Question on aircraft for hours building

[el_miguel42]

Hi Guys

I have a couple of questions. Im thinking about buying a cheap small single/double seater in order to do some hour building towards an fATPL and just for recreational flying. Something along the lines of an Evans VP1 or a Streak Shadow. Something like a Kitfox would be fantastic but outside the range of cash im looking to spend.

The main consideration im looking at is cost of maintenance, and running p/h. If anyone could recommend some planes to look into that would be great. If you have a rough idea of costs that would also be fantastic.

Im aware that you're unable to use a microlight for hours building, but im not too sure about the types of planes qualified as a microlights, especially the new 3-axis microlights like the Jaribu's. Presumably hours building on one of these is still out. Im aware of the regulations on weight, but ive also heard of other regulations on wing area, stall speed etc. I was wondering if anyone could clarify some of these points.

Thanks for the help.

Cheers

Rui Santos

[A and C]

I doubt if buying a very cheap aircraft will prove as cheap in the long run, what will kill this plot is the fixed costs.

Annual checks, insurance, hangarage and capital costs are all going to bring the low opperating costs of a VP-1 up to the cost of joining a group with a
C152 or PA-28. group aircraft.

Risk............. owning aircraft is risky if you have a big problem with the engine you can be into a £5000 bill if a camshaft or piston pin plug fails (both common snaggs on lycoming engines) so if all goes wrong you could be into a big bill before you can get out of the group.

In short aircraft groups are not the place for hours builders because of the financal risk and fact that the other members will resent your high usage of the aircraft and probably do something to stop you flying too much.

At this point I have to declare an interest as I lease aircraft for hours building, the advantage of leasing is that you know exactly what the costs are going to be, you don't have any cash tied up in the aircraft and you don't have any risk of having to find extra cash for unseen mechanical problems.

If you wan't to know any more please PM me your email address.

[shortstripper]

Roger ... A C150 is hardly the best or the cheapest! :rolleyes:

el_miguel42

The VP1 is fine for what you want, but very marginal in performance :\ There are plenty of others such as FRED's, Luton Minor's, Taylor mono's ect ect. Take a look at the PFA/LAA website, in the engineering section there is a full list of types with their "type" listed alongside. For cheapness you really would struggle to beat a VW powered single seater, but other factors do come into play. Is it deriggable/wing folding? (saves hangarage) is it sexy? (VP1's are not so are very cheap, Jodel D9's are, so tend to be expensive. Performance often relates to "sexy"). Also it is far cheaper if you can find an aircraft based on a farm strip. A two seat Jodel for example, based at a strip, will be cheaper to operate than a single seater based at most licenced airfields.

There are some great aeroplanes out there ... have fun looking! :ok:

SS

[egbgstudent]

You should consider permit types, maintenance cost will be greatly reduced as you are able to perform this yourself. The likes of a Taylorcraft are also quite miserly on fuel.
To top this off, they also bring about great fun flying, :D and a new world of farmstrips will open up before you.
Hope you find what you are looking for

[A and C]

As an enthusiastic suporter of the PFA/LAA I give quite a bit of time to owners and builders of homebuilt types as an inspector but I see some of these types as fair weather toys, they are very cheap to run but are not very robust. Most of these do between 50-100 hours a year some a great deal less.

As you move up the pecking order towards the best homebuilt types the cost goes up considerably, the Vans RV aircraft are excelent aircraft and should be classed as home assembled factory aircraft, as such the running costs are much closer to C of A aircraft than they are to types like the VP-1.

So please can some of you post the real cost of running your LAA types, the numbers would be interesting.

[Blink182]

el miguel42

get yourself a copy of "Light Aviation" January 2008 , better still join the LAA (PFA )
http://www.laa.uk.com/

Inside this months magazine is a very informative article on all the considerations and costs involved with buying an aircraft. It will probably answer at least 90 per cent of your questions.

Your original idea of a Shadow (group A ) is a sensible choice of aircraft for what you want.

[shortstripper]

I'll post costs later A&C (just off to work).

I see your point, but if you are out to build hours then even a "fair weather" aircraft can be used very effectively. You can fly the pants off a VP1 or the like when the weather is good in the summer, and accept less hours in the winter, rather than fly all year around in all weathers ... but at a higher rate per hour. My T31m is no tourer and is a fair weather a/c really, but it will handle 15 knots crosswind and I've flown it in some pretty ugly weather (local I admit) at times, just because I could.

