91UL / UL91 / 96UL / UL96 / UL98 etc (merged thread)

I don’t believe it until I see it. If you could import a US Experimental and fly it IFR in Europe, it would be utterly incredible.

VFR, yes.

But you are still a non-ICAO-CofA aircraft so while you can fly all over the world, you still need, theoretically, a permit from each country overflown or visited. There are some automatic concessions but very very few non-CofA aircraft fly internationally, even within Europe.

Importing a pre-built US Experimental may cause lots of problems for you, if you are able to do it at all. In Norway it is not possible unless the builder has fully documented the building process and each stage is signed by a certified mechanic. I think most European countries have this requirement. In the US there is no requirement for such documentation. Building it yourself is another matter altogether.

Flying experimental aircraft in Europe is governed by ECAC recommendation INT.S/11-1. The countries with full and free movement is all the Nordic countries, France, Germany, UK, Italy, The Netherlands and probably a few more. Some you need to apply for specifically, most of the prior eastern countries I think.

IFR, I don’t know, I don’t fly IFR. In Norway it is fully possible though after a long “break” since 2008 when it wasn’t.

Why do you have to trash a large piece of GA in order to fly your €100k machine?

Well, I don’t have a €100k machine. What I said was it was obtainable while a new Cirrus isn’t. My point was that at 100k (maybe even well below) you will in fact get a similar machine to a Cirrus, better handling even, but with much more advanced ignition and fuel system, still with a good old Lycoming 540 in the nose. This is very real, this is what is happening in the US. There are more new experimentals being registered than certified.

That’s wholly subjective. There is a continuous spectrum of people and resources. You have €100k. The next person has €200k. The next one has €300k. And so on. There is no cutoff. At each price increment is a mission capability increment.

Now you are being difficult. A cirrus and a RV-10 are comparable airplanes. Both are 4 seater fast cruisers that can be loaded with all kinds of fancy equipment. One cost 100k, the other cost 500k (roughfly speaking). Clearly the 100k airplane is obtainable by a hole lot more people than the 500k one. Therefore experimental aviation simply makes aviation available. The RV-10 is the largest and most expensive RV, but I chose that as an example because it is comparable to the top of the line certified piston powered aircraft, the Cirrus. Besides, many ultralights cost 100k these days. People don’t seem to think twice purchasing those.

There are others with similar performance to popular certified aircrafts. The two seater RVs can’t really be compared with any certified aircraft though.

Yeah, but some 99% of US pilots have no need to leave the USA. So they can fly non-CofA aircraft. And, probably, they can fly an RV to Mexico and nobody will care anyway. The USA also doesn’t care much for ICAO – no need to, for these internal flights. Also RVs can fly IFR in the USA (again, non-ICAO) which dramatically improves their utility value.

Experimentals from the US or any other place can fly IFR as much as they want in Norway. ECAC countries can do it with no prior permission. What the situation is in other countries regarding IFR, I don’t know. I don’t fly IFR so I have never bothered finding out. I believe Sweden also is OK with IFR though, but I’m not sure. Regulation for experimentals are handled by each nation, not by EASA, so it should (in theory at least) be much easier to try to influence the authorities to allow IFR if it’s not allowed.

How many active piston GA aircraft do you have in Norway?
I don’t know, 1000 maybe?

Re the views of European youth on “ignorant and rich old men”… One hopes those youth haven’t been so brainwashed that they’ll be unable to learn with age.

A few hours ago I flew commercial half way around the world at some number of seat mpg. The arithmetic says my typical annual vacation-related airline travel uses the same amount of fuel as 100 hrs/year in my thirstier plane. Don’t let the government funded environmentalists find out or they’ll make airline travel socially unacceptable too Actually I don’t think they will, because they like mass transit and their ideas aren’t greatly guided by reality, more by the desire for conformity and the pursuit of power in collaboration with their opportunist politician friends.

My (certified) planes cost $35K and $22K to buy, not 100K of almost any currency. They will do a pretty good job indefinitely, if that’s what I choose, and burn just about any kind of gasoline as long as it doesn’t have too much alcohol in it. One of the reasons I selected them was because they were cheaper to buy than their FAA Experimental Amateur Built counterparts. That said, there are a whole lot of very nicely built RVs out there, the RV14 has enough room for two giants and their bags, and they outperform just about anything certified (including my planes) while being simpler in construction and simpler to maintain. They are designed with an exceedingly rational philosophy and little regard for fashion, and they’ve been redesigned iteratively over 40 years. As a result they end up being light without much compromise from lightness. It takes a while to get things right, and a solid commercial base to do it over the whole period. That’ll be my RV proselytizing for the day.

LeSving

Young people are not attracted to tales of flying Cirruses across Europe, tales that includes having to use thousands of € for lead infested fuel. First, a Cirrus is totally unobtainable for them, and second, the environmental ignorance discusses them.

Not really what I experience. They are very well interested in these tales but realize fast that for most of them it is out of their budget. In Friedrichshafen, I noticed a lot of younger people looking at things like the Eclipse, Panthera, Cirrus and Columbia, who wouldn’t. They don’t call it “pilot porn” for nothing, desirable, obtainable for some, but not for the big mass. So lots of them simply become renters at their clubs and sooner or later throw the towel because they never get to fly those big trips they read about.

