New Experimental Turboprop

[av-mech]

Gabby,

As a professional IA who owns a shop doing maintenance on Bonanza's I feel qualified to make the following statement. You are out of your mind if you think your going to match (or even come close) to the operating cost of a Bonanza.

1. 42 gph vs. 14-17 gph at the moment that's roughly a difference of 25 gph @ 6.00 gallon (my airport) so right there is $150.00 per hour difference
2. Ask operators of Turbine Legends, Lancair IV-PT, Comp-air Turbines, Lancair Evolution's what the insurance cost (if they can get it) is. Let me clue you in, it's a huge difference. Many insurance companies will not even write policies on experimental turbine powered aircraft.
3. Engine overhaul cost of PT-6 is in another universe compared to overhauling say.....IO-540 or IO-550 varient
4. Finding qualified maintenance to work on the airplane becomes much more difficult as does parts sourcing for an aircraft where the company is small and resources limited.
5. Pilot qualifications, who will train pilots and at what cost? how often will they require re-current training?


the possibility of being "relatively close" on operating cost is a fantasy. Of course "relative" is......well, relative. there is a moon that orbits a planet why out in the solar system the "warms" to -450 deg f on a good day. Astrophysicists study this planet for its "relative warmth".

[av-mech]

Excellent, well thought out, comprehensive outline that should be mandatory reading for all wannabe Kit and certified producers. You should turn this into a detailed published curriculum available for sale.

I would add one more caution: Failure to meet with Vans to pick his brain on how to do things right and create a highly successful aviation enterprise.

Thanks Floats,
I spent a lot of my youth working with a number of well know experimental companies during the 90's and early 2000's and got to see some mega flame outs and a few success. I also spent time at companies like Adam Aircraft who had all the money they could ever want and still screwed it up. The Adam product did fit in a good market it was too big for smaller operators and too amaturish for large operators. I came to the conclusion that having a successful aircraft manufacturing company is a lot like marriage, you gotta go through a couple before you really figure out how to do it right.

[av-mech]

Gabby,

What do you think your going to bring to the market that other aircraft like the Epic or Evolution don't already bring to an already cramped market? Does your engineer have some new manufacturing technique or design feature that is ground breaking? That's what it's going to take to bring your concept to market and make money. Business is about making money, not fulfilling somebodies fantasy. Now I will agree that it takes a certain amount of fantasy to get ideas started but there also has to be a gigantic amount of reality if the venture is going to be a success. A successful aircraft business is NOT one that leaves their customers high and dry several years down the road.

[rwanttaja]

The size is important for a few reasons.

1. It will allow us to hit our performance numbers much easier. The goal is 300+ KTAS at ~42gph. We believe that this can be done it a -42 PT6 with the size we are considering. If you go much bigger then you suddenly find yourself in a much larger engine and you sacrifice your travel efficiency we are shooting for.

2. With carbon fiber, we can maintain larger internal spaces while having not as large external structure like an aluminum airplane.

3. A large portion of the customer base we are shooting for already uses such T-hangars for their Bonanza or Cirrus. Thus they wouldn't have to search for a new place to store their airplane.

We believe that #1 and #3 are very important to making this product that much more interesting to our potential customers, #1 especially because it would keep their cost of flying the airplane relatively close to what it costs them to fly their Bonanza or Cirrus.

As for #1 and #2, size is not important as the input from a consumer survey. No reason to ask potential purchasers what size they think the airplane should be; that stems from the required performance parameters.

As for #3, your potential customers have more than a million dollars ready to drop; if they do, they're likely to be living in a metropolitan area and can just rent or buy a bigger hangar. If the plane has equivalent performance to a Malibu, TBM, or something of that ilk, the form factor won't be an issue. Buyers will expect something the size of these other airplanes. Limiting your design for the one or two who can't change hangars doesn't make sense.

Restricting performance or settling for inferior handling characterisitics for non-operational considerations often ends in inferior airplanes. The designers of the original DC-4 limited vertical stabilizer height to fit in the hangars of the day; only one was built (and an ugly SOB it was) and it was sold to Japan just prior to WWII. The redesign said, "### the hangars" and produced a good airplane.

The original Fly Baby prototype didn't have very good pitch stability; the contest rules regarding roadability resulted in restricted horizontal stabilizer width. After the fuel-exhaustion crash, Bowers extended the fuselage to improve pitch stability. And you know, it *still* isn't that great... a 50-year-old legacy of non-operational limitations. Lets us get by without trim systems, at least...

If you *do* limit wingspan to fit in some notional idea of a hangar, it'll impact the low-speed capability of the airplane...higher stall speed, possibly poorer stall characteristics. You can gain some of this back with mechanical devices (Fowler flaps, slats, etc.) but that raises the ultimate cost of the airplane, since the owner has to pay more money for the hired guns to construct those items.

