As this thread demonstrate, you can make all the technical arguments you like….some (many….most?) people don’t care…. They just want to fly their favorite airplanes as they are… Those that are slightly more interested in newer tech don’t want to spend the money…
The fact that most new manufacturers fail today is due to the immensely complex and expensive cost of certification
In the case of diesels, I don’t think that’s the problem.
Look at how many diesels pop up at shows, looking for a sponsor.
For sure some financiers are stupid but most aren’t. They will have examined the market and decided it isn’t there. In this world, if there is a clear chance to make money then investment money will follow. Very few obvious opportunities are missed, especially if you are talking €millions or more.
The low hanging fruit is the FTO business and Diamond have finally got themselves together and are addressing that pretty well, and money talks even after they left a bad taste in the mouth from their “adventures” of recent years. So that leaves
There is no low hanging fruit there, which removes the chance to make a fast buck, which means most financiers lose interest. All you have is a long hard work, carving sales out of solid rock, to customers who are close to TBO and find half their camshaft in the oil filter. And most of them will haggle with their A&P over whether the shiny bits are really a problem when their engine is “running real smooth”. And then Lyco can just drop their reman pricing a bit…. 
Speaking of alleged certification costs, take the SMA engine. Looked great when it came out, and Socata even have a TB20 demonstrator with it. Britten-Norman on the Isle of Wight did a lot of development work, on a TB10 platform I believe. But it would not restart above some relevant altitude, perhaps around 12000ft. Now, one person might say that certification is too expensive and how terrible this is, but another (probably somebody who has been above 2000ft 
) might say that engine is a completely and totally useless piece of junk, because all they need is a bit of fuel system or air inlet icing over the Alps and they are dead because it won’t restart before they are in the rocks.
Most certification of mechanical bits like airframes and engines is there for very good reasons. Everybody likes to moan about it but everybody also expects basic levels of safety, and an engine must restart anywhere up to the operating ceiling. SMA sorted that eventually but way too late.
Many think avionics certification is a flawed process because crap products can and do get through, but that’s another thread topic.
You can sell a “junk” to homebuilders (e.g. planes which don’t have enough aileron authority to counter the propeller torque at Vs – because you chopped their wings to make them go faster) because they decide the risk is worth the performance at the relatively lower price, and despite the various restrictions. But even the homebuilt market has not gone for diesels – probaby because most of the activity is US based and the fuel price advantage is not there.
Aviathor wrote:
A wild salmon is probable way more costly than a barrel!
A good analogy to GA in fact. A 5 kilo wild salmon is priceless for many people. They spend the whole summer trying to catch a few. A 5 kilo domestic salmon is worth 30 $. It’s the “journey” that counts and what some people are willing to pay a lot for and use lots of time on. Getting to point A to point B is as trivial as going to the shop to purchase a salmon loin.
Peter wrote:
They will have examined the market and decided it isn’t there. In this world, if there is a clear chance to make money then investment money will follow
Investors who are in for a quick buck are in the wrong business in most development and manufacturing opportunities.However, you are right when you say that the extreme short term orientation of many investors today is one reason why aviation is mostly left out by them. Not only aviation btw but also a lot of other worthwile branches of industry which are simply not yielding fast enough results.
It is funny in a way to see that American investors have ALL given up on GA. It took CHINESE investors to actually stop American GA from total collapse. That alone is a total disgrace but it has a lot to do with the one bit which drives every investor: Confidence.
The Western world, America to a lesser degree then Europe but still, has been drilled in recent years by rubbish slogans and “expert” opinions which have poisoned the whole environment of aviation. “It takes a large fortune in Aviation to turn it into a small one”, just as one. These mantras have destroyed investor confidence, and not only investors but also ours. If I look at this forum as well as others, it is like sitting on a funeral. Confidence in the market for GA is none existent, and we are a European GA forum? I see the same in the ILS Forum and to some degree even in AOPA.
If those who are inside aviation mostly believe there is no future in it, then how should investors believe in it? It takes vision and purpose to believe in something others don’t believe in and the vision most investors today have is only one: make more money, no matter how. They don’t care in what they invest in, if it has a certain yield they will. But that is a fatal approach. As an investor, you own part of what you invest in, at least if we are talking shares. Not caring what that company does is outright stupid and it means you do not exercise your duty as an owner, all you want is to buy a share and kick it off once it has risen. Whether the company makes baby food or produces guilloutines is of no concern.
Sorry, that attude has thrown us in the mess we are in. Particularly in aviation.
Confidence: Investors will check on stuff like how many start ups in that field have survived? How many have made a profit? Not, which start up has a good product? Is that product worth pushing? Can I identify with it?
Clearly, looking at the aviation market, that prospect is one of doom and gloom. 1 out of 10 start ups survive. 1 out of 10 announced products make it through certification. And if one of those investors ever checks one of those forums here or elsewhere, he’ll take a running start.
No, such investors are not what this industry needs. It needs people with vision and with the willingness to see a vision through. Those people exist and most of them are not typical investors but unlikely outsiders who get it right. Some of those get it very right, the likes of Gates, Zuckerberg, Jobs, Branson. In GA: People like the Klappmeiers, Christian Dries, or the founders of Aspen Avionics and similar outfits. To see a niche where a need is there and exploit it. Also Lancair to an extent, and I’d count Jerry Chen of Mooney International into that flock. Even Frank Thielert. What all of them need to succeed however is an opposite who can rock the foundations of their enthusiasm, I’d say that without that, none of those guys would have succeeded and the latter failed spectarularly because of it.
