Alarus CH-2000

n57flyguy

n57flyguy

Well-Known Member
Has anyone ever flown one? Thoughts on them?

About the only thing I have heard is they have an unusual pitch oscillation. However they seem to have great performance (99Kts @ 75%, burning ~6 gph) and they have a solid IFR setup.

Any help is appreciated, thanks!
 
I used to instruct in one. They are fun little planes to fly but 99kts only comes when you point it at mother earth. A more reasonable number is 85. They have a huge rudder which helps them in slow flight but the split flaps are nothing but drag devices, barn doors if you will.

The one I flew had a nasty stall characteristic where if you let it develop into a full stall it would almost always snap to the left and then dump the nose as if it was about to spin. Basically, it scared the crap out of new students even if they kept the ball centered.

They are easy to land and comfortable for the most part with a few odd personality traits but they are good airplanes.
 
Thanks esa.

I figured 99 might be a bit off, but that was what the manufactures stated. Is the 6 GPH relatively true though? And how does it handle X winds?
 
n57flyguy said:
Thanks esa.

I figured 99 might be a bit off, but that was what the manufactures stated. Is the 6 GPH relatively true though? And how does it handle X winds?
Click to expand...

It's an O200 if I remember correctly and it did sip fuel, 6 is probably accurate. The large rudder makes it handle crosswinds way better than it handles head winds. We once had an instructor take nearly an hour forty five to fly 35 miles.

One thing I forgot to mention was the nosegear. It's literally a steel pipe bolted to the frame. You will never land without the nose coming down and making a loud "thunk".
 
n57flyguy said:
Has anyone ever flown one? Thoughts on them?
Click to expand...

Ohhh yeah. LET'S discuss this thing!

Most of what you need to know can be found in this fun thread from 2006:

http://forums.jetcareers.com/cfi-corner/34045-instruction-ch2000-alarus.html


I'll re-paste my Alarus summary for your convenience:



I started compiling this list months ago for the sole reason of ensuring that no other person or organization purchases this aircraft for any reason other than extracting the Garmin 430 and scrapping the experimental kit-plane that remains.

Before the list of problems, I will mention two things that are fun in this airplane.

1) The brakes are absolutely fantastic. If you touch down and have the flaps up I’m not sure any amount of force on the brake pedals will lock the wheels. I have not been able to skid the tires with the flaps up and it is not difficult to stop the plane 200 feet from the touchdown point, wind calm.

2) The second thing is doing a full flaps landing with power at idle. At 90 knots, which is well inside the white arc, a fifteen degree descent path is possible. Five glideslopes! Two instructors I know took one up to 11,000 feet. They crossed the final approach fix on our ILS at that altitude and set full flaps, power idle, 90 knots. The touchdown zone is 4.6 miles later and the tires hit it with no problem. Eleven thousand feet over the outer marker and you can get the thing stopped in the first 2,000 feet of the runway.


Enough.

Let’s do it.

Starting The best way seems to be to not prime it if the engine was run within the past 24 hours. Back when the temperature was cooler where I am, they would often need a battery cart to start and that would still be difficult. There is a “Slick Start” kit that can be installed but, as delivered, the starting of this aircraft is unacceptably difficult and unless it’s really hot outside the slick start thing doesn’t help much anyway. Unusual belching, screaming, and coughing sounds come from these airplanes during startup attempts. At first it is funny to hear from the outside but when you realize you’re now stuck at whatever airport you’re at, it’s totally ridiculous. A few people I flew with had a notion that the battery being in the rear of the airplane is the culprit to many of this thing’s starting problems and I think there is definitely some truth to that.

Fuel As the fuel approaches the cap, it gushes out of the bottom of the wing. Not like a fuel vent that lets some drops out, but rather a steady stream of fuel landing in a puddle all over the ramp. I suspected that we always guess the amount is more than it really is, and that turned out to be true, but we did measure the amount once and it is often one half gallon of fuel in our of our airplanes that is particularly bad. Add both wings together and that is a gallon of gas. Practically a self-imposed $4 fee to top off! How nice. I can’t think of any other airplane that immediately dumps 4% of its usable fuel onto the ramp.

Fuel, Part Two After takeoff having been recently topped off, one can look back towards the trailing edge of the wing and see a steady stream of fuel shooting out from beneath the fuel cap and off the back of the wing. I have seen this in action for several minutes during the climb out and although we have no way to measure this second fuel issue, it appears to be nearly as strong a flow as the ground dump problem and a reasonable estimate as to the amount leaked out this way might be up to a gallon.

