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Cessna 182 - SMA Diesel (this time by Soloy), and innovation in GA

Snoopy wrote:

Anything piston the BRS is a must. Ufn not available in 6 seaters, or?

Well, in that case you know the available airframes and no, there are no six seaters and no diesel planes available at the moment. One bit to consider would be what payload a C182 with diesel and BRS has left… I have no idea but it was widely written that the BRS is equivalent to pretty much loosing the 4 seat capability weight wise.

As for renting out, it is a question of what kind of people you let onto your airplane if they will abuse you or not. What I do is to give each new pilot a difference training (regardless if they have flown the type before or not) in which it is made clear what power regime is to be used and how the engine e.t.c. has to be treated. If I find someone does not, he will not get the airplane anymore. You should calculate rental prices by using 75% cruise and teach them to use 65%. In the end, this will compensate for some who might waste fuel but in my experience most folks adhere to what they are told. At the same time, keep a fuel log and see what the average use is per hour (e.g. collect total consumption for 100 hours and then see how much people have used in real figures and use that to adjust rental price.

As for people ruining engines without FADEC, again such pilots will be found out most of the time already during the difference training and will not get released.

Personally I think people who will not fly without a BRS should stop flying altogether. Granted, it is a good system and save lifes but SEP’s have been flying for many decades without it. Similarily, Diesel engines are still and will be for the forseeable future a lot more expensive than the corresponding Avgas engines, so if Avgas is available, I think cost wise Diesel is not significantly cheaper.

Instead it might be an idea to change the quotation. You want a true six seater, which means a C210 or PA32. None of those is available as diesel nor with BRS. If you can do with 4 seats and insist on the BRS, you will get what you want in a few days looking at the Cirrus listings for half the price you’d probably have to shell out to equip a C182 with Diesel or BRS or both.

So if you have the budget to buy expensive, go for a cheaper solution and use the difference to fly the airplane. Matter of fact, if you have 500 k available to buy a BRS/SMA C182, you can buy a Seneca II for around 60 k and have a good six seater (if you don’t downgrade it to 1999 kg) with a 2nd engine (which eliminates the BRS need) and can fly several years using up the 400k odd money you save buying the thing. Also lots of pilots have Seneca experience so finding renters is not a problem, particularly as most rental Senecas are flight school planes which will not be encouraged to go on trips longer than 2 days. For renting out, availability is a HUGE factor.

I have had several cases in recent years where people were oggling 500k Cirrus planes and ended up heeding the advice about using the money to fly rather than to waste it on a newer airframe which will depreciate by the minute. Quite a few of them had been toying with financing (leasing) e.t.c. as they did not have 500k but thought they needed them. Well, several of those ended up buying 60-100k airframes at the end and are happy enough. Two people went for twins and won’t look back. I don’t think any of them has yet spent his original budget after several years of flying and one of them recently told me that he is more than happy with his M20K which is faster and a LOT more economical than the SR22 he originally wanted and cost him a fraction to buy including a 100 hour engine and prop….

ivark wrote:

how do you get wives who are so educated on details? mine does not like flying (in anything),

You’ve answered your own question and you have in one line given the questions which lead to Cirrus becoming the largest certified GA manufacturer.

Most spouses don’t like flying unless she or he is someone you found in Oskosh or similar places and have licenses in their own right. Most aspiring PPL’s will cheat themselfs into thinking that this will change once they have the license, but in fact many spouses will not fly or only fly with huge reservations, many will not allow the kids to come with their family pilot and so on. If you want an indication, just observe how they behave when you are driving…. or try to repair your kitchen sink. Most wifes don’t trust their husbands even to hit a nail straight in so the concept of letting them loose on a scary airplane is just one which they will not remotely consider. MANY newly minted pilots (or freshly married) will stop flying for this reason.

Cirrus came with the shute and answered the prayers of such people. With the shute, quite a few reluctant wifes would relent, maybe not fly more but be more confident that their money making spouses won’t kill themselfs in one of those contraptions untimely leaving her in the uncomfortable situation having to fend for herself or a family… Not that it was a unlimited success, quite a few people managed to kill themselfs with Cirrus airplanes despite the shute, but psychologically it worked REALLY well so even now they have a jet with parashute.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 30 Sep 21:45
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Mooney_Driver wrote:

with a 2nd engine (which eliminates the BRS need)

I often wonder why people think an engine failure is the only reason to pull the chute.