Ron Wanttaja

[Flyfalcons]

We believe that #1 and #3 are very important to making this product that much more interesting to our potential customers, #1 especially because it would keep their cost of flying the airplane relatively close to what it costs them to fly their Bonanza or Cirrus.

No one with an ounce of common sense believes they can operate a turbine for near what a B or C costs to operate.

[rwanttaja]

Gabby,

What do you think your going to bring to the market that other aircraft like the Epic or Evolution don't already bring to an already cramped market?

There are other points re: competition as well. The LSA market is a prime example. Companies bring out spanking-new LSAs priced at $125,000 and expect people to rush their doors waving money. In reality, their customer base is shouting, "Are you nucking FUTS???" and buying equivalent used aircraft for a quarter of that amount.

And that's where Gabby's Phantasm (he won't give us its name, let's give it one) might run into problems: He's not completing with new airplanes; he's competing with USED airplanes.

He'll be standing there in his blue-checked airplane-salesman suit, extolling the superiority of the Phantasm to a potential customer. The customer's eyes will happen to fall on a copy of Trade-A-Plane open to the Malibu/TBM/whatever page.

"Hmmmm," he'll be thinking. "I can give Gabby $1,000,000 today, pay another $200,000 for an engine, and $100,000 to hired guns to build it for me, wait six months for it to be completed, hope the FAA never detects the fradulent licensing, and forever face difficulties finding someone to annual the airplane for me. Or I can call the number in that ad and fly home tomorrow in a plane with 90% of the performance, none of the legal issues, and have FBOs falling over themselves wanting my business, for about the same money."

There will always be those who MUST have a Phat ("Gabby's Phantasm" is too long). But is relying on these folks a good business plan?

Ron Wanttaja

[gabbett1]

Gabby,

As a professional IA who owns a shop doing maintenance on Bonanza's I feel qualified to make the following statement. You are out of your mind if you think your going to match (or even come close) to the operating cost of a Bonanza.

1. 42 gph vs. 14-17 gph at the moment that's roughly a difference of 25 gph @ 6.00 gallon (my airport) so right there is $150.00 per hour difference
2. Ask operators of Turbine Legends, Lancair IV-PT, Comp-air Turbines, Lancair Evolution's what the insurance cost (if they can get it) is. Let me clue you in, it's a huge difference. Many insurance companies will not even write policies on experimental turbine powered aircraft.
3. Engine overhaul cost of PT-6 is in another universe compared to overhauling say.....IO-540 or IO-550 varient
4. Finding qualified maintenance to work on the airplane becomes much more difficult as does parts sourcing for an aircraft where the company is small and resources limited.
5. Pilot qualifications, who will train pilots and at what cost? how often will they require re-current training?


the possibility of being "relatively close" on operating cost is a fantasy. Of course "relative" is......well, relative. there is a moon that orbits a planet why out in the solar system the "warms" to -450 deg f on a good day. Astrophysicists study this planet for its "relative warmth".

1. You can't look at two airplanes and say, well that one is 42 gph and the other one is 17 gph, so obviously the 17 gph one costs way less to fly. If I can fly 300 kts at 42 gph, that's 7.14 nm/gal. A bonanza will fly 175 kts at 17 gph which is 10.29 nm/gal. Then you take the difference in the price of Jet A vs Avgas. Local to me Jet A is $4.93 and Avgas is $5.64. $4.93 / 7.14 = $0.69 per nm for the turboprop. $5.64 / 10.29 = $0.55 per nm for the Bonanza. So the difference between the two comes to a total of $0.14 per nm.

2. I sometimes make that mistake of saying cost of operation when I mean cost per nm. There is of course going to be a difference between a Bonanza and a Turboprop airplane insurance wise, but not that much. If a new Bonanza is $800k and a new TP like what I propose is $1m, there is little difference in hull value, which is a large part of the insurance cost.

3. This is very true, however someone can own and fly a PT6 for 23 years before needing to do an overhaul (assuming a 150 hours of flight a year). If they only fly 100 hours a year then they can get 35 years on an engine. So pretty much anyone will get almost a lifetime out of a PT6 engine before it would need an overhaul. An IO-550/520 will need to be overhauled every 11 years (if flown 150 hours a year) and every 17 years if flown 100 hours a year. However, I'm talking strictly hours per year. If you were to be realistic and do it based on NM of flight then the PT6 takes an even larger lead in time before overhaul because it will get you to your destination twice as fast thus you put on half the amount of hours.

4. I have no argument against that.

5. Well, we would have a pilot training course. We would go over every single aspect of the plane and it's safety features as well as what to do and not to do/emergency procedures, etc. But none of this is new. Insurance companies require these very things already for flight of any turboprop on a yearly basis.

So as you can see above, I feel I clearly pointed out how the cost of operation CAN in fact be relatively close.