SS

[Dan Dare]

I have flown a number of single seat VW powered aircraft having started as an hours builder in the 90s. Fixed costs will not vary much between types, but fuel costs can vary enormously. The more hours you fly, the more fuel becomes the dominating cost factor. An economy hour in a Jodel D9 can burn as little as 6 litres an hour (I don't know anything you can log hours with which burns less), where a Luton Minor is more like 12 litres an hour! This can be unleaded from Tesco if you get approval. VW engines should be good for around 1500 hours and can be replaced for about that many pounds. Hangarage would range from ~£40/month for farm strip in the middle of nowhere to £250 for a popular licenced airfield. Don't forget that you could be on your own at the farm strip, where you can gain all sorts of advice, help and contacts at the larger airfield - what price do you put on that?

Be realistic about the hours you will do. I knew someone doing 60 a month through the summer, but I struggled to do 100 a year while keeping a job and home.

You should be able to sell your aircraft for about what you bought it, but its always easier to buy than sell. And if you break it then its worth what you can get for the serviceable parts (perversely, there are some types that you can pick up for less than the value of the sum of the parts - old VP1 or Luton Minor can go for £1500)

Best case - A years D9 flying 300 hours from farmers field

Purhase £6000
Insurance £720
PFA fees £190
(£95 permit renewal, £45 membership, £50 for inspector goodwill)
Hangarage £480
Fuel (unleaded) £1900
Sundries for maintennce £100
Advertising sale £100
Sell the aircraft for £6000
Hourly rate £11.63

Worse case - A years Luton Minor flying 100 hours from Large licenced airfield

Purchase £2500
Insurance £720
PFA fees £190
(£95 permit renewal, £45 membership, £50 for inspector goodwill)
Hangarage £3000
Fuel Avgas £1900 (note - same as above!)
Sundries for maintennce £100
You break it but can sell the engine, instruments and prop
Advertising parts £100
Sell the aircraft for parts £1500
Hourly rate £70.10

The real picture is somewhere between the two examples and if you buy in to a group (or create one yourself) then the fixed costs can fall significantly.

A C150 would cost significantly more than this, but you have the opportunity to cost share some of those hours. Do you know enough people to cost share a large number of hours though? Single seaters can be solitary, but I have flown many of my single-seat hours along side others, and had some really memorable days out, with up to 4 of us flying in (loose) formation. Anybody who claims that a single seater does not provide useful hours has not flown them. Your limited pannel flying should be top-notch after navigating with a free floating compass and stopwatch for a few hundred hours.

The diffence between microlight (which you can log up to 100 hours towards you ATPL) and small PFA/LAA types (which you can log all of your hours) is now so little as to be significant only to the beaurocrats, but you will not accidentally buy a microlight, it will be advertised as such because some people prefer the lighter regulation of the microlighting world.

Have to agree with Blink182 about joining the LAA. There are often shares available in various VWs at White Waltham - PM if you want further info.

[gcolyer]

A streak Shandow can be Microlight, PFA or Class A

A friend of mine has one up in Scotoland.

[A and C]

If you are trying to progress to an ATPL flying out of a farmers field is not that practical a way of meeting deadlines, afterall at the moment a lot of these fields are waterlogged and the aircraft (including my personal aircraft) are unable to fly.

With a C152 I can almost meet the £70/hour flying with in the UK and better it if you take the aircraft abroad and this price takes into account landing fees.

Both LAA examples quoted are subject to a lot of "if's & but's" , the very worst case is if you have a big engine problem even a VW will cost you £1000 by the time you have fixed it and that is before you cost the lost flying. The service that I offer is not as cheap as the LAA route but is finacially much less risky, after all the mechanical risk is all mine and the hourly cost predictable.

[el_miguel42]

Thanks for the replies guys. Some really informative and very helpful stuff.

Ill definately pick up a copy of Light Aviation.

Also cheers A & C I hadnt considered leasing. I think some more research and having a good look around is in order before I come to a decision on this.

I hadnt fully considered the difference between flying from a farm strip and a larger airfield. That deserves a think just in itself. Cheers.

[shortstripper]

I personally would recommend the PFA/LAA route to building cheap hours, but to be fair to A and C there is one other factor you may have over looked. LAA/PFA aircraft can only be flown Day VFR whereas CofA aircraft such as he'd offer on lease would "probably" be cleared for IFR flight. This could be important if you want to do the IMC/night flying and build some instrument time as well.

I'd still go for a single seat VW powered a/c as I consider them more fun ... but that's me :\

SS

PS. My costs are less than £20/hr but that's only doing around 60 hours/year as I'm not hour building and with very very cheap hangarage (ie just ground rent for my strip "I built the hangar")

[A and C]

All my aircraft are on a full C of A so no problem with IF/night.