No, investors who are for a quick buck, thanks, but no. Not in any business.
Maybe I do carry a massive grudge when it comes to non-aviation people and politics deciding the fate of technology. I did some research for a friend of mine about the Swiss jet projects, N20 and P16. Both were outstanding products, far ahead of their time and, with the proper backing, could have been market sensations. Both were shot down by politics and outright criminal corruption within the decision makers, with malicious intent and too disgusting to elaborate. I’ve seen a lot of this happen elsewhere. Eventually I had to stop my research because it drove me into an absolute fury.
Maybe that is why my own confidence in aviation is very much in those who try to make things happen, but I have none in those who are responsible for stopping them. And when I see that 20-30 years ago it was possible to certify a SEP from blank sheet to flying airplane in 1-2 years and see that the same thing today takes 5-10 years for a bloody radio, then I have to conclude there is an agenda and there is malicious intent involved, BIG TIME.
This kind of innovation stop FORCES us to today fly with materials which were certified at a time and with certification criterias which today would not be possible. So the overzealous certification regime FORCES us to fly airplanes and engines which are considerably less safe and advanced then the newer designs which have to fulfill unfulfillable wet dreams of regulators, whose only concern is not the advancement of aviation but to cover their own ass.
SMA may be one such example, as you write. A tech problem like that must be solvable and it was, but the confidence wasn’t there to put the effort, so it was done too little too late.
Thielert made it, but f*cked it up due to his ineptitude in business. The product however is there and valid.
Peter wrote:
You can sell a “junk” to homebuilders (e.g. planes which don’t have enough aileron authority to counter the propeller torque at Vs – because you chopped their wings to make them go faster) because they decide the risk is worth the performance at the relatively lower price, and despite the various restrictions.
See, that is EXACTLY what I mean.
The current certification regime FORCES people into the UNCERTIFIED market instead of making the criteria so, that certification can be achieved for those products who deserve it. Instead, it allows unsafe airplanes to fly. IS that where we want to go? Not me.
Flyer59 wrote:
No, I am not missing the point, I am just trying to show you that this point makes no sense. Why shouldn’t we compare similar technologies (combustion engines) in airplanes and cars? We see what is possible today, and really all of us suffer from the bad quality we are sold. The stories about failing Continentals – and Lycomings – are endless.
I would very much like to have a modern FADEC engine on my aircraft, but that won’t let me do away with flight planning and ground checks. So the point is that the difference in “total usability” when you switch between an old and a modern engine is much greater for a car than for an aircraft.
AnthonyQ wrote:
you can make all the technical arguments you like….some (many….most?) people don’t care…. They just want to fly their favorite airplanes as they are…
Either this is the normal conservatism that you find in pilot circles.
Or the arguments do not catch on because people revel in the complexity of managing and maintaining vintage engines, as well as debating it.
Dismissing an engine that you start by the flip of a switch and the turn of a key, that will start within seconds regardless of conditions or engine temperature, that burn a fuel which is available everywhere, that you can climb at all the way to FL250 with the throttle fully forward without worrying about mixture, chts and tits, that will still have plenty power available when it gets there, you do not need to go through 3 sets of cylinders during the engine’s lifetime, you do not need to top off oil between services, no cam spalding, no stuck valves or lifters, no plug fouling on the ground should you forget to lean, no shock cooling… is really beyond me.
The one thing wrong with diesels is that our lives will become miserably boring because we no longer will be able to debate LOP vs ROP leaning techniques – just reminisce times gone by.
The fact that most new manufacturers fail today is due to the immensely complex and expensive cost of certification.
That is what you are claiming over and over, but many companies will easily blame certification for necessary changes that result from bad engineering in the first place. If you design with certification in mind, the cost of certification is manageable because much of the testing and necessary calculations you have to do anyway.
When the same notion is put to flight training, normally from people who have never worked with the system they condemn, I tend to ask where they would like to see content deleted and often many people could not back up their claims.
Likewise, if you insist that certification of, say, an engine, would result in 80% overhead work/cost, surely you could elaborate where these come from and how to mitigate the cost? The basic certification specs are on the EASA website and the fees are public, too.
Alexis: You don’t understand. If a technology is superior, it should be used. But it isn’t automatically superior, just because it is newer.
Another misconception is that automation would reduce complexity. It doesn’t.
Diesels are fine, but there are still some “minor” problems that are quite showstoppers
a) COST to buy/maintain/overhaul – still much more than the alternatives
b) WEIGHT – (and power/weight) esp. Austro –
c) NOT AVAILABLE for interesting (200+ hp) power classes
Rotax is doing fine (not a diesel, but in most aspects on the “new” side of the divide), but not a solution if one needs more power …
The main problem is the size of the market – not enough money to develop a proper modern aircraft engine …
mh wrote:
Alexis: You don’t understand. If a technology is superior, it should be used. But it isn’t automatically superior, just because it is newer.
You don’t need to explain that one. Of course. But if you improve the existing technology … it will be, well, NEW ;-)
No, changed requirements might call for older solutions. Newer is not always better as better is not always newer.
