For a moment, lets forget that the Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet is arguably the most technically advanced personal light aircraft weve ever flown. Or that Cirrus likely will achieve its goal of making it a safe step-up jet for qualified SR22 piston pilots. Moreover, its cabin and cockpit dwelling is perhaps the most satisfying weve experienced. But in our view, the most impressive thing about the Part 23-certified SF50 is that it even exists to talk about.
It all started with a bathtub. In the late 1920s, the cost to rent the airplanes available was a dollar a minute-thats over $14 in current dollars. The over 100-HP radial engines necessary to power the boxkite biplanes werent cheap to run. Naturally, there were a lot of people trying to come up with an airplane that would be more affordable for the many who lusted to fly.
At some point you could be faced with flying off a new engine or cylinders. The exact procedures for attempting this sit-up-straight-in-the-seat chore might depend on the engine, the type of cylinders and what the manufacturer recommends. Still, launching for the first time with any new engine must include a solid plan for ground running, power and propeller settings, how far you’ll venture from the runway, how high you’ll fly and how long you’ll conduct the shakedown run.
While I was recently shopping at BestBuy for a wireless music speaker, a salesperson who arbitrarily remarked that Bose was the best got me thinking about pilots shopping for premium aviation headsets, a market dominated by Bose and also Lightspeed for as long as I can remember. While Bose may be the most recognizable name in both the consumer audio and aviation headset markets, don’t forget that Lightspeed Aviation was a major force in shifting the market from passive to active noise cancelling headsets in the early 1990s.
There are a couple of global things we can say about all three devices we tested. All have excellent battery life, performing fine on a three hour flight, but you’ll want to plug them in to ships power for best performance. Direct connections to 12V systems run around $50 and 24V systems are over $100 (using a 24V-to-120V inverter is a cheaper solution). All systems update automatically from the internet. These things all weigh between two and three pounds, which gets heavy in your hand.
More than 20 years ago, Lycoming flirted with John Deere to develop a heavy fuel rotary and it did again with Detroit Diesel more recently. Both projects were dropped. Continental is no stranger to technological risk. Remember the Voyager engine? If you think the Voyager wasnt innovative, consider this: It was water-cooled, had high turbulence combustion chambers and a compression ratio of 11.4 to 1. In the 300-cubic-inch version, it demonstrated a BSFC of .345, which is better than the diesel technology Continental has acquired from SMA.
Maintenance reliability plays into the marketing attraction, too. Theoretically, with the engines built-in protective algorithms against over-temping and over-revving, the engine wont be subjected to abuse by a ham-fisted pilot. Further, the ECUs are sucking up and storing a lot of data, transmitting some directly to the cockpit for the pilots real time analysis and storing a lot more for use by techs to diagnose maintenance issues, using a code-type system similar to modern cars.
Aviation is, no surprise, uniquely vulnerable to the decline of cheap oil reserves for several reasons. One is that as transportation goes, its energy intensive. It takes a lot more BTUs to move a Cirrus at 200 knots than a Smart Car at 60 MPH. Second, and relating to a critical megatrend Huber and Mills describe, world economies are tilting rapidly toward the purest form of energy-electricity. Just look around. Hybrid gasoline cars are making inroads.
An ancient axiom of aviation is that a company that sets out to design a brand new airframe and wrap it around a brand new engine design had better have a vast pool of money, expertise and patience or an excellent team of bankruptcy attorneys. The aircraft manufacturing world is littered with the remains of companies and concepts that simply could not get through the astronomical combination of variables and issues that must be identified and subsequently solved when absolutely everything is new. With the financial backing of an automotive giant, Honda Aircraft pulled it off, although it took nearly 20 years.
The oil system on most light aircraft engines is simple and mostly effective. Most systems are of a wet sump, low-pressure design. Typically, the oil reservoir (or sump) is located within or attached to the lower part of the crankcase and oil is continuously returned by gravity to the sump after the oil has done its job of lubricating and cooling.
As a follow-on product to the STCd G5 electronic attitude indicator, Garmins G5 electronic directional indicator is taking sizable criticism because the instrument doesnt interface with autopilots. While Garmin says this is a temporary limitation, its easy to understand the backlash. After all, the G5 EHSI is intended to replace mechanical, vacuum-driven DGs-many of which work with the heading channel on a variety of existing autopilots. But looking to the future-as in the coming months-there’s a bigger story here.
These days, there is no shortage of aircraft marketed as backwoods utility machines. The short list includes Maule, CubCrafters, Aviat and American Champion. But in the world of working airplanes, Cessnas long-discontinued 185 is often regarded as one of the most capable. You don’t have to spend much time around a 185 to understand its reputation as the airborne version of a four-wheel-drive, three-quarter-ton pickup truck, easily able to haul heavy loads into and out of short, unimproved strips.
