I'm going off of fuzzy recollection but wasn't there a stabilator mod in there somewhere in the early years? Adding ports to change the characteristics?
Or am I thinking of another plane?

Nope, you remember correctly. They cut some slots in the stabilator to increase effectiveness.

That's what I was thinking Rich. I shopped Cardinals a few years back and it seems the incremental improvements from the original (stab slots, wing, power increase) all made a good plane and the newer and more improved the more expensive.

Only the '68 did not come with slots in the stabilators. Cessna recalled all the '68s and put the slots in the stabilators. There are no Cardinals flying without the slots. The '68 and '69 had a sharper leading edge on the wing which gave it a slightly more abrupt stall. All '70 and later Cardinals had a rounder leading edge which gave them a "mushier" stall.

Vince

Early ones had laminar flow wing?

The 68 and 69 have the NACA 64A215 laminar flow airfoil.
The 70 and later have a hybrid of the 2412 airfoil from the front up to the main spar, and then the rest is still the 64A215 airfoil.

I can't work out how to link directly, but it is page 52 of the Jan 1970 Flying magazine. https://books.google.ca/books?id=GhsB7T ... &q&f=false

IIRC, Cessna came out with several fixes for the early C-177s that were collectively known as the Cardinal Rule. They fixed the stabilator stall and added stall strips to the wing to soften the stall. No idea of the effect on airspeed, but probably didn’t help.

Pedantically, the Cardinal is the term for an upgraded C-177, but now C-177 and Cardinal are synonymous.

A little over a year ago, a customer moved to southern Utah with his 200-hp '68 cardinal. That was a one-time STC, IIRC; made a pretty good ship out of her.

I looked at and flew a 200hp Cardinal RG while looking for a airplane for my growing family.
I bought a fixed gear 182.
A Cardinal with a O470 would have been a GREAT Airplane.

Or a cardinal with an IO390 and a power flow. Probably has almost as much power as an O470.

Or a cardinal with an IO390 and a power flow. Probably has almost as much power as an O470.

I’ve got somewhere around 1500 hours in a few Cardinals, the vast majority in a 180 horse version, a ‘72 if I recall correctly. They are much more responsive in roll compared to a 172. However it was slightly slower than the P model 172 I also flew. The down side, and it could have been this particular aircraft, was it’s climb performance was very anemic. With me and my observer (who was in excess of 300lbs) I couldn’t consistently get 500 fpm. Most of the time it was 300-400 even in winter.

Depending on the mission, unless I needed the ease of entry, personally I think I would favor an N or P model 172.

Curious what makes the Cardinal a sluggish performer in climb.

Is it the wing, weight vs 172?

KJ

That climb rate seems anomalous. They don’t have a reputation of being poor climbers. I often see 800+ fpm. Put the nose down and cruise climb at 95 knots indicated and still see not much shy of 500 fpm.

I do have an IO 390 and yes I have heard cylinders are expensive as none of the after market manufacturers make them so Lycoming has no competition. Fortunately I haven’t had to replace any yet.

Could be and thus my caveat, while this aircraft was lower total time and flew fine otherwise the engine may have been somewhat weak. The initial climb was 500+fpm as I would pitch up from cruise but once established in a constant airspeed climb it would drop. It’s been a while, but I figured at full fuel we were about 200 below gross.

Of course flying patrol I only had to climb to 2000-2500 agl while deadheading.

There was an attorney who had a B model which he put a lot of upgrades into and he loved it. I didn’t fly his to compare against the patrol aircraft, but it sure looked better!