zuutroy wrote:
I don’t think anyone is getting 160 kts on less than 10 gph!
Actually, 18 mpg at 160 KTAS is slightly more than 10 gph!
Sure the economic collapse played a part, but the EU-money boom before that was also transient. Spain never had much money floating around…
Did Spain have any significant GA before the EU-money boom? Maybe not.
If you live in Spain and don’t need to fly internationally or need four seats, a UL simply makes one hell of a lot more sense than anything bigger.
That’s true for any country. That is how GA can collapse.
Especially in the UK where you can fly without a medical (under 2000kg etc) and in France where you can fly UL without a medical. In the UK, there is much value going abroad, but in France, much less, plus the ELP issue. Italy… probably similar to France, same ELP issue, although they do pop over to Croatia quite a lot.
It’s the collapse of their infrastructure.
Collapse of infrastructure? Italy has lots of airfields. Even in metro areas there are fantastic GA fields. Turino Airitalia, Milano Bresso, Venice Lido etc… countless grass fields everywhere.
Maybe it was EASA moving light aircraft into part-m and italian authority being restrictive about it?
Silvaire wrote:
Arguably the best time to be engaged in any activity is when it has yet to be, or is no longer, of interest to the mainstream.
If and only if one could enjoy this activity alone or in a small group of enthusiasts and do not have to rely on any specific public infrastructure to do it.
Classic cars have the advantage that they can use the same road infrastructure as modern cars. So you can easily be “anti cyclic” with your involvement. Nobody will tell you “cars from the 60ies are no longer a thing so we can tear down all the roads that were used by 60ies cars”.
Unfortunately GA is a different animal – at least in all places where it is not an option to just have your personal strip in your backyard. If we do not have a critical mass of pilots using the required infrastructure, there will be (actually there are) always discussions like “wouldn’t these 100ha of land close to the city fit the needs of even more people better, if we built a stadium, a mall or apartments on them?”
What I don’t understand why the discussion focusses so much on fuel prices.
Thanks to EASA regulations maintenance got so much cheaper and easier that you can readily neglect fuel prices. I would not have bought an airplane with all the circumstances and conditions we’ve had, say, 10 years earlier. We had a mandatory avionics check every year, that would have cost a 4000 Euro figure for my panel. That’s gone, and only one example.
This will have a huge impact on GA in the next 10 years. This has only begun. It’s the same “spirit” that you already have in the microlight scene, it’s just fly and enjoy and keep that thing in the air.
You could also say that higher fuel prices weight up a bit for that we don’t have to pay any property taxes or “use taxes” like on cars.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Actually, 18 mpg at 160 KTAS is slightly more than 10 gph!
That was my point…160 at 10 gph + is a more realistic figure.
zuutroy wrote:
160 at 10 gph + is a more realistic figure.
I seriously doubt that given the nature of most GA flights in Europe, many pilots will on many flights get even close to 160KTS at 10gph on average for the flight.
Is it only in aviation that people swap units so much to try to compete?
What is the “m” in mpg statute miles or nautical miles? (nearly all marketing for US aircraft is statute miles)
MPH instead of Knots?
US or imperial gallons, makes a lot of difference.
IAS v TAS. TAS always sounds so much better until you look at what altitude that was set at.
Why not talk about GS with a 50kt tailwind?
Then we have zero fuel weight MTOW, MTOM, Useful load (which appears to mean different things to different people)
No wonder the youth of today yawn and go and fly a ULM at 10 to 20litres an hour, costs about €70 an hour to fly in a club, 10 to 15hours with an instructor can get you a licence, less if you have the aptitude. Build, your own ULM if you fancy it, out of whatever material you like working with or if you have the money buy something much more modern, shape fitting seats, full glass interior, parachute,and quite capable of reaching the cruising speeds of many certified aircraft. And all without the regulatory hassle.
The similar argument goes for experimental, kit built, orphelins, or aircraft of collection. All these are much more interesting than most of the standard certified, overpriced, overregulated, inefficient aircraft on the market today.
If flying for the sheer enjoyment of flying is the way forward in the future, then certified GA has so much going against it.
If flying to go places on business or to take the family on holiday is the future, then certified GA will survive and thrive, but only if manufacturers and regulators get with the plot. There are a few signs of that eg diesel and mogas, lightening of maintenance regulations for the owner but will it be enough?
Yes; UK mpg is not same as US mpg. Got to be careful there 
But it is never in nm AFAIK.
gallois wrote:
Is it only in aviation that people swap units so much to try to compete?
Aviation is one of the few global thing where we still use medieval local units of measure instead of the global standards (which has only been around for about 70 years now and therefore nobody can tell if this new hype will ever make it to mainstream). This is creating at least half of the complexity.
The other half is coming from the fact that different goals require different units: If it is just about getting your backside into the air then l/h is a good metric – if it is about getting to somewhere it is quite irrelevant and l/100km is much more telling…