Heat When spring turned to summer the airplanes started to get warmer inside. We thought something might be keeping the heater stuck on and we talked to a mechanic about it. Unfortunately we’re out of luck because it’s not the heat that is stuck on. The airplane lacks suitable insulation between the engine and the cockpit and the heat billows out from above and behind the rudder pedals. Keep your feet on the pedals and have them melt, or pull them back towards the seat to keep cool. The temperature in the cockpit on a cool evening can be above 90°F because of this, making instruction difficult as both the instructor and the student are distracted by the intense heat blowing on their legs. When it gets cold there is no heat. You might as well leave the heater off so the knob doesn’t fall out in your hand. Which brings me to the next item.

Carb Heat Knob The factory installed carb heat knob falls out after about a hundred hours. Your mechanics will have to replace it at that time. If it’s not one that falls out, they slowly vibrate themselves out to the ON position. The students initially may think that they must straddle their right hand over the carb heat and throttle during the climb. They’re right.

Gauges The needles in the engine, fuel, and electrical systems of this airplane are nothing short of ridiculous. It’s one thing to say it’s a single engine trainer and don’t trust the fuel gauges too much but I’m talking about starting up the airplane with a full tank and having one stuck on zero and the other stuck in the middle and having to ground the plane when it has 50 hours out of the factory. The ammeter often indicates a continuous charge, or discharge, or basically whatever it feels like indicating.

Fuel Pressure Gauge The fuel pressure gauge normally indicates one hundredth of an inch above redline and does not move no matter what you do with the engine or the auxiliary fuel pump. Other times, it goes to redline on the high side but moves if you tap it. The consensus is that this instrument is not actually connected to anything in the fuel system.

Altimeter An altimeter got stuck on a low altitude and then broke free seven hundred feet lower. This is dangerous for an airplane fresh out of the factory, IFR certified.

Suction The suction gauge often indicates zero, but may rise to the normal range with an increase in RPM. The attitude indicator is never to be trusted for IFR even if it is stable during the taxi check.

COM 2 Often times does not work properly. The usual problem is that when COM 2 is being monitored, transmissions on COM 1 are barely readable.

NAV 2 Often times does not work properly, such as being 8 degrees off from NAV 1. On a delivery flight NAV 2 failed 45 minutes after departing the factory. VOR needles are usually barely able to meet the required errors for IFR use. Some theorize that the current flowing between the engine area and the battery past all of the NAV antennas interferes. I’d believe that some navigational errors are attributed to this, in addition to the CDI cards being calibrated incorrectly as delivered, to the point of them not being useful for any IFR navigation and requiring a trip to the avionics shop. To summarize, you have to take it to an avionics shop for repair at the end of the delivery flight.

Alternator The alternator fails often and that is ridiculous. Need I say more?

Landing lights They literally burn out without being turned on. It’s a good thing there are two of them but frankly they need at least another two. Nobody knows if it’s the position of them or what but they don’t last long at all.

Position Lights There is nothing holding the white tail position light to the airplane. It’s just there.

Key Installation After a while some of the OFF / L / R / BOTH / START key pieces start to rotate out of their normal position and flip all the way around. We’re talking planes with 300 hours on them.

Vibration This is more of a comfort thing. The floor vibrates. A lot. Wear shoes with a thick sole or carry an old towel to throw down and absorb some of the vibration. Some airplanes vibrate so much that the needles are actually vibrating as you fly an ILS. Don’t assume you can an ILS at more than 2500RPM if ATC asks for some speed on final – the needles go bonkers sometimes under higher power settings. Think you can read the wet compass easily at night in one of the more intensely vibrating airplanes? It is believed by some that the vibration contributes to the incredible failure rate of new avionics.

Noise It is very loud in the cockpit. If it is hot and you want to get a lot of air into the cockpit, the noise increases dramatically if you open the scoop window vents. 116 horsepower should not be this loud! Besides engine noise and wind sound during cruise, the ventilation system often creates very high pitched squealing noises. Sometimes you can jam a pen between the door frame and the door to open it a bit (they never close completely anyway) and that makes the squealing stop.

Transponder This has indicated FL600 on radar. Not necessarily an Alarus problem but why not throw it on the list anyway since it’s in the airplane.