One of my customers did just under 60 hours flying in three weeks and in the summer I am usualy doing a 50 hour check each month, I wonder how well a VW engine would stand up to the use rate?

Is there any one who puts this sort of "time" on a VW engine LAA type? If there is it would make interesting reading, the other thing that I would like to know is what is the average annual flying time for the LAA fleet?

If you have the answers please post them.

[shortstripper]

I think that's a bit unfair A&C. I don't have the info you'd like, but I can assure you LAA/PFA types are not all disaster stories. I used to be in a Luton Minor group of 11 pilots. That aircraft flew a lot of hours without any problems, and is now flying up in Scotland with a Pprune forumite. I have also known several cases of CofA types that were always offline for maintanence ... usually engine related!

The VW is a perfectly robust engine if converted properly and not made to work too hard. The problem comes when it's an ill matched engine to airframe and abused. My 1834 VW engine was orginally in a VP2 I owned. The poor thing struggled to pull all that drag and the cylinder temperatures would sky rocket (unlike the poor old veep). It's now on my T31m and the same engine is like a racehorse on steroids! It never gets hot, pulls the less draggy airframe around with no problem whatsoever and is likely to put in many many more hours before overhaul. The beauty of the VW is the cost of replacing bits. A new set of cylinders and barrels cost around £150 ... what are the for say an 0200? I have built a couple of aero VW's and rate them ... but like I said, it depends what you put them on. I had great fun in my VP2, but if I'm honest, I'd admit that is just too draggy an airframe to allow a VW to shine. The Jodel D9, Turbulent, Luton Minor and Taylor Mono (to name a few) are perfectly suited and the engine will run fine for many many hours if not abused (just like any engine).

I've nothing against leasing, and have argued your case in as far as IFR flight ect is concerned. I do not think it's right to slag off all LAA/PFA types just because of a few bad eggs that you've encountered.

SS

[A and C]

I was not intending to be unfair in any way, I try to do as much as I can to help the LAA types and don't usualy charge for my time as a LAA inspector ( as a licenced engineer I can).

However I don't see most of these aircraft doing a lot of flying and was only enquiring as to what the average usage of the LAA fleet. The aircraft that I inspect are very different with some only flying a few hours a year (less than 20) and some (mostly Vans types) doing a lot of flying. What I was hoping for was to get some sort of idea of how reliable the VW engine is when fitted in aircraft.

The LAA is a very good way to hour build if you have time and like me don't mind getting your hands dirty maintaining the aircraft but I suspect that a lot of those aspiring to the flight deck of an airliner don't have the inclination or abilty to spend the days in a cold hangar doing the nessesary maintenance.


What a disaster it would be for the average group of LAA guys to get one of these hours builders who uses three or four years of engine time in a few months and then vanishes having put nothing back into the group.

For this reason it is nessesary for groups to know what the expected time to overhaul is for the VW engine and cost the engine time accordingly if only to protect themselfs from being "carpetbagged" by an hours builder with a very short term agenda.

The time expected before an overhaul is required for a Continental or Lycoming are well known in the business and so I can plan my costs accordingly, I think it would help a lot of LAA flyers if someone could give us all an idea of what can be expected from a VW engine so that these groups can get a realistic idea of the cost per engine hour.

As for "slagging off" PFA/LAA types I don't think that I have done anything in the posts above to do so. The fact is that without the skills and time that inspectors like myself bring to the PFA/LAA you would not have "permit" aircraft flying in the UK and a lot of people would not be able to afford to fly.

[shortstripper]

Fair enough ...

Well, purely subjectively, I can say with reasonable certainty but no implied authority (no I'm not into politics :} ) That VW's can last anything from hours, to hundreds of hours ;)

A VW ... any VW is only capable of about 50hp sustained. The reason is that the weak point (the cylinder heads) are pretty much the same size for engines ranging from 1200cc through to 2400 cc. Whilst the bigger engines can deliver high hp for short bursts, the cylinder head temperatures soon get too hot if you try to sustain such high power. The usual result of running VW's hot is that the valves usually run out of adjustment very quickly and new heads are required. This usually occurs at around 200 hours if allowed, but if CHT's are strickly adhered too, a VW will easliy last 1000-1500 before overhaul. Realistically, 500 for a top end job is about right ... but if done DIY this will only cost about £750 using brand new parts! If you then say 1000-1500 for a complete overhaul, you will see that the VW is in fact a very cheap and reliable engine. I say again, how you treat those CHT's is the important thing. If you have an airframe that requires 60hp then a VW might do ... but it won't last. If it needs only 45hp, the VW will run and run.

