I really like the look of the jet, seems like a Rockwell Commander and a Bonanza made a baby, actually a nice looking love child, but I digress.

Since they are starting to deliver them, do you think the folks piloting them are going to think they are more invincible now due to turbine power?

I saw the ceiling on the Vision Jet is 28k, which is up there, but only 3k more than the SR22 and still not higher than most big thunder storms.

What you guys think..?

Great question. The SR22 is already the modern "fork tailed doctor killer".

Even with the ballistic chute?

yeah no lie.

yep....

Attached File

The last few years the Cirrus safety record has been pretty good, nearly that of the DA40.

I heard that also...I was listening to a POD cast and they were talking about how Cirrus owners that are members of COPA have a far lower accident rate than non-members.

I find that chart interesting, I knew a guy that was killed in his Lancer, go figure, and another friend that has had a 210 and a cirrus and did fine in those, but bent his shiny new Carbon Cub enough times that he finally gave up on flying!

The Lancair is interesting as to why they have so many accidents.

Homebuilt. High stall speed and nasty stall characteristics. Sometimes people do things like put automobile engines in them. Car engines don't like to be airplane engines. Sustained operation under heavy loads causes things like the rings to expand enough to lock up the engine. Any time you have a higher stall speed, it means that your approach speed will be higher as well. Part of it is that in the case of an engine failure where you have to put down in a field, road, et cetera, it means that you will touch the ground going faster and take longer to stop, exposing you and the aircraft to increase risk of hitting something. Putting an airplane down somewhere in the event of a mechanical failure doesn't become an accident until you damage control surfaces, people get hurt, and some other requirements. Think of it like running off the road at 100mph instead of 60mph. Your risk of destroying your car and sustaining injury goes up significantly with the higher speed.

There are fighter pilots that own Lancairs who refuse to stall them.

That doesn't seem like somthing I'd want to participate it.

I guess the speed and low cost of a home built is appealing to the owners.

A third of the people who fly them,  fly them like maniacs.

For a while we had a pair that would go dogfight under the IAF of an international airport.

We have one that usually takes a few passes to land on a 7k ft runway because he refuses to fly less than 220kts in the pattern.

The guys who know how to fly them and fly them safely are fun as all hell to work and you can weave them into the pattern  with traffic of all types. And have a ball

that made me laugh a little...

The only time I would pull it is over open water or extreme mountainous terrain. It has it uses but it inspires a false sense of confidence.

There's someone with one here at KDTS.  Every time I see that thing it looks like its balls to the wall.  It does make for a neat looking low pass over the beach at those speeds.

Lancair/Glasair just looks fast sitting there without a prop



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS7tVZi5d1E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDqcZHymeqM

It's an awesome plane. I absolutely love them when the pilot is being smart.  At a previous facility we had a few of them and they'd come in as a flight and do overhead breaks and it was incredible. Almost as fun as doing it doing it with flights of fighters.....


Well kinda.

I have a thing for Lancairs... but this one is just stupid

That climb rate though,

OHHH YEAHHH

"This year, Mike, adding to the Patey brothers' aviation lore, set a world record for average speed in a single-engine turbo prop plane, averaging 438.02 miles an hour in the sleek, one-of-a-kind “Turbulence” he built from the ground up."

http://www.mojaveflyin.com/2014/03/lancair-legacy-780-conversion-and-other.html

I saw on another forum there was a another SR22 crash...people are saying base to final spin stall.

The guy have like over 2500 hours in the military and flew B2s

I wonder where he turned base.

As in what point in the pattern?


This is all I saw

Kathryn's Report

We lost a B1 pilot in a Mooney a few years back as well: http://gazette.com/air-force-pilot-wife-killed-in-small-plane-crash-at-springs-airport/article/110012

There can't be that many B1 pilots out there; this strikes me as statistically significant given what I perceive the size of the community to be.

Scott Crossfield bought the farm in a T210 and Steve Fossett in a Super Decathlon, both killed themselves by making the same sorts of mistakes that are often attributed to inexperience.

What always made me wonder is why there is two distinct turns in the downwind - base - final procedure.

i don't know what the hell I am doing flying so my legs look more like a U than the end of a square.

Yeah. Sometimes people turn base very early and go from pattern altitude to the pavement in one hard banking turn instead of a turn to base,  turn to final making a square or a U shape while descending incrementally.

When they make those hard turn/dives it gets iffy if the wind acts up, they see birds or unexpected aircraft.

One of the scariest things I've seen is a Bonanza trying to recover from that turn and nearly T-boning a Navajo departing the parallel runway when he over shot and had to pull up and straighten out the wings

That's crazy.....I try to make the end of the pattern as smooth as I can and to not bank too much and damn sure don't try and use the rudder to tighten a turn.

I think many new owners will be surprised by the insurance requirements.

