Gorgeous sexy Eclipse
I have had my eye on one of these babies for a while. It makes the Citation Mustang look like a fat plain older sister!
The aircraft Eclipse had on display at Friedrichshafen really blew me away.
For a total cost of £850K you get a heck of a capable aircraft.
One of my hangar-sharing buddies has a deposit on one, expecting delivery Sept '08, needless to say he is buying mucho US dollars at present while the rate is excellent.
I am very envious - maybe he will persuade me to do the same once I have seen his and helped him polish it (if he'll let me near it!)
In fact I went on the eclipse site this week and had my own little fantasy specifying my own options (including colour scheme), that is how keen I am!
I agree with you IO540 about ironing out the bugs - there will no doubt be further mods which will be built-in to new production aircraft but need to be retrofitted to operational ones and this will mean downtime and be a genuine pain in the backside. As happens with all aircraft though these bugs will continue to be thrown up for the duration of its service life and I guess just get less frequent with time in service.
If I bought one I would need to do the mentor pilot training as I do not have a multi-engine or jet rating (as will my friend) but that could also be a lot of fun.
I would also like to know how people will end up using the aircraft in the air-taxi market in europe. Also I am watching to see whether any max altitude restrictions will be placed on these aircraft.
Interesting times,
SB