Day VFR would be a restriction which pretty much makes a plane like this unsellable. I don’t think anyone flies high performance long range SEP s like this just VFR.
I get a reply from Pipistrel. This aircraft for sale was the personal aircraft of one of their dealers. Apparently all their delivery slots are booked for next 15 months. It is Experimental and the EASA certification process is still ongoing.
First IO540 engined model sold to the US. Pipistrel appointed a dealer for all the Americas.
This one is under Experimental so not FAA (or anything else) certified yet. They talk about 2022 for certification. In the US, this is fine.
183kt TAS at 10.7GPH. Like a true marketing man, he fails to omit the altitude but from the window view and lack of oxygen use it looks like FL100 or so. That’s an impressive performance. The TB20 is some 155kt TAS at 10.5GPH, but has about 100,000 pop rivets sticking out
GTN650Xi+750Xi and 2x G3X.
I think they mentioned 11500 feet?
That, when certified and with a diesel…
A diesel will kill their US sales, however, along with any chances of selling good numbers pre-certification to the US Experimental market.
Not diesel in US, but in Europe….was want I meant. Fully agree that US is not as ready for diesel as Europe and other parts of the world is!
To rephrase…“that, when certified and with a diesel…..and with a lottery ticket…next plane for me!” :-)
From avweb test flight
When the airplane settled out at 8000 feet on an ISA plus 30 day, it was cruising at 184 knots on 13 GPH
https://www.avweb.com/insider/resurgence-of-the-rg/
184 knots for a 4 seater, Io-540 engine and 13gph is very impressive – very very impressive-
still wouldnt buy it though – for me it has to be a diesl burner of some shape or form for the next plane –
1 – As long as you are not burning Jet A you are subject to the vagaries of each countries approach to light aviation – already in France we pay between 40c/litre over the price of regular SP98 for ul91 or avgas – and because we are an easy target they are going to add more tax to avgas until it dies.
2/ I never want to manage an air cooled horizontally opposed engines ever again – I want to fly not spend a fair amount of my cockpit time managing throttle, mixture, prop, cowl flaps, actively monitoring oil, cht, egt – I understand the appeal and know the joy of having everything setup just right and the engine runs smoothly and efficiently but its a PITA.
aidanf123 wrote:
When the airplane settled out at 8000 feet on an ISA plus 30 day, it was cruising at 184 knots on 13 GPHhttps://www.avweb.com/insider/resurgence-of-the-rg/
184 knots for a 4 seater, Io-540 engine and 13gph is very impressive – very very impressive
Well, but it shows that all the previous talk of 200knots @10GPH was bollox, as we all knew…
It also shows that physics are hard to defy. An SR22 flown at 8000 feet and ISA plus 30 (Fahrenheit, I assume), which must be around 10000 feet density altitude, will do 170 knots @13 GPH. So, we are talking 14 knots of difference at the same fuel flow. With the addition of retractable landing gear and a windshield that is so extremely sloped that there is very little visibility straight ahead…
If what Avweb says is true, it also means that they either did not set up the cruise properly on that flight, or otherwise that the claim in the previously mentioned video, i.e. 183 knots at 10.8 GPH was bogus.
Good article. local copy I never believed that fixed gear makes “no” difference
But we are seeing a mixture of numbers. 13GPH is very different from 10.7GPH; the latter is peak EGT at 11k, WOT. Even a 3000ft difference in altitude doesn’t explain that… Somebody is not doing something right.
Still, 14kt speed difference is a HUGE efficiency gain, at those speeds.
I guess the previous claim was in Economy Cruise, Avweb does not say anything on power setting, from what I can see. Could have missed something. So, abit apples and pears, as I now see Peter writes rightly as well.