2 and/or 4 seat experimental & ultralight

LeSving wrote:

With opt out to 600 kg, there will be more standardization though.

LOL. We already see that this is not the case. The DULV/DAeC went foreward and carft a (not very good, I must say) certification specs and other countries claim to “follow, where they see these specifications would fit”. France is out completely, not even going the full 600kg. The microlight associations have created a monster.

Certifying a ULM for the market requires 28+4 single certification applications with at least one, but in most cases much more than one substantiation checks for Europe allone.

Certifying an LSA for the market requires one single certification application with one substantiation check. You can easily extend to CS23 Amdt5 and (in near future) to the declarative Part-21. Then you have a complete ICAO compatible certification.

Peter wrote:

If I was EASA-reg I would have a ~€10k instrument, rendered worthless.

Probably not, but they might charge you, because you believe that they need the overhead they never do. Printing a Form1 is additional cost of one printed paper. You just have to organise your company.

Snoopy wrote:

Nreg might come close to experimental or „normal“ eu ultralights though… way cheaper than anything else. For the same product just without a piece of form 1 paper.

NReg ist in fact quite close to EASA/German regulations. Some differences, but in the end it’s irrelevant if you get charged by John Doe, or by Doe Aircraft Service ltd. Both won’t charge for a friend and both will charge people who drop a blank cheque and the keys accordingly. And in D-Reg, microlight and experimental maintenance costs pretty much exact the same as EASA maintenance under Part ML or part M(EMA1), unless you think an aircraft mechanic working on an experimental should earn less than when he’s working on a certified aircraft. The ULM inspector charges the same for an annual as my EASA inspector, and if I want to do everything by myself, I can do it on all three regimes.

Complaining about EASA on EuroGA has cost more, than the differences in operations.

Bottom line: Don’t press yourself into one regulation or another. Make a purchase desicion based on the aircraft that fit’s your needs. If it’s a Savage Bobber, then go for it. If it’s a DR400, then look for a nice one.

Buying an other plane in two years because you think you’re pressed to go experimental and then realising that it is the wrong plane and you’d be happier with a certain certified plane will, in the end, cost you more than you imagine the maintenance difference would be.

Probably not, but they might charge you, because you believe that they need the overhead they never do. Printing a Form1 is additional cost of one printed paper. You just have to organise your company.

I will look for the previous discussion, so I can ask you to post the full detail

Both won’t charge for a friend and both will charge people who drop a blank cheque and the keys accordingly.

Sure, but there is a big variation in the diameter of the barrel over which one gets bent.

Snoopy wrote:

My impression so far is that UL and experimental is substantially „cheaper“ than certified, over all, not only for maintenance. Maybe that’s wrong!?

It has been posted a lot, but in the end it’s not true. The rule of thumb is “1€/h per installed HP”. That’s with no owner maintenance, empirically determined across ULM, Experimentals and certified aircraft based on just shy of 100h/year.

ULM can be cheap: A C42 for example is built very cheap, so are some other ULM in these price ranges. But Mogas for a Rotax 912 is exactly as expensive as Mogas for an O200. And the D-Motor consumes the exact same amount of fuel as a C90, when both are properly leaned and deliver the same power. A Blackwing is quoted way north of 200k€ purchase price. The (night VFR and next year IFR) certified Sonaca 200 is listed for 170k€. A Rotax 912 consumes just a liter per hour less than a O200 with the same power delivered and while having some other maintenance items, basically you have the same workload (more oil changes here, gear inspections there.)

ULM have been quoted so low fuel consumptions, due to the light weight and low speeds in economy cruise. But if I operate an O200 with just 45%, it, too, just barely consumes fuel. And if I want to race a SportCruiser oder a Bristell or a Viper or a Breezer, they all consume around 21-23 liters at 110 KTAS. The exact same figures than a Bölkow Junior.

So in the end: Chose what you like, not what any anonymous guy on the internet tells you to fly because he has a deal with his ULM mechanic, but not with his EASA mechanic. Some will tell you that self-maintenance will be possible on NReg or ULM, but completely neglect that you can do the same under EASA reg. Some will tell you that you don’t need to exchange engined and parts at TBO, but that is true for all three options. Others will point out, that you can use non certified avionics, but to a certain degree that is true for all three regimes.

In the end, all of that isn’t important. It’s important, that you like your aircraft and that you can do with it, what you intend to do. Everything else is outright silly.

Do you really want to go building a Sonnex, because it makes LeSving happy?
Do we all need to fly a TB20 on Nreg, because that’s what Peter likes most?
Do you want to operate one aircraft in all three regimes, because I chose to do so?

I think not.

mh wrote:

LOL. We already see that this is not the case. The DULV/DAeC went foreward and carft a (not very good, I must say) certification specs and other countries claim to “follow, where they see these specifications would fit”. France is out completely, not even going the full 600kg. The microlight associations have created a monster.

Certifying a ULM for the market requires 28+4 single certification applications with at least one, but in most cases much more than one substantiation checks for Europe allone.

Certifying an LSA for the market requires one single certification application with one substantiation check. You can easily extend to CS23 Amdt5 and (in near future) to the declarative Part-21. Then you have a complete ICAO compatible certification.

It’s a matter of point of view. You can agree not to agree, but still accept differences, or try to reach a common denominator that nobody wants (CS-LSA in a nut shell).

Good post MH.

I would just add that

Chose what you like, not what any anonymous guy on the internet tells you to fly because he has a deal with his ULM mechanic, but not with his EASA mechanic

tends to cut both ways e.g.

“not what any anonymous guy on the internet tells you to fly because he has a deal with his EASA mechanic, but not with his ULM mechanic”
“not what any anonymous guy on the internet tells you to fly because he has a deal with his EASA mechanic, but not with his FAA A&P/IA mechanic”

and every possible permutation…

Lots of people have friends who help them out, or other nice deals going, but they fail to make this clear in their posts. This could lead someone new to aircraft ownership to make uninformed and expensive decisions. Accordingly, I tend to be careful and quite detailed when posting about N-reg advantages – because they are indeed contingent on various things being in place. It was “partial posting” and my resulting questions which led to a lot of toys getting chucked out of prams here in the past

In aviation, what makes the biggest difference to owner satisfaction is the sort of setup which one can arrange on the ground.

Heaven = own hangar, near the house, DIY maintenance
Hell = no hangar, far to travel, have to use a company for everything and they want to see a Form-X for every screw

and every possible permutation…

Exactly my point.