while the airplane still has some energy. Furthermore, I’m still traveling sideways a little, so we aren’t straight. The main wheels and nosewheel make contact at the same time.
There’s a squeal from the tires, the Colt shakes its ass, becomes briefly airborne and then touches down again. I have the yoke back for this second touchdown and this ensures that only the main wheels are on the runway until I’m ready, a few seconds later, to lower the nosewheel.
It’s not much good to an aviation journalist if everything goes too smoothly. Just as in personal relationships, it’s only when you disagree that you really start to get to know each other. What this slight contretemps has shown me is that the Colt is forgiving and easy to land, but you need to have your wits about you to land it well. This is ideal behavior in a trainer, and no bad thing in an airplane you plan to keep long-term.
I wish Frank Rothera a great many more greased-on landings in his Colt. Her makeup may be on the gaudy side, but she’s a great little lady.
Nick Bloom, a prolific writer and accomplished competition aerobatic pilot, has flown and written about some 100 different aircraft. For six years Bloom was editor of the UK’s best-selling General Aviation magazine, Pilot. His aviation novels include “Ace” and “The Flight Instructor.” In the workshop next to his private airstrip near London, he has rebuilt a Stampe and a Tipsy Nipper and is currently constructing a Currie Wot. Send questions or comments to editor@www.piperflyer.com.
