Silvaire wrote:
Starting isn’t problem either for me – carbureted Lycomings start right up, hot or cold.
The carbureted ones will, yes. I never had a problem starting the O360 hot or cold, even though cold it needs a LOT of fuel to start and that has lead to carburetor fires in the past. I usually get it to start on the first try now I know it, in the beginning it took up to 3 tries until I got the hang of it.
Injected is a totally different story however. They usually start well enough cold, but I’ve seen more than one M20J or Seneca or Arrow turn and turn and turn, burn their starter motors e.t.c. trying to start the IO360 when it is hot. Whole articles have been written on the technique to get them running. I remember the Senecas. We used to give those engines at least 1 hour cooling time before we tried to restart them. And on take off, practically every time you got them into overboost before catching the throttle to have the lights go out. No wonder these things need new cylinders early.
What GA needs are bullet proof engines which run with one engine master switch and a throttle, monitors its own limits and acts accordingly. In short, that is what diesels do today. With technology like that, even GA planes could get auto throttle and fully functional autopilots like in an Airbus.
In jets and turboprops, this has happened a long time ago. Try starting an A320, it’s just 3 steps: APU Bleed on, Start selector to Start and Engine Master On. If I remember the Caravelle, it was science: Bleed on, starter hold, wait for N2 to reach 20%, open fuel, wait for light up, watch the temps, check for hot starts, e.t.c. until you got it settled. It was fun for a while but got old eventually.
Or the Saab 2000 with it’s FADEC. No prop control, all you did is set the % power you wanted (called power units) and that was it. Easy as hell to use. and nobody will ruin an engine by firewalling it.
Peter wrote:
You will never make money by telling him that he is stupid and that your great new widget will prevent him exercising his stupidity.
Car salesmen obviously manages to do exactly that 
If fiddling with controls is important, sports cars typically have a F-1 style gear changer system in addition to the usual automatic gear box. There is an “off” button on the traction control and the automatic road holding stuff, a “sport” mode in addition to “normal” and “eco”. With FADEC all kinds of “fiddling” devices can be put in, but the engine is still FADEC. There is no reason why a single lever control can not be fitted with an additional “manual” control of RPM for “manual” operation for instance (but it would be rather stupid in most cases, except aerobatics and short field).
Stephan_Schwab wrote:
My climb is full power, full rich. My climb is with power pulled back a bit to keep speed around 150 kts. Should I worry?
Probably a typo, and you meant to write “my cruise is with power pulled back a bit”? Because on a ROP climb, you want to leave the power lever full forward to get the extra fuel to keep your engine cool enough (cf. this thread). Also, at 150 kts there wouldn’t be much of a climb rate.
Then I don’t see what would be wrong with this practice or why you would get shorter engine life, though I would recommend 380F as a temperature limit and not 400. And as I commented on another thread, in my humble opinion your “regular TIT limits” are chosen too high as well.
One of the most important thing FADEC does is to prevent the engine from running “off spec” and prevent abuse.
True.
The result of this is increased reliability and longer engine life.
That is a tricky one
In marketing you always want to flatter the customer. You will never make money by telling him that he is stupid and that your great new widget will prevent him exercising his stupidity.
And most pilots think they are really great
In reality, it is not difficult for an intelligent pilot to avoid buggering up the engine.
Mine is turbo-normalized. I take off and climb straight to FL200 for cruise and in many cases descend after about 2.5 hrs from FL200 to almost sealevel in more or less one go. My CHT stays well below 400 and my EGT and TIT stay within regular limits. My climb is full power, full rich. My climb is with power pulled back a bit to keep speed around 150 kts. Should I worry?
Only that you have a turbocharged engine, which simply won’t last as long – simply because it is making a lot more power for a lot longer.
Peter wrote:
But most of them eventually realise that actually not much would be gained by stuff like FADEC
One of the most important thing FADEC does is to prevent the engine from running “off spec” and prevent abuse. The result of this is increased reliability and longer engine life. The other thing is easier operation. All these three things are very much desirable for a pilot, but very undesirable for a producer that makes money, not by selling new engines, but by selling parts to old engines. The Evolution is sold with the YeC2 (or whatever the designation was), and if the sales numbers of new certified aircraft would increase, so would the incentive to sell them with FADEC.
