I got the Comanche and did my usual check flight that I do with most new aircraft: fly from my home airport F00 in Bonham to downtown Dallas, circle the buildings, and fly back to Bonham.
Then I did what everyone does with a new vehicle: load the family in and take a trip. In this case flying from Bonham with my wife, son and his wife to Des Moines to visit my brother in law. Keep in mind my family isn't exactly light weight; my son's a chef and a good one. I was only 70 pounds overweight though.
The first thing I noticed was that the Comanche feels and sounds powerful. This probably wasn't hard after flying the Cub for so long.
After an hour in the air I decided the plane had a very solid and refined feel to it. Comparing to cars, the Cub is a WW2 army jeep (a friend had one), the Cessna 172 reminds me of the 63 Ford Falcon I owned along ago, the Cherokee is like a nice Japanese car, Nissan Altima perhaps. The Comanche feels like a Mercedes, not because either are particularly luxurious but of the solid and special feel they both have.It took me a while to find the breakers, which are on the bottom of the panel right in front of you. The DME gave me problems as well until I realized it was the rotary switch on the Nav 1 radio. Taxiing with a nose wheel was different after the Cub, but the plane was quite easy to taxi, not overpowered on the ground as I'd heard in some reviews. By the time I got back to Bonham on the return flight I think I'd figured everything out. That's 9.5 hours so far.
The plane flies really well, no problems at all. Even flying in light turbulence wasn't as annoying as it can be in some other aircraft. Getting slowed down for landing was easy enough, although I used a LOT of runway landing at Bonham and even had to use the brakes. I realized later that I'd landed with a 7 knot tailwind.
Oops.The Comanche is just comfortable. And refined. And it feels solid. I can see why Scott likes his, and if nothing else I'm guessing the A2A Comanche is as close to Scott's real aircraft as it's possible to get in a sim.
Hook