I'm of the opinion, that Ciholas is currently being schooled by Crandall, Talley. Tinkle and Spear. It's an opinion though.....so I may be wrong, then you throw in Jesse and Charles and he's lost at which side to argue, engineering, logic, illogic, post count, post likes, you name it.

He's posting pictures with airplanes, axis and stuff.......Cirrus marketing just mailed him a check and asked him to keep up the good work.........

Shame on me for allowing you all to go unsupervised for 5 hours whilst I had to go fly!!!!!

At the end of the day we're all pilots.........that's the really cool part

The whole point on the bet with Ciholas is this..... He says it's so flawed it won't make it to market. I don't think Cirrus is dumb enough to get this far down the road and not know these basic problems Ciholas speaks of. But I don't work on airplanes for a living. I don't know.

So, regardless, I'm confident it will deliver and be a success. But I can't put a date on it.

Let's just make the bet "If it delivers, it will sell better than ANY VLJ on the market".

That's simply not true. At worst, the twin provides a hugely increased glide distance AND time during which the problem could be fixed (say selected fuel tank ran dry). At best, you can maintain altitude or climb. Lastly, the pilot can load the airplane for a weight which gives him climb performance.

Twin jet like an EA500? No problem, it will climb on one.


Not vertically. In the thin air, that same air that you say won't let a twin fly, will also mean your airplane under chute is going to hit much harder vertically. Back injuries are more likely. If the chute puts you on the side of steep rocky mountain, good luck surviving the tumble into the valley. A glide would be much better.


I can touch down in the MU2 at 74 knots at gross, around 70 light. Baron should be well into the 60s.


Propulsion reasons: climb on one engine, or if not, hugely increased glide on one engine. After takeoff, you climb MUCH faster with two, so if the engine quits say 2 minutes after takeoff, you are at 3000 AGL instead of 1000 AGL and you have much more time and options to land, if that is even necessary.

Other reasons: two sources of electrical power, vacuum, pressure, etc. More people die from loss of electrical power or instrument air than engine failures.


An SF50 would be safer (and more economical) with two smaller jet engines.

Mike C.

Mike, so you are saying that more engines are safer than a parachute?

Why don't the gubermint have 6 engines on the f-16 and no ejection seat?

Any number of reasons, but that plane wasn't designed with safety as the top priority.

Your kidding, Right!!!

Your kidding, Right!!!

I am not surprised.

In case anyone didn't get their fill of the absurd in the first 35 pages of this thread...

The logic is there. It's a reasonable argument.

Mike,

You keep repeating the same thing over and over again. That a plane climbs better on two engines then one. Give me the engineering data to prove the number of engines matter. What matters is total thrust, drag, lift and weight. One engine, two or twenty does not affect climb performance in normal conditions (yes, when one fails there is an effect).

But why not advocate four engines for all planes, then when one engine dies you only lose 25% of the thrust? Oh wait let's take it ten engines and only lose 10% of the thrust....

Next point, Every Cirrus has dual alternators and a dual bus electrical system which a physically separated and have a one way diode for to keep essential systems working in case of an alternator failure. So explain besides the engine failure how having two alternators on two separate engines is better?

Since you are an engineer, you know the speed increase from 60 knots to 71 is rather substantial, and in fact it really is from 56 knots to 71 since most single engine planes stall even slower.

Tim

Great question.

About 500 have been "sold" varying in price anywhere from around $1.2M to $2.2M. Most were sold at the lower price early, so let's say the average sales price is $1.5M. So Cirrus has a book of $750M orders. By comparison, Eclipse had 2,700 "orders" and an average sales price around $1.4M (using 2009 dollars, same as Cirrus) for a total book of $3.8B.

Is $750M enough? Eclipse spent about $8B all in, at least $2B on the design phase, so it doesn't seem like enough, though some discount is in order for the terrible mismanagement of Eclipse.

Now come the hard part, what does it cost to build? No one really knows, not even Cirrus themselves really. I'd be amazed if it is under $1M per copy, and I'd estimate closer to $1.4M which is why they had to raise the price.

Now the margins are very slim to pay back the development investment.

Cirrus says 125 planes a year. I don't see how they can do that given the first 4 years of sales are priced at or below cost. The faster they make them, the faster they lose money.

That was the Eclipse bankruptcy plan, make them as fast as they could.

Mike C.

I admit to not being familiar with the Cirrus installation details, but it seems likely that they have a risk of common mode failure (where one exogenous event takes out both alternators) either because of the physical proximity or because they are both driven from a common mechanical part (which is not essential for the continued power production of the engine).

Maybe that's a lightning strike. Maybe it's a bird strike. Maybe it's an accessory case failure, or electrical fire under the cowling. Maybe it's a maintenance induced failure where the airplane as-flown isn't actually as redundant as the type certificate says it should be.

Things happen. I'm not arguing the relative safety of Mu2 vs SR22; I am saying that common-mode failures are real and physical separation is one way to help guard against them. I could take a bird strike through the cowl on my A36 that could take out the front-mounted alternator and continue back to the standby. That's a lot harder on my 58P. (It also doesn't stop my from flying the A36.)

Great question.

About 500 have been "sold" varying in price anywhere from around $1.2M to $2.2M. Most were sold at the lower price early, so let's say the average sales price is $1.5M. So Cirrus has a book of $750M orders. By comparison, Eclipse had 2,700 "orders" and an average sales price around $1.4M (using 2009 dollars, same as Cirrus) for a total book of $3.8B.

Is $750M enough? Eclipse spent about $8B all in, at least $2B on the design phase, so it doesn't seem like enough, though some discount is in order for the terrible mismanagement of Eclipse.

Now come the hard part, what does it cost to build? No one really knows, not even Cirrus themselves really. I'd be amazed if it is under $1M per copy, and I'd estimate closer to $1.4M which is why they had to raise the price.

Now the margins are very slim to pay back the development investment.

Cirrus says 125 planes a year. I don't see how they can do that given the first 4 years of sales are priced at or below cost. The faster they make them, the faster they lose money.

That was the Eclipse bankruptcy plan, make them as fast as they could.

Mike C.

An assessment of the accidents stats says they didn't.


And there are people who are dead right now who took too much comfort in having a chute.

And before you retort "you don't know that", I will just say you don't know that any of the CAPS activations actually avoided death, either.

The "saves" are great optics, so dramatic, so heroic, so convincing to the compliant mind, but people are pushing themselves and the machine to places it shouldn't go and the chute doesn't protect everyone as much as they think.


They appear to engender risky behavior beyond which they can save someone much of the time.

Mike C.