Time to say goodbye to aviation?

Ibra wrote:

I think for him it was the useful load/space when going to places for more than 1 day and the need for a long tarmac (or very very good grass) but yes for gliding and cheap touring it was very fine

Thanks for commenting, that makes sense. The wingspan of the Stemme is just far from practicable in daily use. The luggage room of the Stemme is really small, the Dimona or Grob for example have lots more space, but it is still poor compared to an avarage SEP. Nonetheless, flying a TMG feels way more comfortable overhead mountainous terrain or water, thanks to its far better glide ratio. In case of engine failure, you’ll have lots of more possibilities.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

And here, unfortunately, I see a massive degradation in driving skills and will to drive reasonably in the recent years. Part of that comes from the fact that with the mix of cultures in our country we see more crashes that were and are commonplace elsewhere as the driving styles are imported with the people.

Is it that bad? Compared to (southern) Italy or much worse: Ukraine, Russia or even Georgia, driving in Switzerland is very safe. I’ve been driving in Georgia for one week in january 2017 and never experienced so much “near miss” situations in my entire life before. Compared with driving in Georgia, I would say flying a SEP is way safer. It depends on driving culture, which in our countries, is quite good.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

I suppose all we can do is to be careful and migate risks by knowledge and currency.

Agree. I’m quite young yet (27), so perhaps its also my second nature not to see too much risks, but also chances. I do believe that we shouldn’t display all tragic events to our personal lives, that would make us only misrable and isn’t realistic either. One of my nearest pilotfriends almost died this year due to a plane crash, caused by technical error. It did made me (re)think about the risks and my personal flying, however I saw it as a review chance instead of getting scared. But the processing of bad events in life will be different from person to person, not only age.

Peter wrote:

Car engines driven really hard (rally cars etc) fall apart really fast. And they do fail.

I agree. My first non-hand-me-down car was a small compact/city car, from a renowned German brand. Except I was using it to “commute” on week-ends 350km each way, on highways up and down hills. That car would barely keep close to the maximum highway speed limit (no, I don’t mean in Germany) on flat ground, so through the hills was indeed spending quite some time at full throttle.

The result? Several failures in two years. Some total loss of power on the highway, where I used my inertia to get to shoulders of the road. Like the failure of some belt. Some more like “partial loss of power”, like a hole in a hose.

Now that I think of it, that engine (Mercedes OM668) is the basis of the Thielert Centurion 1.7 and is the predecessor of the one (OM640) that the Austro Engine AE300 and the Thielert Centurion 2.0 are derived from.

Maybe we all should get rid of the ancient Conti/Lyco and switch to experimental, with some nice BMW/Mercedes/Porsche engines, twice as powerful and half the size.

I have a BMW M3 and a Z4, both engines could be a good candidate for an aircraft project.

Then maybe they’ll get the message. Don’t start with ‘its not their fault, FAA and EASA take too much time to certify a new engine’ … they are all the same people.

Porsche failed once, technically and as a business, doubt they’ll try again. Their aero engine was a boat anchor.

The issue with aircraft is that the efficiency of the system depends greatly on weight, and a lot of things about the engine that might be important in a less weight sensitive application supported on ball bearings (cars are generally getting heavier not lighter), are secondary in a aircraft application supported by wings. That is not to say that current aircraft engines can’t be improved, they can, but every improvement in aircraft engines needs to be weighed on a scale first, and in every other way later. The next most important factor is field maintainability over lifetimes measured in decades.

I personally love my O-320 and respect the great reliability record the engine type has accrued. The IO-360 in a Mooney is not far behind on that basis.

Re Stemme motor gliders, I knew somebody who had one – it was a huge maintenance hog. According to him it would be great for somebody who wanted to spend a great deal of money on reaching the pinnacle of performance in their sport… purely as an expensive toy and without any requirement for financial accountability. He now has a Pipistrel bought with just a few hundred hours TT for under $50K, apparently a much better solution for his needs.

Maybe we all should get rid of the ancient Conti/Lyco and switch to experimental, with some nice BMW/Mercedes/Porsche engines, twice as powerful and half the size.

For some people, the experimental/homebuilt route has been liberating, while for others it has been a millstone around their neck, with massive downtime due to poor quality components / poor design / general unreliability, inability to do DIY maintenance (without that, forget about the homebuilt route), the need for permits to legally fly internationally (many previous threads in the Non Certified section), dodgy handling especially at low speeds scaring the hell out of the pilot…

To ‘modernise’ the piston aero engine in a way that most of us would really appreciate (stop them eating oil and requiring fresh oil every 50 hours) the fundamental change required is for them to become liquid-cooled.

The problem is, where size and weight are absolutely critical, no-one has really made this work. It’s fine with very large engines (Merlin etc) because the cooling system becomes a lower proportion of the overall weight, but on a little four or six cylinder flat engine the liquid cooling system just weighs far too much and (in a small aeroplane) takes up too much space.

Silvaire wrote:

Re Stemme motor gliders, I knew somebody who had one – it was a huge maintenance hog. According to him it would be great for somebody who wanted to spend a great deal of money on reaching the pinnacle of performance in their sport… purely as an expensive toy and without any requirement for financial accountability.

Good to know. The Stemme is – more or less – a “dream machine” among glider pilots. I’ve flown Falke, Grob and Diamond TMGs so far. The Falke is great for training: Simple, cheap and robust, but too slow, ugly and old for my taste. The Grob and Dimona are both good and more advanced airplanes, which can compete with 2-seater SEP airplanes. Nonetheless, I would love to try a S10 or S12 someday, plus the Valentin Taifun.

For benchmarking, here is something recently published (sort of serious study), the numbers turns out to be inline with some of my emprical observations:

https://chessintheair.com/the-risk-of-dying-doing-what-we-love

Frans wrote:

I would love to try a S10 or S12 someday, plus the Valentin Taifun.

I once flew a Valentin Taifun. The takeoff and climb performance was so bad it was alarming. I don’t know if they are all like this, but the one I flew was. Also the undercarriage retraction was a complicated and slow arrangement.