FRENCH FLIES

Like it or not, the French know how to make great planes - even if their cars are funny. So imagine what you get when you take French flair to the world's best-selling plane.

- Guy Leitch

Reims Cessna F172

WHEN I LEARNED to fly (in the 1970s!) in a cramped and underpowered Cessna 150, what I aspired to was to fly a Cessna 172. Almost every flying club and school had at least one Cessna 172 on their fleet, for hire and fly with my shiny new PPL blue book.

C172s are the Toyota Corollas of the air – even if they still have the smooth but underpowered Continental O-300 engine. Over time the C172 has been endowed with bigger engines and the 180hp Lycoming IO-360 of the C172S is now just about standard.

But it took the French to give the great little plane the power it deserved. They grafted on a Continental IO-360 with 210 horses and a constant speed prop and called it the Reims Cessna F172 Skyhawk II.

At time of writing there is one for sale in South Africa – and even more remarkably – it is on the NTCA register as ZU-IGG.

ZU-IGG is a 1979 Reims-built Cessna F172N Skyhawk II. The aircraft was originally on the Swazi register when it was acquired by Raymond Fowkes who completely rebuilt it from the ground up and in the process created a like new C172 with a zero-timed airframe, engine and prop and a striking red and white paint scheme. In 2014 it was registered as a Foxcraft amateur-built aircraft which means it can be operated and maintained as a non-type certified aircraft (NTCA).

As a Reims Rocket it is powered by a 210hp Lycoming IO-360, driving a McCauley two-blade, constant-speed prop. The increased power over the American 172s gives it a very useful max all up weight (MAUW) of 1157kg (2550 lb). With an empty weight of 750 kg (1650 lb) there is a 407 kg (900 lb) useful load. With full fuel of 200 litres (52 USG), which is enough for 5-6 hours, ZU-IGG still has a useful load of 263 kg (580 lb), permitting two adults and two children and some baggage to be carried a long way.