True, that turbine engine probably cost more than a whole SR22

There is supposedly some newer thinking as to pattern entry and flying training these days. When I was a student I was taught to enter the downwind on a 45 degree, or if coming from the opposite side of the pattern, overfly the field at pattern altitude + 500 (e.g. 1500 for a standard pattern at sea level) and perform a teardrop 225 degree turn to enter the downwind. I never do this. If entering a pattern at a non-controlled field and I can do it on an extended base, that is the approach that I take unless there are already aircraft in the pattern, in which case I sequence in by clearing myself of the airport area, doing my best to communicate with and locate the aircraft in the pattern and then sequence in from a distance. Being in a prolonged turn creates a blind spot that I am not comfortable with. The logic behind the standard patterns seems to be for aircraft to remain in the pattern and for more to enter that pattern and is useful for students and those practicing pattern work. The 90 degree pattern turns seem like what you normally do when getting ready to do some maneuvering practice: start a turn, level off and check your blind spot and make sure there's not somebody you missed on final, then continue the turn. The only advantage I see in flying the standard downwind is it allows for the pilot to observe the windsock and compensate for drift towards the runway due to crosswinds, though at the same time, it seems like a tightened downwind to a pilot who is unaware of the risks being taken may shorten a base leg even more to where they overshoot final, over bank or use the rudder to pull the nose around. The extra workload or bank angle increases the load on the airframe and causes greater loss of altitude than expected by the pilot which they compensate for by pulling back. This increases stall speed and the reduction in rate of descent further reduces airspeed. The skid from the extra rudder both blocks the low wing from some airflow by the airframe and may cause airspeed indication error from the pitot tube, and increases lift from the faster moving wing that's pointed more skywards. The bottom wing stalls, pulling the nose downwards, which further increases the speed and associated lift of the upward wing combined with the yawing rotating motion of the airplane quickly throws it into a spin and creating a smoking hole in the ground.

That makes a lot of sense.

The failure mode in an auto conversion is actually very rarely the internals of the engine itself.  Look at how modern car engines are tested--they run wide-ass open for hundreds of hours under full load on the dyno.

Instead, the majority of the failures can be attributed to the rest of the stuff that goes with the engine.  In order to get decent power output at speeds compatible with a reasonable propeller a lot of engines have to be geared down and that opens you up to a whole bunch of additional torsional vibration and resonance issues.  You're also having to deal with highly-loaded gears.  Since there are so few "standard" conversions a whole lot of these are one-off combinations and a lot of people don't pony up the cash for a full vibration survey.

The other issue is the engine systems--things like fuel delivery, ignition, cooling, oil, etc.  I know of cases where the builders used the stock ECU out of the car that, unbeknownst to them, went looking for a lot of data from the rest of the car--and if it wasn't there, would cut the engine back to limp mode after about 30 seconds of high-power operation.  You know, just after takeoff

A lot of this isn't helped in that a lot of the people making such conversion attempts don't really have the knowledge, education, or background to do them.  I'm an aircraft systems engineer and I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it right now.  If I had millions of dollars or a sugar mama that would pay my salary and fund the development of such an engine I think it would be fun, but nobody out there is willing to do that for me

Auto engines aren't inherently "bad" for airplanes, and traditional airplane engines aren't inherently "good".  The difference is that Cessna, Lycoming, Piper, etc. all worked together decades ago to more or less standardize the installation of direct-drive air-cooled opposed engines on light airplanes, and spent lots of dollars and man-hours doing so.  Anyone with deep enough pockets could create a great standardized auto conversion engine for some popular homebuilts, but the ROI is either too low or takes too long.  


The rest of what you said about the Lancair is often true.  Pitch stability was very marginal as designed and the stall speeds are insane for a light airplane.  That's why I'm sticking with an RV--it's much more reasonable.

I was wondering how the new pilots are going to adapt to the thrust being applied from the rear rather than the prop pulling the plane around.

Thats not really an issue, spool time however is going to pucker some butts.

I was thinking about that too....I forsee a lot of grass landings.

Hey, don't forget Jack Roush's crash at Oshkosh.

I read the story and was he suppose to monitor two frequencies at once to avoid the Cub?

Should've worn his shoulder strap.

The only relevant part is where he went around and didn't add power, succesfully stalling a perfectly operating aircraft and nearly killing himself.

Generally speaking in jets if you move the yoke you need to move the throttles.

That too....I am sure jets have ones similar to cars.

I never flown a jet, but when he added power the plane pitched up?

Think he pitched up but didn't add power.

well that's not good.

Turbines respond slowly.

http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/1043/why-do-turbine-engines-take-so-long-to-spool-up

I thought they did.

The old GE CJ610's on a learjet 20 series spooled as fast a piston engine.  5,800lbs of thrust as fast as you can jam the levers forward.  Too bad there is not an emoji for a huge hard on.

Loved those old dinosaurs! I'm so glad I get to fly them before they went away. They sounded so good, too.

But I'm also glad I'm not still flying them.

100 Decibels  of kerosene injected glory.  

I was going to add, the Williams FJ44 engines on the CJ's, also have nearly instant gratification.  And oddly enough, they suck-n-blow pretty good.   Nothing at all like the anemic and disappointing engines in that Eclipse jet.  Gawd, what an embarrassment.  Glad they went bankrupt.