SS

[A and C]

Thanx thats more like it ! some numbers to look at.

Using your average numbers a well treated VW should last 1250 hours and require two top end overhauls costing £750 each so the likely total to get the VW to full overhaul is 2x £750 = 1500 and the overhaul at £1250 = a total cost of £ 2750 or £2.20/hour.

What has not been costed is the price of the labour for the engine and top end work

My calculations for the Lycoming O-235 put the price per hour at £4.50 and this alows for one top end overhauland the engine running to the normal TBO if you can get the full extention on the engine (2880TT) the costs drop to £3.75/ hour.

In 2400 hours the Lycoming will have had one top end and been removed once the VW will been removed twice and had four topend overhauls.

I think these numbers prove that the VW is a very good powerplant but only
if treated well and as an engine for a PFA/LAA group of enthusiasts who do the work themselfs and are into a long term commitment to the aircraft it has to be the way to go.

However the chances of getting this sort of commitment form a guy who only wants to fly jets and who has the sole aim of getting the hours in the log book to enable him to make his objective are very low.

The Lycoming engine is very robust and is abused by low time students on a day to day basis, the engine usualy makes TBO or better.

I think the message is clear that a well run group with a VW engined aircraft lets in an hours builder is playing with fire and are very likely to get burnt as a few cases of engine abuse with the VW could with ease drive the hourly cost way above that of the Lycoming.
All this is before the group members have to do all the work to repair the damage done by the hours builder.

[Blink182]

As an side issue....... what is the TBO of the Rotax 912/914 and the Jabiru as these are now the common engines in the Permit A/c fleets. How do their costs pan out ?

[A and C]

The problem with the PFA/LAA types is that with the low usage that the aircraft get it takes a long time to get any meaningfull numbers.

The Rotax has a good reputation within the homebuilt market but has had a few problems when fitted to C of A types, I suspect that this is because the homebuilder will look after his engine in a way that a low time student won't.

The Rotax seems to be over all the inital problems and is now a very reliable unit however I suspect that the Mecanical cost per hour is not far from that of the Lycoming O-235 but the fuel costs are far lower.

As for the Jabiru I don't have enough data to comment apart from to say that from the outside it looks to be a very well constructed engine.

[BackPacker]

The Rotax has a good reputation within the homebuilt market but has had a few problems when fitted to C of A types, I suspect that this is because the homebuilder will look after his engine in a way that a low time student won't.

I've never flown a Rotax 912 but I've been thinking about building a kitplane with one. Hence the interest. What I remember is that there's some things you need to watch out for, which are not common for Lycosauri:

- Two carbs, which need to be balanced every now and then. How often is mostly a matter of the amount of play in the throttle cable setup. Balancing is a relatively straightforward procedure involving a long tube with some standing water in it, or slightly more sophisticated pressure differential measuring equipment.
- The engine needs to be rotated manually (I think backwards, but I'm not sure) before flight until something in the oil system "burps". This means that all the air is now purged from the relevant bits of the oil system.
- The carb flanges have a tendency to split prematurely and should be given a good look regularly.

There may be more issues, but this is what I remember. I think Skydrive, the Rotax dealer for the UK, regularly runs 2-hour workshops which tell you more about taking care of your 912/914 than you ever wanted to know. I'd say something like that is a must for everybody who takes care of 912/914s, or teaches others how to fly behind one.

As for the Jabiru I don't have enough data to comment apart from to say that from the outside it looks to be a very well constructed engine.

One thing to watch out for, so I've heard, is that the Jabiru produces its max rated power at 3300 rpm or so. Depending on the size of your prop, this puts the prop tips in the transonic regime, effectively turning all those horsepowers into a lot of noise instead of thrust.

[el_miguel42]

Backpacker, quick question on what you said about the transonic prop speeds. Do you loose that much energy to sound at the tips?

I would have guessed that not much energy would get converted to noise simply because it doesnt take a lot of energy to make a loud noise, and that if your prop tips were rotating in the transonic range that it would cause a load of extra drag on the tips due to approaching air pressure wave speed, that would result in serious uneven stress along the prop aswell I would have thought.

Wouldnt this be quite dangerous and degrade prop life expectancy?

This is just my educated guess on this I could be miles out.

[radicalrabit]

Would anyone want to use a Cherokee from Sheffield , Barton or somewhere in that area ? We are looking to get one in the next ten weeks and it would be useful to get some experience beside a qualified pilot while i am training , Also looking fot a freelance instructor if there is anyone out there who fancies the task ?