Silvaire wrote:
If you’re at the level of building a pressurized homebuilt you need to develop resources to support its development. That’s life.
These things were never owner built as no homebuilder (bar very few) has the resources required to do that. Therefore one either takes what the company supplies one with and installs avionics and upholstery or one chooses a different plane and the manufacturer ceases to exist. As in this case.
I really don’t understand what all this fuss is about just because it’s Lancair which lost its windscreen. (Certified) Jets/Turboprops lost cabin pressure at high altitude, windscreens, even complete cabin roofs…
It depends on the class and mission of the aircraft that determines what margin you have if something doesn’t go as planned. There are inspectors checking every stage of the build, ensuring everything is constructed according to the manual.
That said, much can be done (wrong) in the maintenance of the small certified GA as well. Everyone of us can tell a story can’t we?
I’m not denying, that certified aircraft are safer than uncertified, but we are far from tired of life, just because we are flying uncertified.
europaxs wrote:
I really don’t understand what all this fuss is about
Maybe it’s just to amuse us 
europaxs wrote:
I’m not denying, that certified aircraft are safer than uncertified, but we are far from tired of life, just because we are flying uncertified.
You really can not compare your pretty Europa (which I myself would love to try out one day) with that Epic we are talking about here. The latter is an extremely complex aircraft to be operated on the very border of safe margins and with vital systems known to be poorly designed. Which is not intended as a blame to the designers, I just repeat myself by saying that in order to get something that complex right, a large team of experienced people and lots of time and money are required.
what_next wrote:
I see this rather personal – you either value your life and that of your family/friends highly or you don’t.
Some value living instead of just existing. The quality of life means more to many people, than absence of danger and risk. Besides, the largest danger, by far, that threatens our entire existence is that there are way too many of us. We will soon be too many for our tiny little globe. It cannot support us with food, fresh water or oxygen. Our society (western society) is still based on safety, risk aversion and long lives as three high valued ethical concepts, but how long is that going to last when it’s leading us directly into a disaster of epic proportions like the human race has never seen?
I think most private pilots value living and a bit of risk, or they would be collecting stamps instead. You can value living and quality of life, and still not be (overly) afraid of dying. There is no conflict in that, and it has nothing to do with living with a death wish.
achimha wrote:
I agree with @what_next, this type of airplane should not be built under the experimental provisions. The consequences of component failure are too severe.
I fully agree. This kind of airplane is simply too complex and too much can go wrong to have it evade certification rules by making it “home built”, which in any case it is not. In the end, much of the “experimental” scene is a scam in the regard that the only reason that it is done like this is to avoid certification.
So the Evolutions were not built in anyone´s garage as the “homebuilt” label would suggest but in the factory where the owners went and built them with assistence from the factory. In the end, while this gives the owners a very different insight into what they are buying and quite some choices buyers of certified airplanes don´t have, it still is not what a experimental label usually warrants.
None of the serial built experimental kit planes are really what experimentals are all about, namely to build something unique and then fly it as experimental. ALL of the kit planes are done mostly out of one simple reason: Certification can not be achieved without bancrupting the manufacturer and without sending prices outside the reach of most people who go for them.
In the case of the Evolution, it would never have flown with a single owner if certification would have been attempted. But a plane of this complexity needs to be built by a factory, by workmen and engineers who know what they are doing and it needs to have proper factory support.
So the ideal solution for the Evo would be if someone buys out the factory witout the obligations it may have, just the parts and the model and sets up a proper manufacturing line for the Evo and then goes about certifying it. It is a great plane but it needs a proper framework in which to be operated in.
Obviously this will not happen unless certification rules for light aviation are finally brought towards something a normal company can achieve. Or maybe the Evolution has to emigrate to Europe, where apparently certification is more likely? Looking at the last few years, more certified GA has developed here then in the US.
Clearly, a LOT of money is needed for that and the result will likely be an airplane in the cost range of the TBM.
Peter wrote:
So why did they sell only 80 kits?Maybe 80 is the market? I don’t know.
