Cessna 188

The Cessna 188 is a family of light agricultural aircraft produced between 1966 and 1983 by the Cessna Aircraft Company.

The various versions of the 188 — the AGwagon, AGpickup, AGtruck and AGhusky, along with the AGcarryall variant of the 185, constituted Cessna's line of agricultural aircraft.

Development

In the early 1960s Cessna decided to expand their already wide line of light aircraft by entering the agricultural aircraft market. They surveyed pilots and operators of other brands of agricultural aircraft to see what features and capabilities these operators were looking for. The resulting aircraft was a conventional single-seat, piston-engined, strut-braced low-wing agricultural airplane.

The Cessna 188 borrowed heavily from the Cessna 180, the initial version using the same tail cone and fin structure as well as the same Continental O-470-R 230 hp (170 kW) powerplant. The 188’s airframe is predominantly built from 2024-T3 aluminum, with the chemical hopper constructed from fibreglass. The fuselage is of semi-monocoque construction and is pressurized on later models (using the dynamic pressure resulting from the aircraft's forward speed) to reduce induction of chemicals into the airframe.