You need to be using SOME numbers to support this.

Show us the evidence as precisely as you can.

Make no mistake, I want it to be true!

Mike C.

Someone here said the future SF50 pilots are just looking for travel and don't want to mess with a multi rating. That's not an attitude that will get them through a multi week transition course.

I suspect Tony isn't like that. He came away happy with his training. But he wasn't ready that day to be an SF50 pilot and I'd be surprised if his assessment differs. I think that was even true at the end of his SR training.

So the SF50 pilots, if they are truly SR pilots upgrading, are going to find the training a much bigger personal investment than they expect.


So you think they are ready to complete the SF50 initial class in one week?

I don't. It will take longer. No matter how structured the class is, flying a jet is a whole new ballgame over the SR.

I think almost every SR pilot CAN BE a jet pilot and Tony will almost certainly be able to be one if he so chooses, but the step from SR to SF is not going to be easy.

Part of the problem is that Cirrus has sold the airplane to the pilots saying it will be easy. The whole premise of the program is the "jet for piston single pilots". Hence the reason they crippled it with a single engine. Putting just one engine on it didn't make the SF50 one tiny bit easier to fly, it made it harder in fact.

Mike C.

It is the checking to ATP a standards that will get the transitioing pilots who are not on their game. I watched it happen to Mustang pilots while I was in the same building at FSI doing CJ2 training. It is up to the check airman to decide what is a bust and early in the program they were very tough.

You can say you have gone through the same type of training but until you fly the checkrides to the required standards you cant say it was the same.

Remember there is a crew as well as a SP type rating. I am sure we will hear stories of SF50 buyers who could not get the SP rating initially and sold the plane. It will happen.

Available now:

Meridian
TBM
PC12
Eclipse
Mustang
Phenom 100

Not yet out but for sale:

SF50
Kestrel
Epic E1000
HondaJet
(Hard to complete this list due to assessing probability of delivering, dozens more could be added)


I believe Meridian makes your 250 knots spec, just.


Meridian does go further on much less fuel than an SF50, so top end speed is not the only metric in play.

It should be noted that we actually don't know the "real" price of the SF50. Most folks bought an Eclipse for about half the current list price. So once the current backlog of orders are delivered (if Cirrus can survive those losses), then I wonder what the real price will be.


Would be more demand if it were a twin, and cost no more to produce. The whole ecosystem would benefit from more units being made and sold.

There is the possibility that there isn't enough demand for a ~$2.5M airplane that goes 300 knots to justify the costs.


370 knots, FL410, 1/3rd less fuel, 1/3rd more range, more payload, redundancy changes your life better.

Mike C.

Mike,

I've enjoyed dipping into this thread every now and then. One statement you made early on puzzled me: it makes no sense to build a single engine jet because it's just as efficient to build two engine of the same total thrust. I paraphrased. Please feel free to correct me. I accept your other arguments regarding the superiority of a twin jet over a single jet. The pressurization argument impressed me in particular.

I'm not an engineer, my ego isn't on the line here, but bear with me. Why are two jet engines more efficient than one of equal power?

Do two half-sized engines have the same drag as one single? Is drag approximately proportional to the square area presented? If so, I would think that an engine with half the power of another would have a cross sectional size that is at least equal to half that of the bigger engine. Isn't the drag of two small jets greater than that of one of equal power?

My conception of a jet engine is basic. I imagine most of the weight is in the fan-blades of the compressor and turbine, and their bearings. There will be twice as many with two engines. The fan-blades will be shorter on the smaller engine, I can imagine that they might be less than half the weight on the smaller engine. Can bearings be less than half the weight on the half-sized engine?

Jet engines have become bigger with, in general, fewer per airplane. That's surprising if more, smaller, engines are as efficient. It was tough to get clearance for twin-engined airliners to fly over oceans. They had to show that they could reach an airport if an engine failed at any time during cruise. They needn't have bothered if they had more engines, each of which was less powerful. Surely efficiency drove the move to fewer, more powerful, engines on long-haul flights?

With regards to training. The Eclipse company seems to have done a great job. They have zero fatalities. Reading elsewhere on Beechtalk, their avionics seem positively dangerous to me. I imagine a number of Eclipse pilots were of limited experience when they signed up.

Ashley

Here's excerpts from the Flying web site that paints a different picture:

But what owners will get is a single-engine jet that will be very flyable and, perhaps most importantly, one that will have the lowest complexity of entry of any turbofan ever. You will need a type rating, but you won’t even have to concern yourself with RVSM.

Despite years of lots of asking nicely and a little begging, I have yet to fly the SF50. But based on my conversations with pilots who have flown it, I have very little doubt that it will be an easy transition for pilots who are already proficient in the SR22, an airplane that features nearly all of the advanced features of the SF50 save the pressurization and retractable landing gear.