These are very expensive aircraft and more to the point I think in the real world each of them takes a substantial effort to (build and) develop into practical transport. There’s nothing wrong with that in principle, obviously people can spend their time, money & risk budgets however they like, but I’m surprised the mainly-US market was as large as 80 planes. A guy local to me built a turbine Legend, a similar scope of project, not this one but very much alike His original idea was that a turbine would be simpler to own than the string of recip. war birds he’d owned before. The exact opposite ended up being the case and eventually he moved on. Making a custom aircraft perform as wanted is a huge task, much more so for a super-complex homebuilt, and I don’t think extensive factory support makes that go away. Most potential customers know that, the BD-5 episode with its lessons learned was 40 years ago, and customers are not usually as dizzy as portrayed in the vendor’s PR material 
LeSving wrote:
What are certified GA planes “all about”? a money scam for authorities and maintenance organisations?
Certified light GA aircraft are not either of those things in the US, so your objection has nothing to with certification per se, what you’re describing is opportunist government. In maintaining my certified planes I believe I’ve spent exactly nothing with authorities and maintenance organisations.
Silvaire wrote:
His original idea was that a turbine would be simpler to own than the string of recip. war birds he’d owned before. The exact opposite ended up being the case and eventually he moved on.
How much of that is caused by turbines mostly having more complex secondary systems like pressurization and so on. To be sure, part of it is that having a non-pressurized turboprop is kind of pointless, but on the other hand I would think that a very simple turboprop (no pressurization, constant section metal wings, simple landing gear, non-integrated avionics?) would be harder but not amazingly harder than a comparable piston. The secondary stuff (pressurization, etc) seems like where you can get bogged down spending a lot of time with relatively little performance gain.
I think you’re correct, it was not the turbine engine in isolation but the overall complexity of the turbine Legend that caused the long, long development process for the local guy I knew. It was fun to watch fly though, boy did it go!
Peter,
I have flown the Lanvair 4 once and it is in my opinion an airplane which as it is should never be allowed to fly. It violates basic control principles in as so far that for take off you can not even set full power and expect to stay on the runway, like the Evolution too btw. But it is essentially very close to the Columbia, basically the Columbia was developed from it. They obviously addressed the shortcomings of the 4 and they kept the gear nicely locked down and got reasonable with their engine choices, but otherwise they are quite similar.
The Columbia failed and continues failing as it was up against the great marketing of Cirrus and their shute. In the end, many people interested in the Columbia went for Cirrus because either they or their wifes said they want the shute and never mind the much superior aerodynamics and performance. These kind of things happen all the time and very often the much superior airframe will loose out to great marketing of the competition. Ask Saab how they feel about the success of the Dash 8… I know how I feel about that one
True, in some cases, and the Evolution is one of them, the concern why a design would stay experimental as opposed to certified had to do with them simply not be certifyable in the incarnation they exist. Which, imho makes them dangerous and not suitable as a product for normal pilots. The Evolution saga proves that. I would think that all the accidents which happened here with the exception of the blasted windshield were pilot error and pilots simply being incapable of flying the airplane as it should be, in maybe one case augmented by a home made electrical system which failed. Again, such work does not belong into a plane like this in the first place, but if the pilot was not capable of landing this airplane without instruments in broad VMC then he was not suitable to fly it. Yet, this and other such events now prompt the shut down of the company because the insurances take a different look at personal risk management than Silvaire suggests the average American does. Well maybe better so. If a plane is inherently dangerous it should not fly, regardless in what cathegory. On the other hand, I am sure that the Evolution could have been made into a safer airplane if there had been the requirement to do so.
In that I do agree with what_next. To use a plane like this to transport family and friends is irresponsible unless it fulfills the requirements all other planes need to fulfil to be deemed safe. Some criteria for such planes may be outdated but the gist of it is not. However, the way certification today works and what has to be demonstrated and amassed in data is just no longer feasible for normal manufacturers .
So imho the certification base has to change so it becomes affordable and attractive again. Only like that we can expect that the evasion of safety standards by going the experimental route is finally going to die out. I am quite sure that many kit makers today would make great airplane companies if they were given the possibility. That would however mean that airplanes need to be produced in numbers and at prices again which allow a decent price tag, not the fanatsy prices charged today.
