Twin piston high wing aircraft?
- Thread starter Jeremy
- Start date
Joe Gremlin
Well-Known Member
Oye I stand corrected. There's a price point where a 140kt twin will work. But $500k ain't it. If you're in the market for a twin and you've got a $500k budget, you ain't gonna settle for 140kts. And lets face it, the low fuel burn doesn't help because if you've got a $500k airplane budget, you stopped paying attention to the fuel bill long ago. If you absolutely have to have brand new, you can get a Cirrus that goes faster and has a chute for backup for less. A lot less.
I realize their target is the training environment. But a flight school could put 5 aircraft online for the price of one of these. I hope they do well but I'll hold off calling my broker and buying any stock in the company for a while.
Yeah I know. I was just funin' with ya. But deserved or not, the Rotax still has a ways to go with a large segment of the pilot population in order to prove itself in terms of being as reliable and economical to own as a lyc or conti.
KSCessnaDriver
Well-Known Member
Yup, but eventually those old twins will wear out. Heck, one of the flight schools that I did a significant portion of my training at refuses to own/operate (leaseback) planes more than 18 years old. They like to cite GARA. Plus, they won't operate anything that they don't sell. Right now, there are 2 built for training twins. The DA-42 and the P2006T. One can be bought fully loaded for right at, or under 500K, and the other one is pushing 600K bone stock. Sure payloads are a bit different, but its a training plane. 2 people is all that you need to haul around. Again with speed, flight schools don't care about speed when they are looking to train for ratings.
I really, really hope they come out with something in the 160-200 horsepower department, to try to compete with the big boys. I don't mind people who are critical of the engines, but they really ought to try them before the bashing begins. I find them to be very smooth to fly behind. From a pilot standpoint, they are a heck of a lot easier to operate. With a fixed pitch prop, you've got one lever. Many installations don't have a need for carb heat, even though its a carbureted engine. Plus, they aren't stuck with 100LL for operation.
Joe Gremlin
Well-Known Member
That's one flight school. I can assure you, they are the exception not the rule. The fleet will wear out eventually, but seriously doubt that I'll live to see a day where there is a such a shortage of ratty 1950's-1960's twins on the market that flight schools are forced to buy brand new equipment. And if I do live to see such a day, I would wager that most flight schools will simply close their doors before they'll lay out the cash for a $500k training aircraft.
Change is slow in aviation and there are very good reasons for that. The problem with trying something unproven is that if you make a wrong choice, you could lose your shirt trying to fix it or make it right. When its your money on the line and your choices are known good vs might be good, most guys will go with known good every time. That's just how it is and I can't say I blame most folks.
The only problem I have with the article that P&P did on the 2006t is the engine comparo......
"In the end, Pascale chose the Rotax mills for a variety of reasons. For one thing, they’re remarkably light powerplants. The diminutive Rotax 912S weighs in at only 141 pounds, a total of 282 pounds for a pair. In contrast, the equivalent single Lycoming IO-360-A1A tips the scales at 321 pounds, so the Tecnam with dual Rotax power is actually 40 pounds lighter than having a single Lycoming out front."
How are you going to compare a 0-360 (160-180hp) to a Rotax 912 (100hp at best). A closer comparison would have been to the 0-200.
0-200 -170lbs
912ULS -145lbs
Side note *ULS stands for Unuseable Service Life*
Here is a link to some of the recomended maint./pre-flight issues
http://www.ultralightnews.com/enginemaintenance/912serviceintervals.htm
Sure, it sips fuel, but you make up for it in maint. costs.
KSCessnaDriver
Well-Known Member
If you really want to compare it, compare it to the O-200D (the new LSA designed O-200).
In regards to the whole list of maintenance items, how are any of them much different than say an O-320? Other than coolant and the coolant related systems, they seem to be common on almost every engine I've seen.
KSCessnaDriver
Well-Known Member
Add this one to the list of piston high wing planes. Plus its a taildragger to boot. FPNA sells the kits for it, but it was designed in Russia, IIRC. Neat looking plane. http://www.fpna.com/a36.htm
Cooling hoses, coolant, radiator cap, rubber intake manifold, carb syncing, just a few that come to mind immeadiatly. Oh, and the gear box. The one thing they do have over a conventional airplane engine is the cyl. seal. The Nikisyl (or however it's spelled) has far superior sealing quality than a std. bore/hone cyl. of ANY lyc./cont. on the market.
KSCessnaDriver
Well-Known Member
Still, with the new extension on the recommended TBO, I think the Rotax is the future. One nice feature about the gear box, is on a prop strike. If the clutch system works properly, you don't have to tear the engine apart. Once you get to looking at the engine and overhauls, usually it ends up being better to just replace. IIRC, the cost difference between overhaul and replacement was somewhere around 3-4K.