Peter wrote:
There is a lot of “technology” people here on EuroGA. The GA business selects those types quite strongly. See this old thread for example. And these people strongly wish that they didn’t have to fly the decrepit technology we are handed down.
I am a technology person, no quotation marks required, and the technology development programs I’ve worked on over the last 15 or so years, funded between $25M and $1B (yes, that is a B) are very much along the same lines as replacing 50-100 year old aircraft engine technology with newer technology. Its made me appreciate the sort of thing that’s being replaced, and understand why it takes so much money to replace and how, sometimes, it’s not the right way to go. At least not without a very realistic approach if you want to avoid failure. It’s quite easy to waste $100M.
In contrast, the occasional issues with Lycoming cam failure (I know one guy who’s had it personally), setting mixture for cruise, setting rpm etc are just non issues
I think that’s really the root of the lack of demand for diesels – where other special circumstances don’t exist. The Market just doesn’t see it as worth the hassle.
Same with electronic ignition. We had a thread on that here too. Lycoming quite obviously can’t be bothered to develop the product. They know their market…
There is a lot of “technology” people here on EuroGA. The GA business selects those types quite strongly. See this old thread for example. And these people strongly wish that they didn’t have to fly the decrepit technology we are handed down.
But most of them eventually realise that actually not much would be gained by stuff like FADEC (no improvement over an engine manually adjusted to peak EGT / LOP in cruise) etc etc.
I think the Lyco camshaft issues are far bigger in Europe than in the USA. Here, we have a huge % of GA flying almost no hours at all. The other day I went to a pilot meet-up. I think nearly everyone there was struggling to do the 12hrs every 2 years.
German cars were unreliable although otherwise quite practical and maintainable through the 80s. Now I think they are adequately reliable on a daily basis (although not world beating in that respect) but not not very maintainable. I have no interest in them, the Japanese have always made a better throw away product and that’s what the car market has moved to.
Late model ‘modern’ BMW motorcycles are actually less reliable in normal service than they were. On my last trip my 1990 BMW provided its normal reliable service with roughly 160,000 km of European touring on the clock. It’s never failed to get me home from all over Europe, ever. It was close once ten years ago, stuck in one gear, but I made it back to base. It’s very much like an aircraft, not perfect but easily maintainable, and I’ll probably be riding it indefinitely. Meanwhile, two of my partners had failures on late model BMWs: a throttle position sensor failed on a 2012 model, but didn’t set any error codes so despite being hauled to the local dealer by truck, it ended up being shipped from Corsica to Germany for repair. The other bike, a 2016 model, made progressively more tappet rattle over the tour until it was very loud… but did make it back to base. The BMW factory affiliated rental agent didn’t even come to listen to it, he just said “OK, I understand, it’s the fifth one so far”. A friend who is, shall we say, well placed to know what’s going on was asked if this is a common problem. He said “it might be” with a well practiced blank expression. BMW makes about 100,000 motorcycles a year and I think that’s not enough volume to allow high tech to be developed for a high level of day to day reliability, especially over a long time in service. Aircraft volumes are miniscule is comparison.
In contrast, the occasional issues with Lycoming cam failure (I know one guy who’s had it personally), setting mixture for cruise, setting rpm etc are just non issues. I like operating a machine, it’s fun and it allows me to avoid ownership hassles. Starting isn’t problem either for me – carbureted Lycomings start right up, hot or cold.
@Silvaire
I sympathize with a lot what you say about motorcycles and planes that are easy to maintain, but your facts about cars are clearly wrong. Probably it’s more a feeling you have.
If you were in that business you’d be aware that one of the problems the German Car industry faces is that passengers got constantly more reliable and have a longer lifespan tha in the 60’s. While the average car in Germany was 6.8 years old in 2000 the average German car is 9 years old now, 16 years later. But that’s not the end of the lifecycle of these cars, most are sold abroad later and they actually get very old: VWs 26 years, BMWs, Audis and Mercs about 24 years,
I also did not know I am ordered to buy a new car ;-)