So in case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is the deal: with a Cirrus jet a regular little airplane pilot with experience in a high-performance glass-panel airplane can jump into a jet with what will surely be an very doable type rating. No multi-engine rating required.

Only difference between SR22 and SF50 is pressurization and gear. Wow, I can be a JET PILOT, it is so EASY!! Where do I send my money?

http://www.flyingmag.com/blogs/going-di ... cirrus-jet

Mike C.

Here's excerpts from the Flying web site that paints a different picture:

But what owners will get is a single-engine jet that will be very flyable and, perhaps most importantly, one that will have the lowest complexity of entry of any turbofan ever. You will need a type rating, but you won’t even have to concern yourself with RVSM.

Despite years of lots of asking nicely and a little begging, I have yet to fly the SF50. But based on my conversations with pilots who have flown it, I have very little doubt that it will be an easy transition for pilots who are already proficient in the SR22, an airplane that features nearly all of the advanced features of the SF50 save the pressurization and retractable landing gear.

So in case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is the deal: with a Cirrus jet a regular little airplane pilot with experience in a high-performance glass-panel airplane can jump into a jet with what will surely be an very doable type rating. No multi-engine rating required.

Only difference between SR22 and SF50 is pressurization and gear. Wow, I can be a JET PILOT, it is so EASY!! Where do I send my money?

http://www.flyingmag.com/blogs/going-di ... cirrus-jet

Mike C.

Someone here said the future SF50 pilots are just looking for travel and don't want to mess with a multi rating. That's not an attitude that will get them through a multi week transition course.

I suspect Tony isn't like that. He came away happy with his training. But he wasn't ready that day to be an SF50 pilot and I'd be surprised if his assessment differs. I think that was even true at the end of his SR training.

So the SF50 pilots, if they are truly SR pilots upgrading, are going to find the training a much bigger personal investment than they expect.


So you think they are ready to complete the SF50 initial class in one week?

I don't. It will take longer. No matter how structured the class is, flying a jet is a whole new ballgame over the SR.

I think almost every SR pilot CAN BE a jet pilot and Tony will almost certainly be able to be one if he so chooses, but the step from SR to SF is not going to be easy.

Part of the problem is that Cirrus has sold the airplane to the pilots saying it will be easy. The whole premise of the program is the "jet for piston single pilots". Hence the reason they crippled it with a single engine. Putting just one engine on it didn't make the SF50 one tiny bit easier to fly, it made it harder in fact.

Mike C.

Because the two engines are allowed to fly higher by FAA rules for redundancy in pressurization.

In isolation, a single jet engine of twice the size is slightly more efficient than two of half the size. This presumes identical operational environment (same altitude, placement, airflow alignment, etc). But the problems come about that you can't provide that in a single jet.


The twin has less system drag due to more optimal placement of the engine on pylons away from the fuselage. The single engine has no good place to be on the planform. Everywhere you put it (in fin like PiperJet, on back like SF50, embedded like Diamond Jet) causes some efficiency loss in air ducting, thrust line, trim drag, tail construction, etc.


The jet engine is not a shape being pushed through the air. At the front, it is sucking in air in large quantities and pushing it out the back at elevated speeds. So the frontal area is not really metric for engine "drag". Indeed, the jet engine is all about negative drag, producing thrust.


Let's compare:

One FJ33-5A is estimated to weigh 325 pounds (slight increase from lower thrust variant the FJ33-4-15).

One PW610F (precisely half the thrust of the FJ33-5A) weighs 255 pounds. That's 510 pounds of engines for a twin.

So your instinct that two jet engines will weigh more is correct, in this case by about 185 pounds.

But engine weight isn't the entire story. You have to look at the total system weight of having two engines versus one.

For example, to make a single work, the SF50 has a V tail. The tail surfaces are HUGE. Compare them to an Eclipse and you'll be astounded as the size difference. That causes extra weight in the airframe (and drag, too). The Eclipse gets by with smaller tail by having it further back as a T tail, the SF50 simply can't do that due to the single exhaust flow out the back. Further, the V tail requires a control mixer between rudder and elevator. That adds weight and complexity. And then the deice boots got longer. And so forth. Net effect is that I would estimate the tail on the SF50 weighs around 150 pounds more than the Eclipse, covers most of the second engine.

If one talks about the chute as being compensation for not having a second engine, then all the weight of the chute system plus the weight it causes in system and structural design can be set against the extra weight of the second engine. I think the chute subsystem causes about 300 pounds of weight, others think less, but it is almost certain the chute system weighs more than the second engine delta.

Now let's talk about fuel. 185 pounds is 28 gallons of fuel. When you get to turbines, the fuel weight becomes more significant (you have so much more) and the engine weights become less (engines are light). In this case, if the Eclipse burns 28 gallons less fuel getting somewhere, that, by itself without regard to anything else, compensates for having the extra engine weight to carry around.

