Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
13 gph at 276 mph? Wow. That’s like 21 mpg. My Jeep Cherokee never got that.
Of course, how much would I burn looking for a parking space?
Like the blog. Regret that I stumbled upon it too late to point it out to my dad. Lost him last November, USN 1956-65, CPO 2nd class, was nuts for ships and planes. This would have been right in his wheelhouse.
Of course it’s the same plane that made news at Hilton Head recently.
There are probably a lot of comparisons to be made and I’ll take a look at some stats later. The Mooney is a slower and a more stable platform. Not surprising really since one is factory built and the other experimental. Significantly faster than the composite Cessna 400.
Unless you fly a lot of hours, getting in trouble at high speeds with less reaction time leaves less margin for error and no time to bleed off airspeed. You arrive at your own accident much sooner.
Side note: 200 kts can be just as fatal as 276 kts. Stability of aircraft I think is a factor.
I’m thinking owners with more cash than sense; Doctors+duckets=doodahs.
The Beech Bonanza used to be called the Beechcraft Doctor Killer. For just that reason.
Thought that was the Baron.
I’d seen the Bonanza referred to as the Doctor Destroyer back in the 70s aviation mags. Same idea.
71.5K for a kit? You NEEED one of those. Assume you got a two car garage, but in Sandy Eggo who needs a garage to protect cars?
WRT mishaps – metal vs carbon and plastic? I fly with a friend who has a Mooney with all the LoPresti speed mods and it is a demon on wings to get slowed down. It actually does a rather nice break to a short downwind and Navy pattern. At least so says the Charleston tower.
I’m with you, G-man. Having a nice steel cage around the soft meaty primate at the controls does wonders for crash survivability. It’s probably not going to help much at 200mph, but at 50mph you might just survive. At 30mph you might even walk away. The slower you hit, tighter you’re strapped in, and the more protected your noggin’, the better the odds are you’ll leave the scene of the crash under your own power. Aircraft with a higher stall speed and of lighter construction do not lend themselves to these conditions.
Pity. She sure is a pretty beast.
Which reminds me, the Beech Baron and Bonanza were called the Doctor Destroyers and V-tailed Doctor Killer and other assorted names. Was there ever an aircraft called The WidowMaker? Because near as I can tell every sport or dangerous job has something in it referred to as a widowmaker. It might be a particular hill or track or course in motor racing, it could be the way a tree has fallen in logging, it could be a long down-hill run along a mountain road in trucking or mining, even a soft patch of ground in heavy equipment operation. I’ve just never heard it used with aircraft amongst pilots.
– Max
The F4U, also known as the Ensign Eliminator, and Ensign Eater. I think the early B-26′s were called that, too, as well as “The Flying Prostitute”. I am told they were called that due to thier short wingspan giving them no visible means of support.
Don’t count on being comfortable inside the Mooney if you have broad shoulders, either.
Hate to say it, but, that’s a myth that Mooney’s are significantly narrow compared to other planes in its class. They are all about +/- an inch of each other. Maybe not be true of some of the newest composite jobbers.
You can get the kit for 71.5K but the number you’ve got to look at is 180 – 280K finshed plane estimate. Engine, Prop, Instruments etc. don’t come cheap. But if I had the money, i’d be all over it.
This guy was proud to finally complete his Lancair….ten years later.
As to the fatalities — the 4130 chrome/moly tubular steel cage surrounding you in the Mooney has proven to be incredibly strong and, as an added bonus, steel is a fairly good material for absorbing impact energy. I suspect this may have something to do with the stats.
I was fortunate enough to tour the Mooney factory while they were in production. Take a gander if you’d like: http://foobert.com/gal/main.php/v/vacations/mooneyfactory/
Too little wing, an airfoil with a sharp post-stall lift drop, slight rigging asymmetry caused by amateur builders, not enough rudder, and a price point available to novices.
Compared to your average GA plane, it’s very good at going fast – and very bad at going slow. Put someone with only straight-wing Cessna experience in one, and he will fly his pattern too tight and too slow, while thinking he’s too fast and too wide. The plane wants to turn base at 110, the pilot’s thinking goes to 70, and he compromises at 90. Put that much alpha on the wing, overturn a bit, and one, and exactly one, wing will stall, and stall very briskly.
Without much rudder authority or altitude, things get pear-shaped very quickly. Not being a certified aircraft, it does not need to meet stall speed, stall warning, etc requirements imposed by the FAA.
Probably not a problem for an experienced aviator, but it’s pretty good at killing those with three digits in the logbook.
276MPH at 13GPH = 21.2 mpg… roughly what my ’80 RX-7 gets on the highway. Which is the closest I’m statutorily able to get to flying, dammit. Amazing!
Lex:
Like Sam and John have said, the Mooney’s are hell-for-stout cage structures, and handle low airspeed/high alpha very nicely. The Lancair’s actually come in various sizes, shapes and flavors. (I have all of 0.7 in the IV-P) All are composites (which is NOT necessarily a bad thing), designed for low drag coefficients and high wing loading. They go like hell, but do not suffer fools and getting behind the power curve gladly. They stall like a son-of-bitch. Add in any sort of builder error and if you frab-up they will kill you quickly and efficiently. I lost a friend, and high time Lancair pilot in a Legacy crash when he tried to follow a controller’s order at Oshkosh to slow up because the spam can ahead of him was dawdling along. He began a series of low altitude, low speed S-turns. He departed the aircraft at low altitude.
Yet, our local DPE has one he flies in the summers and he loves it. He just keeps his knots up and tries to respect it from the time he does his walk around to the moment the engine stops.
A perusal of the stats seems to indicate a high failure rate in the control yoke to pilot’s seat interface module, particularly during periods of limited visibility.
Seems inevitable that when the local press mentions a flying accident a homebuilt is involved. Do their stats bear that out?
The Cessna P-210 has a poor safety record for much the same reason the Lancair does. It’s too much plane for some people.
The Lancair is actually the basis of the Columbia 300/400, which is now owned by Cessna. The plane had to be re-engineered to meet the requirements for certification and the stall characteristics are far better than the Lancair home builts.
Not only is the Lancair expensive to build, it takes a long time to build it. The shortest time I’ve heard is 4 years for a home builder, and he wasn’t working on it 20 hours a week either. A former fighter pilot, who is used to high performance, and understands how to find the edges of the envelope would probably do fine with it. For the overwhelming majority of GA pilots, it’s an AC to admire on the flight line, but avoid strapping on.
This is why I want an Ercoupe. A man has to know his limitations.
Same Here. I didn’t get my dream of being rated in the Military, but Sport Pilot is there, and so are a number of Ercoupe 415-Cs.
Can’t say I hate the idea of the Lancair, but I’m enough of an Engineer to know it ain’t for me.
Of course, you can die just as well in an Ercoupe. But it’s hard to slide the canopy back and rest your arm on the sill why you fly at 100 Knots with a Lancair. Plus, I’m too impatient, and too poor, to build or buy a Lancair.
Concur. A good man’s gotta know his limitations. Know your personal envelope and stay within it and that includes the airframe(s) you fly. Mine has training wheels.
Lex-
My grandfather shuffled off this mortal coil flying one of these (R.I.P. Poppo.) Loved it until the end, though. Flew GA for a few gazillion years. Like Sam said – these aren’t forgiving and they don’t care how many logbooks you have bound together…
But what worth flying in aviation is?