What I have been trying to do in the last years is to pick such people out of their frustration and show them that owning airplanes does NOT exclusively mean to buy new airplanes but that there are lots of entry level airplanes available they can buy and have a lot of fun with. And that the cost of owning and operating these planes are not exorbitant but pretty much affordable by a good lot of them.

How many of us have started out buying a new Lexus or Mercedes when we got our first cars? Not many. Yet a 200k mile pre-owned car will do most of what the shiny new one can. I could never and will never afford myself a new car as with second hand I can always buy one or two classes higher and have what I actually want. So I drive my 3rd car only (at 51) and all of them were 3rd or 4th hand.

The very same goes for airplanes. You don’t need a 500k Cirrus to fly at 150 kts when there are pre-owned Bonanzas, Mooneys and TB20’s to do the same for maybe 100k. Or, at the very entry level, you can get a 140-150 kt economic cruiser with a vintage M20C/E/F or a 120 kt maschine like a Cheetah for 20-40k and still have a very capable traveller. Quite a few of the people I introduced to ownership have gone this route. And if there are planes which can use Mogas (such as the Cheetah can and many others) so much the better. Quite a few are IFR capable, which in my view is a must in Europe. I recently talked to a guy who flew his M20C to Oskosh and back, not much too it but a bit of planning and the will to do it. If you are interested, here is his blog

No, it is dead wrong to point fingers at those who can and more importantly WILL afford a brand new plane, but it is equally wrong for some of those people to ignore the concerns of those who need to watch every penny in this undertaking and therefore for whom the pricing of fuel is of paramount importance. In the end, everyone profits from cheaper fuels, not only the “poor” spamcan drivers at the lower edge of GA.

Therefore it is totally contraproductive to divide the scene between the “rich” who can buy new Cirruses and those who buy 40 year old airplanes. First of all, those who buy the shiny new toys provide for the second hand market of tomorrow. Secondly, we are all in the same boat eventually, the same GA, the same problems, only that some to this point don’t care much about certain issues that we do care about out of sheer survival.

It is however interesting to see that the manufacturers seem to be much more aware of this than some of the posters here would like us to believe. Pipistrel went and changed the engine on the Panthera due to the fact that they absolutely want Mogas compatibility. Cirrus, so I am told, are looking intensively how to address that problem too, they are painfully aware that their market dominance is not “God given” and they are one of the most innovative companies to emerge in the last few decades too. Cessna is re-designing the 182 to work with Diesel, I reckon as a testbed rather to see how this will work. Others will follow. I heard from the Mooney homecoming last week that the attendance there made a rather clear case for them to go into the direction of economy which made them what they were prior to giving up on that, suggestions reach from Diesel powered to a renewed entry model with UL91 or better Mogas capable engines. I don’t think you will find ANY plane maker today who would not immediately go for a powerplant which addresses the fuel problems if they were readily available.

But the real addressees should be the engine industry. In the end, neither Cirrus nor Cessna nor anyone else can offer planes if the engines are not there. And I simply do not believe that in this day and age they are not capable of building engines which can produce the same amount of power at much lower fuel flow and with as normal as possible fuel grades available. Avgas as well as UL91 are boutique fuels, they are not mass produced and therefore expensive. The mass produced fuels are Jet A1 and automotive fuels, so that is what they sould really focus on. That goes especcially for Lycoming and TCM, otherwise they eventually will suffer the same fate as the Detroit Auto Industry did when the Japanese came up with all the economy cars in the 70ties. Continental seems to move towards Diesel and are actually actively looking at buying up the existing designs, I don’t think they do that to shut them down but rather to make them finally a common place thing.

Yes, GA has to change, it has to become more mainstream again to survive. But this requires ALL of it, not just parts. And it requires massive cost reduction on all fronts, with fuel being the most important one, followed by maintenance and avionic.

Peter,

totally spot on with post #85.

Let’s wait for the first four hour trip in that RV10, maybe with a few (non-flying) passengers…

Go to the engine industry then. Knock at their door.
They will tell you that there is no engineering capacity left at TCM….
Some smaller companies will do some development, but they have to make money with it or they will get bust. There is not enough money in the market. How many new single engine piston GA planes are sold a year? Around 800. All Cirruses, LSAs everything (Including 106 C172. 2013 data). In 1965 1,436 C172F were built.
There is no volume in the market.
I was at Aero and I had a look at Panthera and spoke to one of the developers.
They should go for a diesel, but they come from microlight corner where many bring their fuel from the petrol station. I have landed at many airports with no AVGAS, No UL91, no MOGAS and no way to get fuel in. Jet A1 rules.

Young people are less interested in flying, because it means hard work to learn something. The main thing in our societies is to consume. Look into your smartphone or computer and let the virtual world take over. My daughter is 13, but I have many friend with kids between 12 and 20. one 18 year old got an almost new car and he is scared to drive. I was taking the carburettor apart from my car with 18 and kids nowadays call the RAC when the battery is flat.
I worked every weekend to finance my flying when I was 16.