Turning Tendency Many of them have an extremely strong rolling tendency to the right or left, right out of the factory. The craft is not symmetrically constructed and you should not have to burn 90% of the right wing tank first in hopes that you can help trim the thing out.

Fire On a cool evening without having the engine flooded or the starter overheated from excessive cranking, fire emerged from near the exhaust pipe and burned for one minute. Flames were dripping out of the engine and had it not been dark I would not have seen the orange glow on the ground. Brand new plane!

Electrical System Numerous total electrical failures occurred, some at night.

Flap Position Indicator It is often wrong, so the best way to put the flaps down is in increments of seconds.

Door Handles They’re flimsy metal and they get bent very easily. Sometimes one person has to get the other out of the airplane by walking around to their side and unlatching it from the outside. When it gets that bad, of course, it’s time to ground the plane and get a new latch put on or have the mechanics bend it back to a reasonable position.

Electrical Tape Each airplane comes with a piece of black electrical tape on the cowl, almost aligned with the longitudinal axis. If that is what it is for, it’s wrong and is a distraction to a student trying to master crosswind landings. If it’s for something else, it’s inadequate since it peels off over the course of many flight hours. What is this tape for?

Turn Coordinator They don’t last too long. Some start the grinding noises indicative of impending failure at around 200 hours out of the factory.

Doors The doors are as cheap as the rest of the airplane. They get bent out of position and leak horrendously. Some are real bad when they make a high pitch whistle through the entire flight. Not a good thing to hear on eight hours of cross country.

Oil Temperature The whole engine overheats terribly, even on cool nights in the 50F range. The best thing to do is to set 2100RPM and fly at L/D max for a few minutes. It settles down into the middle of the green at some point and then you’ve got maybe two to four thousand additional feet to climb before the needle creeps up to the point where you ought to level off and let it cool again. It’s really not good to be asking SoCal for a holding pattern on a cool day so you can get up to the MEA and continue flying.

Fuel Tab One annoyance is that it blocks the view of the fuel in the tank, but after moving it out of the way the level of fuel can be seen. The real problem is when the cheap little thing falls off the cap and sinks to the bottom of the fuel tank. That’s a great use of the mechanic’s time.



I have 500 hours in this type; 50% of that is at night. I no longer trust it enough to do the night IMC flying that myself and others were doing with it but that phase is over for our students anyway.

Don't buy it. And if you have a choice, don't fly it.



Here is a hilarious video (audio in the dark) taken by JC'er frascaflyer. I was in the Alarus with one of my students and we were trying to get the thing started, as usual. A very unique steel-drum type noise can be heard in the final seconds of the clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrfFCEJ9L-U
 
Fuel As the fuel approaches the cap, it gushes out of the bottom of the wing. Not like a fuel vent that lets some drops out, but rather a steady stream of fuel landing in a puddle all over the ramp. I suspected that we always guess the amount is more than it really is, and that turned out to be true, but we did measure the amount once and it is often one half gallon of fuel in our of our airplanes that is particularly bad. Add both wings together and that is a gallon of gas. Practically a self-imposed $4 fee to top off! How nice. I can’t think of any other airplane that immediately dumps 4% of its usable fuel onto the ramp.

Fuel, Part Two After takeoff having been recently topped off, one can look back towards the trailing edge of the wing and see a steady stream of fuel shooting out from beneath the fuel cap and off the back of the wing. I have seen this in action for several minutes during the climb out and although we have no way to measure this second fuel issue, it appears to be nearly as strong a flow as the ground dump problem and a reasonable estimate as to the amount leaked out this way might be up to a gallon.

Gauges The needles in the engine, fuel, and electrical systems of this airplane are nothing short of ridiculous. It’s one thing to say it’s a single engine trainer and don’t trust the fuel gauges too much but I’m talking about starting up the airplane with a full tank and having one stuck on zero and the other stuck in the middle and having to ground the plane when it has 50 hours out of the factory. The ammeter often indicates a continuous charge, or discharge, or basically whatever it feels like indicating.

Fuel Pressure Gauge The fuel pressure gauge normally indicates one hundredth of an inch above redline and does not move no matter what you do with the engine or the auxiliary fuel pump. Other times, it goes to redline on the high side but moves if you tap it. The consensus is that this instrument is not actually connected to anything in the fuel system.


