Or perhaps a smart, ambitious actor who has the vision and wherewithal to change the future, and is not stuck in myopic view of what's possible today. You know, the kind of guy who starts a company that can land rockets back on Earth after they deliver payload to space, and plans a colony on Mars in a few years.



You are repeating yourself. We already established that the cost of 262 Eclipses is irrelevant. That was just getting warmed up. The cost of 26,200 is what matters.

I find it strange you believe in a super rich person who wants to build super cheap jets in the tens of thousands. You let me know when that happens.

If I am supplier to that enterprise, I'm shipping things COD.

Mike C.

I'll say it now, and I'll say it again..........Mike's buying a legacy PC12, caved, finally saw the error of his ways..............looked at flightaware and said damn..........whole bunch of numbnuts flying them damn things every day, going to all places, some long ways away.......carry much stuff, not at Citation speeds, but close enough to warrant a speedo check, and we ain't talking about the white things he wears to a pool party...........

heh heh, you can even get auto throttle now........

confused you say, yup, he's arguing about bets placed a year ago with JC.............

JC and I will offer to pick him up and fly him to a place here in the mountains to reduce his stress level..............

single pilot, single engine, over mountains.............we can do it at night.......lot less turbulence....

Pilatus PC-12 is overall the best owner flown bird in the sky. It's a Suburban. If you use an airplane for anything more than point to point transportation it's pretty darn hard to beat!

Just an aside regarding profitability of a company that a Chinese investment corporation sees as a strategic investment:

In my limited dealings with Chinese companies, their definition of "strategic investment" would make Warren Buffett look like a day trader.

It isn't always the case. But in an industry that they've identified as key to their economic development via improved infrastructure, losing a few hundred million over several years is a drop in the bucket. In the mid-2000's, you could drive for 45 minutes at 70mph through totally uninhabited parts of Beijing - the infrastructure looked like a better version of LA, but none of it was generating revenue. They basically built Manhattan on spec. Then there's the currency buying - who buys that many Treasuries from an economic perspective? No one. You do it to help your economy gain a foothold in international trade. That's a key thing that Americans (me) have difficulty with understanding with respect to a centralized government's development plan.

Wait - we have the interstate system and a ton of underutilized airports all over the country... I guess we kind of did a similar thing from 1940-1965. Both had military value, but they also changed our infrastructure for the better and no private enterprise was going to do that.

Sorry. Back to the SF50 (which is ugly and inefficient, but if someone gave it to me with the 5 year "warranty + maintenance + training" program I'd love it).

Look - I am in Duluth every other week and I supply to them. I have good credit terms and performance. I have zero doubt on the numbers presented, at one a week, we have twelve more aircraft from the tail number I last saw. 60 easy

Mike being a good engineer, forgot what that meant. Anybody can build a good aircraft out of existing components from existing established manufacturers (who are getting a bold rate of return), and achieve a reasonable result. Really quite simple - and Mike is right it will cost 6M. The Cessna Mustang is a case example, the Denali appears to be heading down the same road.

What I see with Cirrus is an interest to step out of the box , one example close to my heart is fuel quantity. We undercut CraneAE, Meggitt, Parker, Honeywell on a jet level fuel quantity system by a factor of 10 and offer better performance and value. We leveraged Garmin's inherent intelligence to simplify what would normally be a complex system on a single engine Jet A. In fact it is so mindless it is transparent to the experience.

Making a better simpler system that performs is engineering - the other alternative is catalog shopping.

Suffice to say we are working on other systems as we have a track record of being frugal and good.

So we designed a jet fuel quantity system that offers class leading performance, but yet you can economically install it on a legacy Beech piston aircraft. Your economics are fixed in the past.

Looks like SF 50 can sitting in regular hangar , it will be our neighbor and part of us

[youtube]https://youtu.be/YH6bUrQgrFI[/youtube]

17 minute AvWeb piece that includes comparisons to SETPs and light jets.

https://youtu.be/lten6GjGNiE

Enjoyed watching that Jim. Thanks.

It'll never work.

Just kidding.... Great video. $2.2MM fully loaded. It's a great airplane.

Thanks, I want one...

Scott, very, very interesting observation from a systems perspective.

Did I mention that they'll sell a ton of these ?

The video has the desired effect on you.

The question will be if you want to keep it after you get it.

The real jet makers see this as an opportunity to sell real jets to people who have bought toy jets and then discover how limited they are. 280 knots limited to FL280 is not a real jet.

A quote from the Aviation Consumer article indicates this:

On an eastbound leg cruising at the ragged tops of dissipating thunderstorms we didn’t want to fool with (our demo had the optional Garmin GWX70 weather radar), a climb into the low 30s seemed like a good idea, but the SF50—which has the Cirrus-inspired Garmin G3000 avionics suite—isn’t RVSM certified. That’s a real money saver.

Not being RVSM *costs* money because the airplane is slower and burns more fuel than if it was RVSM. Additionally, RVSM compliance is getting dramatically cheaper with recent FAA rule changes.

Passengers will want to wear noise-cancelling headsets, however. The whine from the Williams engine is dominant, partly because of its piggybacked placement on top of the cabin.

It isn't a real jet if your passengers have to wear noise canceling headsets.

The $2.2M price is not yet CPI adjusted, so figure closer to $2.5-2.6M when it actually delivers in 2022 or so if you place an order now (10 years of inflation since the price is in 2012 dollars).

The video say 2400 lbs useful load, but no actual empty weights are mentioned. The useful load full fuel might be surprisingly low on actual examples as opposed to the brochure number.

The bit about the chute requiring the autopilot to take control of the airplane is disturbing. What does it do if the autopilot speed sensor is reading wrong? What does it do if there is no electrical power, or the problem is an autopilot runaway, or the autopilot has lost attitude input, or there is a control system malfunction?

If the autopilot can be trusted to control the airplane to the point the chute can be deployed within envelope (speed below 143 knots, attitude wings level, etc), does that mean the airplane could be safely landed without the chute in the first place? If so, what is the chute for?

What happens if, say, there is a midair and the SF50 can't be slowed to 143 knots or less because of damage to flying surfaces? Then what?

This statement also had me wondering about the automation dependencies:

The yaw stability augmentation system is controlled by an autopilot servo motor. The control surface, which is hinged to the ventral fin, rotates asymmetrically to actively augment lateral and directional stability. The system shuts off when the autopilot yaw damper automatically engages above 200 feet.

So the yaw stability system works below 200 ft, but above that the autopilot yaw damper is automatically turned on? Why would you need a yaw stability system that works only in the last 200 ft of altitude? I wonder how the yaw damper knows you have reached 200 ft and should turn on, and what happens if it gets that wrong.

Sitting in the rear cabin, we tried hard to sense the tail-wagging tendencies you’d expect from an airplane with a V-tail (yes, think V-tail Bonanza), but it just wasn’t there. On the other hand, it was obvious that all those servos were working hard.

What happens if the servos quit?

There are a lot of compromises and issues the SF50 has, they will only come to light when the actual airplane speaks for itself instead of the Cirrus marketing machine.

Mike C.

What if....what if....what if..

What if it's the perfect jet for lots of people?

[youtube]https://youtu.be/fM8V1XOI-14[/youtube]