As always, you can pay more and get more.

I started flying 10 years ago and 4000 hours. I've never really flown a steam gauge airplane. Never had all panels go dark either. I've never had 1 panel go dark.

Newer planes have backups for the backups even if the plane has only 1 engine.

Yes. Question of time. There are early adopters with one or two hours of viable training time now. With battery density going up by a measurable amount every year, it will not be long before trainers are good for three hours. That is all they really need from a practical perspective.

Tim

Looks like AGM2 failed. Happened to me too but on the ground. I assume you know you could have just switched the copilot side to agm1. Those agm boards appear to be the weak link in the apex, but at least it's an easy fix with the modular design.

Indeed I did; but had to get the pic, first.

I think that the Alpine-born PC-12 hates heat universally.

Technically, you still have 3 working.

You could always go back to steam gauges which never fail.

If you are below chute altitude, you crash.

That may be "simple", but it isn't "safe".

Mike C.

The SR22 was not illogically crippled like the SF50. Cirrus did not set out to make the "slowest, lowest piston single".

Ultimately all aircraft are judged on what they do for what they cost.


Hopefully he is a pilot capable of flying any of the three. If he isn't capable of flying the TBM or C510, then he will be dangerous in the SF50.


Sounds good to me, you will become accustomed to having no range and limited performance from the start.

Mike C.

There is plenty wrong with a single jet. You can't get a high ceiling, you can't lay the planform out in an efficient way, and you can't get redundancy in both thrust and systems. And, in the end, the single isn't meaningfully cheaper to design, build, sell, or operate.

Mike C.

"Software" does not tend to fix a power redundancy issue, which is why the SF50 isn't allowed to do SEIFR part 135.

I've never seen a line of code cause a second generator to appear, or a new electrical bus to happen, or a battery to get bigger.

Mike C.

I disagree. Ceiling is mainly a function of thrust to weight, although wing area is important, too. The F-16 (single engine) can reach FL 550 pretty easily.

There are several good choices for single engine jet layouts. Cirrus picked a bad one.

There are several SETP that have adequate "redundancy in both thrust and systems." No reason you can't achieve the same with a turbofan.

All else being equal, a single engine jet will always be cheaper to build and operate than a two engine jet. The cost difference between purchasing and operating, for example, one FJ44 versus two FJ33 is significant. It's why a PC-12 is cheaper to operate than a King Air.

I don't choose to own a single engine airplane given my mission, but there's no reason a single engine jet couldn't be a good solution for certain customers if properly designed.

Nathan

P.S. Not sure who said the SF50 has a higher thrust to weight ratio than the Eclipse Canada, but obviously that's not true at altitude.

You are using a physics answer to a regulatory question.

The FARs require redundant pressurization for high flight levels. A single engine jet doesn't do that simply (it would need another pressurization source besides the engine). A twin jet does that naturally. Therefore a single engine jet is ceiling limited for regulatory reasons, not physics.


There really aren't.

S ducts and buried in the fuselage like the Diamond and Stratos cause lots of weight and induction inefficiency, plus are inlet duct deicing nightmares.

Eclipse 400 has the same problems as the SF50 withe the V tail trim drag and high thrust line.

PiperJet put the engine in the tail which is draggy and high thrust line, plus hard to work on.

The Flaris is a joke out of the box, but perhaps the best layout of the bunch.


No single engine airplane has thrust redundancy.

No single engine airplane has true systems redundancy since even with, say, two generators, they still rely on one engine. Engine quits, both generators quit.


Not really.

The Eclipse Canada will be cheaper to operate per mile than the SF50. It will burn less fuel per hour and fly much faster, which saves airframe and engine hour maintenance.

One FJ33-5A is the cost of two PW610F to purchase, if not more.


Yes, it is true. At any given altitude, the SF50 has a higher thrust to weight ratio.

One FJ33-5A on SF50: 1846 lbf

Two PW610F on Canada: 900 lbf each, 1800 lbf total

Both are 6000 lbs MGTOW.

As you climb, both engines will lose power proportionately.

It is not the lack of thrust, it is the lack of using that thrust efficiently that kills the SF50.

Mike C.

The Canada is using the larger PW615 engine, with a takeoff thrust of 1200 lbs each. So takeoff thrust is 2400 lbs.


Sorry to use physics again, but the PW610/615 engines don't lose power with altitude as quickly as the FJ33. The Williams has a relatively high bypass ratio (for a small turbofan) and has a large fan diameter. That means it can produce a lot of static thrust and is efficient. But it also means that it loses thrust more quickly as speed increases (true airspeed). They don't publish the numbers, but I suspect this is one reason the SF50 is so slow.

The aerodynamic design of the SF50 isn't THAT bad.

Nathan

If there is a "common" single point failure in the PT6, one of the most reliable engines ever made, it is the fuel control unit. Twin PT6 aircraft will usually just shut down an engine with an FCU failure, but I also believe there have been some fatal crashes in twins from FCU failures and mismanagement of engine failure. Blurry memory. In all PT6 single engine aircraft, there is an FCU over-ride (MOR), which is a type of thrust redundancy. In essence you directly put fuel into the can. Doesn't really matter to me. There are more twin turbine engine related fatals per hour than there are single engine turbine related fatals, so what does that redundancy really get you?

From the 2012 Breiling report fatal accidents related to engine failure in SETP's per 100K hours: Find a twin with better data

CE208 (0.012), TBM7 0, PC12 0, PA46-500TP 0.

As I said, this is a problem for all manufacturers, nothing new here. If anything, Cirrus should be less susceptible to this effect given that many of Cirrus buyers seem to be wealthy, "money is no object" type of individuals. If money is no object, you aren't even going to look at used market.

In any case, if Cirrus achieves 75% conversion rate from SRs to SF50, that would be a phenomenal success for them, far beyond what others have been able to achieve.