Vibration This is more of a comfort thing. The floor vibrates. A lot. Wear shoes with a thick sole or carry an old towel to throw down and absorb some of the vibration. Some airplanes vibrate so much that the needles are actually vibrating as you fly an ILS. Don’t assume you can an ILS at more than 2500RPM if ATC asks for some speed on final – the needles go bonkers sometimes under higher power settings. Think you can read the wet compass easily at night in one of the more intensely vibrating airplanes? It is believed by some that the vibration contributes to the incredible failure rate of new avionics.

Noise It is very loud in the cockpit. If it is hot and you want to get a lot of air into the cockpit, the noise increases dramatically if you open the scoop window vents. 116 horsepower should not be this loud! Besides engine noise and wind sound during cruise, the ventilation system often creates very high pitched squealing noises. Sometimes you can jam a pen between the door frame and the door to open it a bit (they never close completely anyway) and that makes the squealing stop.

Door Handles They’re flimsy metal and they get bent very easily. Sometimes one person has to get the other out of the airplane by walking around to their side and unlatching it from the outside. When it gets that bad, of course, it’s time to ground the plane and get a new latch put on or have the mechanics bend it back to a reasonable position.

Doors The doors are as cheap as the rest of the airplane. They get bent out of position and leak horrendously. Some are real bad when they make a high pitch whistle through the entire flight. Not a good thing to hear on eight hours of cross country.

Fuel Tab One annoyance is that it blocks the view of the fuel in the tank, but after moving it out of the way the level of fuel can be seen. The real problem is when the cheap little thing falls off the cap and sinks to the bottom of the fuel tank. That’s a great use of the mechanic’s time.
Click to expand...

I agree with all of these I quoted, I even find some of them to be a bit nostalgic. Thanks for reminding me!

I really had fun in the plane and don't have the same reservations about it's safety and I've flown it at night in IMC with Chuck Norris on my tail. Every thing that I deleted out of the quote I would attribute to maintenance and can be fixed and or replaced. Bad MX does not mean bad aircraft.
 
Thanks for the input guys, I will probably be flying it because I will be able to on the cheap. I'll let you know what I think in a few weeks.


Nick, did you fly them out of PNE?

Edit: It is not a flight school airplane.
 
n57flyguy said:
Thanks for the input guys, I will probably be flying it because I will be able to on the cheap. I'll let you know what I think in a few weeks.


Nick, did you fly them out of PNE?

Edit: It is not a flight school airplane.
Click to expand...

Glad you enjoyed that 2006 blast from the past. Brings back some funny memories of teaching the Chinese kids to fly.

No, I did not fly the Alarus at PNE. We flew them at MER in Atwater, California (Castle Airport).

I only rented from PNE a few times.
 
Nick said:
Glad you enjoyed that 2006 blast from the past. Brings back some funny memories of teaching the Chinese kids to fly.

No, I did not fly the Alarus at PNE. We flew them at MER in Atwater, California (Castle Airport).

I only rented from PNE a few times.
Click to expand...

Yeah if only I had the energy to find the names of some of those old threads.

Ah right, you left PA a long, long time ago then.
 
I flew one for my CSEL train up...maybe it was just me, but the thing felt as stable as a unicycle. The sink rate is alarming and takes more time to get used to than I have in the plane and I heard the stall horn a lot on take-offs which was a new experience for me. They are uncomfortable, loud, and awkward...in my opinion, they are the Yugo of the general aviation world. Fortunately, the FBO screwed up the scheduling and I didn't use it on the checkride becuase I'm sure I would've had a tail strike during the landings as I did on 3-4 prior.

Take it with a grain of salt because my back ground it in high wing Cessnas.
 
n57flyguy said:
Thanks for the input guys, I will probably be flying it because I will be able to on the cheap. I'll let you know what I think in a few weeks.


Nick, did you fly them out of PNE?

Edit: It is not a flight school airplane.
Click to expand...

How much do they rent it for?
 
By far the worst plane ever. Period. It's amazing the thing can even get off the ground...not very water proof. Horrible fire wall. Would melt your shoes in the summer in California. Yup worst plane ever.
 
This plane a a hunk a junk if not well maintained. And i mean well maintained. Flew them for two years instructing and i never want to see one again. Sweat to death in the summer. Maybe 300 fpm climb in the summer if youre flying at eight in the morning, but hey its got a great descent rate! Nose gear is simply a pole bolted to the firewall. Avionics are nice i guess. Favorite quote: a bunch of instructors sitting around discussing what we would do after an alarus had an engine fire on start "i would have pushed it into all the other ones so they all burn"
 
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