[gabbett1]

Gabby,

What do you think your going to bring to the market that other aircraft like the Epic or Evolution don't already bring to an already cramped market? Does your engineer have some new manufacturing technique or design feature that is ground breaking? That's what it's going to take to bring your concept to market and make money. Business is about making money, not fulfilling somebodies fantasy. Now I will agree that it takes a certain amount of fantasy to get ideas started but there also has to be a gigantic amount of reality if the venture is going to be a success. A successful aircraft business is NOT one that leaves their customers high and dry several years down the road.

True, there are already airplanes out there that are similar, and it is cramped to some extent. Some of the manufacturing processes will be improved upon to not only reduce build time, but also improve strength by forging one piece instead of gluing two halves together. (although I'm not certain how Lancair and Epic does this process for sure)

The difference is that we feel we will have a leg up on both:

Lancair:
-The Evolution is a great flying airplane, great stall and slow flight handling as well as a very fast airplane. We believe we can maintain those same flight characteristics and speed with the luxury of a little bigger cabin on better or similar fuel specifics
-The entry to the Evolution is not the best. You have to be somewhat of a contortionist to get in and out. With an airstair entry and exits will be much easier.
-There are several areas of drag that we believe we can improve upon that will make our plane fly faster.
-We believe we can bring our product to market quite a bit cheaper (nearly $500k cheaper) because the fact that we are a start up and won't have the overhead that Lancair has. In business sometimes it's easier to be cheap starting from scratch rather than trying to cut the fat.
-We would allow our customers to chose the engine they want, and the avionics they want, and allow them to purchase those items from the location of their choosing, instead of forcing them to buy everything from us (which is what Lancair is currently doing, and they are turning customers away because they get angry).
-We would make our landing gear stout as to not leave lingering questions of it's strength. Also, I would like for it to be able to fly in and out of soft fields.

Epic:
-The Epic is also a very good flying airplane. It has similar speed and a decent amount more range, but at a sacrifice of cost per NM. The Epic burns 66 gph at ~310 kts where we would be ~42 gph at basically the same speed. Those numbers are real differences in cost of flying per nm. 24 gph to be exact which makes the Epic cost ~$120-150/hour more to fly.
-The epic is a $2.3m kit. A whole $1-1.3m more than ours. So, someone has to consider if they want to pay another $1m for a bigger cabin, 200-300 nm more range and $120-150/nm more to operate.
-Fit and finish of the interiors of every Epic I have been in have been poor.

[gabbett1]

As for #1 and #2, size is not important as the input from a consumer survey. No reason to ask potential purchasers what size they think the airplane should be; that stems from the required performance parameters.

As for #3, your potential customers have more than a million dollars ready to drop; if they do, they're likely to be living in a metropolitan area and can just rent or buy a bigger hangar. If the plane has equivalent performance to a Malibu, TBM, or something of that ilk, the form factor won't be an issue. Buyers will expect something the size of these other airplanes. Limiting your design for the one or two who can't change hangars doesn't make sense.

Well, if you recall, I did state in the OP that the interior would be somewhere in size of a PA46, or in other words a Malibu or Meridian.

Restricting performance or settling for inferior handling characterisitics for non-operational considerations often ends in inferior airplanes. The designers of the original DC-4 limited vertical stabilizer height to fit in the hangars of the day; only one was built (and an ugly SOB it was) and it was sold to Japan just prior to WWII. The redesign said, "### the hangars" and produced a good airplane.

I've seen this statement written several times now and I'm not sure why you/others think you would have to sacrifice performance and handling characteristics. Have you ever flown an Evolution? It is fast (320 kts if you install a -42) and it handles extremely well at slow speeds as well as stalls at 61 kts. Plus, our design wouldn't be a whole lot larger than the Evolution (the plane is much larger than I thought it would be). We have no reason to believe that we couldn't accomplish the same thing.

The original Fly Baby prototype didn't have very good pitch stability; the contest rules regarding roadability resulted in restricted horizontal stabilizer width. After the fuel-exhaustion crash, Bowers extended the fuselage to improve pitch stability. And you know, it *still* isn't that great... a 50-year-old legacy of non-operational limitations. Lets us get by without trim systems, at least...

If you *do* limit wingspan to fit in some notional idea of a hangar, it'll impact the low-speed capability of the airplane...higher stall speed, possibly poorer stall characteristics. You can gain some of this back with mechanical devices (Fowler flaps, slats, etc.) but that raises the ultimate cost of the airplane, since the owner has to pay more money for the hired guns to construct those items.

Ron Wanttaja

We would build the airplane with a traditional yoke instead of a joystick. This will allow us to make the ailerons smaller and the flaps larger, allowing us to slow the airplane down more and improving stall characteristics.

[gabbett1]

No one with an ounce of common sense believes they can operate a turbine for near what a B or C costs to operate.

I just demonstrated above that it can be close.