Reliability of Training Aircrafts
Join Date: May 2001
Location: 75N 16E
Age: 54
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I flew a lovely little aeroplane once, called an OMF Symphony. I don't know what happened to them as you hardly see any around, but it was a great 2 seater. Would be an ideal training aeroplane. Comfortable 25G bucket seats, good boot space, all digital engine monitoring and had a stick! Wasn't too shabby on speed either if I recall correctly. Did some long XC flights out into Nevada in it - That was great, flying over the high desert at night peering up at the stars through the roof windows.....
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Whitby, North Yorkshire
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flown once (for a reason) with a flying school up at durham tees. On take off the door popped off the latch thing mid winter so i put the heater on full - not that it worked (i only had a t-shirt on) and proceeded to freeze my bollocks off. The radio stack in the aircraft could only be described as pre-historic to the point it took me a minute to work out how to switch it on and the general keep of the machine was terrible. Pity the cost per hour didnt reflect this. The transponder i fear didn't work (interesting conversation with durham radar)
On the other hand, the school where i learnt to fly had relatively newish machines, no older than 10 years or so and what a difference. Yes they had the scars of training but fly very nicely bar one of them which has had a re-paint and the lazy buggers haven't stripped the old paint off, thus making it very heavy.
Used to be a part of a cherokee 140 group and the machine was built in the mid 70's. Still perfectly fine although i found it under powered and slow despite its high fuel burn. Didn't like the old style yokes but otherwise felt perfectly safe in it.
I find it incomprehensible that its so difficult to invent new engines for the likes of warriors and 152's etc that are cheap to run and actually get certified to fly. I understand that theres a new diesel out on the market? although to upgrade that in a warrior, how many hours would have to be done to justify the upgrade?
Im personally at the stage where I want my own aircraft and although I wish to have an IFR capable machine, I don't want the stigma of a high fuel burn issue to go with it.
I think one of the biggest issues here is the fuel cost, the flying schools have their overheads and so on, and i see the point of training machines being work horses and therfor not worthy of a bit of TLC.
I was speaking to a chap involved in aviation and he seemed to think that avgas wasnt going to be around for much longer, what then?
Dan
On the other hand, the school where i learnt to fly had relatively newish machines, no older than 10 years or so and what a difference. Yes they had the scars of training but fly very nicely bar one of them which has had a re-paint and the lazy buggers haven't stripped the old paint off, thus making it very heavy.
Used to be a part of a cherokee 140 group and the machine was built in the mid 70's. Still perfectly fine although i found it under powered and slow despite its high fuel burn. Didn't like the old style yokes but otherwise felt perfectly safe in it.
I find it incomprehensible that its so difficult to invent new engines for the likes of warriors and 152's etc that are cheap to run and actually get certified to fly. I understand that theres a new diesel out on the market? although to upgrade that in a warrior, how many hours would have to be done to justify the upgrade?
Im personally at the stage where I want my own aircraft and although I wish to have an IFR capable machine, I don't want the stigma of a high fuel burn issue to go with it.
I think one of the biggest issues here is the fuel cost, the flying schools have their overheads and so on, and i see the point of training machines being work horses and therfor not worthy of a bit of TLC.
I was speaking to a chap involved in aviation and he seemed to think that avgas wasnt going to be around for much longer, what then?
Dan
why would you think that a Cessna 150 powered by a 100HP Rotax would not perform as well as one powered by a 100HP O-200
The Rotax engined version would burn cheaper fuel (assuming no auto fuel STC was legal locally - worldwide many people do burn auto fuel legally in 150s), but to produce the same performance hauling around a 150 it would also burn about the same amount of fuel. When overhaul time came, the O-200 could be overhauled using parts from several sources, and depending on who does it and where, the work can be a lot cheaper for the Continental.
Re OMF Symphony Aircraft - it was basically an O-320 powered Glastar kit aircraft with a heavier airframe (I believe the fuselage/tail cone was non-composite and substatially heavier?) to meet some countries certification requirements. A local lawyer bought one new, and a friend of mine used to fly it. Eventually, and this is where I was tempted, it was a sold with a couple of hundred hours for a low price almost beyond belief. The resale issue was that it was competing in the used market with lighter Glastars licensed as experimental homebuilt.
Join Date: Jan 1999
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Micky
In that case I suspect ( but without the data it is not much more than a guess) that the Rotax has a much steeper torque curve than the older engines ad so a narrower RPM band in witch it is able to transmit that power into thrust. Hence the VP prop to be able to keep the prop efficient over a narrow RPM band.