Indeed, the Eclipse has 251 gallons fuel, the SF50 has 288 gallons fuel. The SF50 has 37 more gallons fuel and GOES LESS FAR. Basically, for any given trip, the extra fuel you need in the SF50 is almost always MORE weight than the extra engine weight.

I gave three things that each balance the extra engine weight: V tail, chute, and extra fuel. Combined together, adding a second engine would make the plane LIGHTER!

I know, this doesn't make "sense" from a piston twin point of view. That's why this issue is so hard to see for some folks. Jets are not like piston airplanes. Cirrus is trying to build a piston airplane with a jet strapped to it. Sigh.


In commercial service, yes. Not at the scale of GA. And no one is proposing a SINGLE engine jet airliner.


Actually, it is harder than that. They had to show they could reach an airport at any time during cruise AND do that in less than 180 minutes. The ETOPS thing was to push engine reliability high enough that the twin airliner was viable. ETOPS is a whole other topic, but so far, it has been working. The things that would cause it not to work would generally take out a 4 engine airplane, too, for example volcanic ash, fuel exhaustion, or crew error.


Having 2 engines doesn't cause you to fly lower. If it did, no airliner would have 2 engines. So that's not really testing the main issue here.

Note that 2 or 4 engine airliners dominate. Having 3 engines created similar problems to having 1, namely a tough place to put that odd engine, so only some old airplanes had 3 (727, DC10, L1011) and they are all mostly phased out by now. So the ETOPS thing is not about going from 3 to 2 engines, it is about going from 4 to 2 engines. That is why it is so economically advantageous.


Zero fatalities is a great record and a testament to the PILOTS who bought the Eclipse. The avionics on the Eclipse are dangerous IMO, so this record is despite that. Just goes to show you that the equipment is not really the primary factor in safety.

Many Eclipse pilots step out of piston airplanes. It CAN be done. It DOESN'T matter if it is a twin, not for a jet.

Mike C.

That's not the Cirrus message.

They SPECIFICALLY designed the SF50 to be "easy" for a piston pilot to fly. They, in fact, DO believe it will be easier than a Mustang.

I'm with you, it will be about as hard or as easy for any given pilot regardless of which airplane they choose.

Thus, being a single made no meaningful difference to the transition effort.


Eclipse was, at least momentarily for a time, delivering airplanes faster than Cirrus claims they will. So it has been done.

Tony, would you buy an SF50 if it was a single, but not if it was a twin?

Mike C.

Everybody wants a cheap jet. Delivering it has been something of an ordeal.


You at KCIR? I'm at KEVV. You can come over and fly with me someday if you like.


Nice airplane. I almost bought one.

I think I am flying my MU2 for about what a 421 would cost or close to it.


If the forum police arrest folks for what you did, be nobody left...

Mike C.

To keep things accurate. Dassault Falcon 50's, 900's and the 7X are all powered by three engines. They are, I believe, neither outdated nor unpopular.

Best,

There have been MANY Cirrus SR pilots that have transitioned to TBM's, Pilatus', Meridians, Eclipses, Mustangs, and Phenoms. I haven't heard of ANY that have failed the transition-or the type rating for the jets.

And I think the same type of Cirrus pilots will be the ones wanting an SF50, i.e., pilots that have gotten significant time in a Cirrus (or other) SEP and want the added performance that the jet provides. I doubt there will be many that attempt the step into an SF50 that are new pilots. A large number of the SF50 deposits are from existing Cirrus pilots that have had positions for YEARS. In the meantime they have been flying and training and becoming more proficient pilots.

I sat in the SF50 this year at OshKosh and I was very impressed. For up to 5 people, the accommodations are great. LOTS of legroom, a wide cabin with lots of windows! I talked to the guy that was in charge of some part of the program and he asked what I thought of the plane and what Cirrus could do to make things better.

My only concern, as I mentioned to him, is that Cirrus will need Service Centers that step up to the level of service that turbine owners expect. The current Cirrus piston service centers are a mixed bag, some good, a few great, and some bad. (I think this is true for all piston service). But they seemed very aware of expectations and SF50's will be serviced by specific service centers.

Spend some time on COPA. They are a pretty savvy group of pilots and very safety oriented.

(I owned a 2004 SR22-bought new, traded for a 2007 SR22TN, traded for a Meridian, and now a TBM.)

Mike,

The issue of having an MEI or not before making a purchase decision is irrelevant to me. I plan to do the MEI in the first quarter next year. I'd have done it already but had to some time conflicts.

Most of the Cirrus pilots I know are good sticks. Many very highly experienced with advanced ratings including the MEI (some moved to Cirrus from twins). Some, for whom Cirrus is a first aircraft already have an MEI or will in the simple interest of expanding flying capability.

I think there may be a very few for whom not having to get the MEI might make a small purchase decision difference. But it's hard to see how anyone contemplating moving to a jet, with the advanced training it requires would choose an SE jet just to avoid another check ride.

I think this entire issue is a straw man.

Concur.

Mike C.