EDLE

The usual reason I hear for the “spouse chute preference” is pilot incapacitation, specifically the pilot getting a heart attack.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
@mooney_driver interesting points.

I disagree about giving up flying sep.. I will fly without a chute for a short local flight where I am familiar with terrain and airfields. For touring flights (especially ifr) I think the chute is a great tool if passing an area with imc below enroute. The same goes for darkness.
With the cirrus I don’t mind to depart during sunset and land at night (vmc).

So the decision is either brs/diesel or 6 seats.
For 6 seats it would make more sense to go the turbine route, something I don’t think is viable if a plane will be chartered out. Some fractional ownership model could work though.

The c182 came to mind because it could be run until the avgas engine is „done“ and then be fitted with a diesel engine. Even if Cirrus comes out with a Diesel version it will be a new plane costing again a million.

I think the 182 provides the best utility combination allround (touring, docile handling, to/ldg distance, payload).

always learning
LO__, Austria

Snoopy wrote:

I think the 182 provides the best utility combination allround (touring, docile handling, to/ldg distance, payload).

That I would agree with. A C182 is a sort of flying SUV / Swiss Army Knife combo that can handle pretty much any kind of flying. Like an SUV it doesn’t really excel anywhere, but it always gets the job done. Prob90 the best for your application.

Snoopy wrote:

The c182 came to mind because it could be run until the avgas engine is „done“ and then be fitted with a diesel engine.

That sounds like a valid plan, as I said what I would check is the payload after the conversion to both shute and engine. I also understood that there is not much baggage space left after the shute is installed in a 182, but that may be referring to the rather large space it has got anyway, so even then it might have actually more than others without it… but check it anyway.

In any event, calculate it through. You may find that even with all cost saving a Diesel brings, the investment cost may still favour a SR22. Apart from the fact that you can buy it and have everything you need, CAPS already installed and no big conversions necessary for the forseeable future.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 02 Oct 07:57
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

europaxs wrote:

I often wonder why people think an engine failure is the only reason to pull the chute.

It certainly isn’t but I’d say it is the main reason the shute is such a safety instrument for flights e.g. in IMC, night and over hostile terrain.

Obviously there are other reasons such as pilot incapacitation or mid air collision/airframe failure too. But it would be interesting to get an idea on how many actual pulls were due to engine related vs other reasons. My guess would be that certainly more than half would have to be engine related.

Peter wrote:

The usual reason I hear for the “spouse chute preference” is pilot incapacitation, specifically the pilot getting a heart attack.

Well, the whole spouse chute preferrence thing is based on quite irrational fears anyway so this may well be true. Spouses usually don’t know the reliability of our engines… and better for it. So the one item they distrust most is their pilot…. q.e.d to what I said before. Many spouses have a very unhealthy trust relationship with their significant others when it comes to capabilities… backseat driving is a good indication for that.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

But it would be interesting to get an idea on how many actual pulls were due to engine related vs other reasons. My guess would be that certainly more than half would have to be engine related.

The whole list of Cirrus chute pulls and their reasons was posted here a while ago, but I can’t easily search for it because the guy who posted it (the Prince) used several identities over time… but it is undoubtedly online somewhere. When you read the circumstances in detail, it doesn’t read as a great marketing document for BRS; more like a testimony that great marketing attracts incompetent pilots disproportionately… but perversely that is a testimony to the success of the product because you cannot sell all those thousands of new aircraft into the existing “old fashioned” and conservative GA community. The issue was eventually largely addressed with manufacturer-sponsored training but IMHO the bulk of BRS activations involved aircraft that could have been flown to an airport.

EDIT: current Cirrus BRS list is here

The % of engine failures, excluding fuel exhaustion, was much less than 50% but most would have said it was a lot higher than GA average, especially during certain periods. One thread on this is here (ignore the banal posts by two individuals who posted mostly windups). I did read quite a lot on US forums (back when I had time) about the IO550 failure rate being seemingly quite high.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter,

so 34 engine failures out of 91 caps events, so somewhere around 1/3rd.

Amazing how many loss of control due to vertigo and icing. And there were a few mid airs as well.

Still, 34 engine failures leading to CAPS activation is not few.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

I wonder how many were empty tanks? In the wider GA sphere, empty tanks are much more common than a mechanical failure in the engine.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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