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Thread: Aviatinon Spending and the Economy

  1. #31
    rwanttaja's Avatar
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    Aviation Spending and the Economy

    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Blum View Post
    If everything is so bleak (and has been for 40 years), why are you (and others on this forum) still involved?
    Primary land transportation system for thousands of years was the horse. Either ridden by itself, or hitched to a mechanism that allowed it to pull thousands of pounds of wagon and material.

    A bit over a hundred years ago, the horse became obsolete. The internal combustion engine turned out to be a far superior basis for human transport.

    So...did horses disappear? Are they viewable only in zoos?

    Of course not. They became recreational rides; people don't ride them/hitch them to wagons for serious transportation, but they do it just for the fun of it.

    Hmmmm... "recreational rides". Remind you of any Experimental Aircraft Associations you know of?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Blum View Post
    To borrow a little from Ken Blanchard, "Our cheese has moved." Unless we go in search of new cheese, we will perish. Aviation today is UAVs, drones, quadcopters, etc. Why aren't we capitalizing on these technologies? Everything that is currently being accomplished by these vehicles can also be safely accomplished by manned vehicles, too. .. and more efficiently.
    Ohhh, my old soapbox about how General Aviation needs to evolve. Lemme brush some Duz flakes off the top before I step up and repeat what I've been saying on various forums for years.

    Why doesn't the average citizen like General Aviation? There are probably two major reasons:

    1. It's dangerous, and
    2. It requires learning an esoteric skill many people are afraid of.

    (#3 is that it's expensive, but that's a market thing. Make it popular again, and prices will go down.)

    The key thing is that #1 and #2 are related. Take a simple, classic airplane like the Cessna 172. About 72% of the accidents are due to pilot error. 60% are plain mistakes at the controls (pilot miscontrol), and the other 12% are judgement problems (running out of fuel, VFR into IMC, etc.).

    Oddly enough, the blame can be laid at one simple, low cost component: The 1/8" aviation control cable.

    114 years after the Wright brothers, we're STILL controlling the airplanes the same way they did: By physical manipulation of aircraft surfaces to make the plane move in the direction the pilot thinks he wants. It's idiotic. We have self-driving cars, now...why not self-flying airplanes? Sever the damn control cables and put a computer to work. Why force an airplane operator to know how to fly coordinated turns, and achieve a target airspeed and glide angle, and manage their fuel, and fiddle with the mixture and carb heat, and a myriad other things that have NOTHING TO DO with the desire to travel from point A to point B? A computer could do that far better.

    Give the operator a control screen for them to tell the plane where to go, and let the plane go there. Give the owner a little tiller if you want, to let them drive the plane on the ground. But once they tell the plane to fly, it should be able to find the active runway, take off, and head to the destination. Geeze, we're all putting ADS-B systems on our planes, so traffic avoidance is simplified.

    Put a CAPS onboard, and let the computer activate it if it detects a safety issue. Give the occupants a big red handle, too, so they can pop the chute if they're scared. Winds too strong to land? Let the computer fly the plane over to an area safe for a CAPS descent, and activate it at the right time.

    IFR conditions? Ain't gonna scare the computer. Running out of gas? The computer won't let you. No more stalling, no more spinning, no more undershooting, no more forgetting to lower the landing gear.

    That's not flying, you say? That's not being a pilot?

    Well, yes, that's true. But remember, we're not talking recreation, here. We're talking what aviation was originally designed to do...provide aerial transportation. Get human error out of the loop, and you'll eliminate a ton of accidents. The increased safety will get more interest, as will the ability to fly above the traffic.

    Nothing prevents hard-case guys from continuing to manually fly their Fly Babies, Nieuports, and RVs.... just like thousands of citizens spend their leisure going out the saddle up ol' Dobbin for a quick canter through the park.

    Ron "Come on, Concorde!" Wanttaja

  2. #32

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    Complete Agreement

    I completely agree with you (Ron W. #1). We could even make your Fly Baby the prototype. Let's find a US investor and do this! Seriously!

    Ron "I'm (all but financially) capable of making this happen" Blum

  3. #33

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    The Flybaby won the EAA design contest partly to promote folding wings. I would rather trailer it to Oshkosh with my air conditioned car on I -90 at 75-80 mph than fly it in the turbulence that would kill me after 4 hours.
    Flying for useful transportation has only worked for me about 3 times in 43 years of recreational aircraft ownership.

  4. #34

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    Agree with Bill, too

    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Berson View Post
    I would rather trailer it [my Fly Baby] to Oshkosh with my air conditioned car on I -90 at 75-80 mph than fly it in the turbulence that would kill me after 4 hours.
    Yes! Exactly! The "Fly Baby" (although a great airplane ... I have many friends that love theirs) is not designed for long distance transportation It would however make for great recreational transportation in an area like Wichita, where you could fly it to 5, 6, 7 airports on a weekend day to check out what everyone else is doing (including giving you free burgers just for flying in). You couldn't do that in a car.

    I also have a friend with an Air Bike. He has flown it from Derby, KS (just south of Wichita) to Oshkosh at least a couple times. When I mention that it would be less expensive to fly a C182, he laughs and tells me his hourly fuel burn rate. But, he's not looking at the number of hours it takes him to get there ... the C182 is more economical (especially if there is any wind ... and we are in Kansas).

    As Charlie Johnson (former Cessna COO and CEO, at Bye Aerospace now, I believe) used to say, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've already got." Exactly.

    We have to do something different. Our cheese has moved. Let's go find it!

    (Thinking out loud ... in an online forum). Would you guys be interested in an Oshkosh forum on this topic if I put one together?

    Thanks,
    Ron

  5. #35
    rwanttaja's Avatar
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    Aviation Spending and the Economy

    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Berson View Post
    The Flybaby won the EAA design contest partly to promote folding wings. I would rather trailer it to Oshkosh with my air conditioned car on I -90 at 75-80 mph than fly it in the turbulence that would kill me after 4 hours.
    For the 20th anniversary of the Fly Baby's win, Pete Bowers offered to let Chapter 26 use N500F as a club airplane if they restored it. Chapter members flew it to Oshkosh in 1982 for the 20th, and in 1987 for the 25th anniversary. Four chapter members did the flying...one there, one back, for each trip.

    None of those guys who flew the airplane on those trips flew it again, other than one or two minor flights. That ~1300 mile flight, in an open cockpit sitting on the most brutal aircraft seat ever designed, cured them of interest in the airplane.

    Been flying one Fly Baby or the other for thirty years now, and *I* wouldn't want to take that trip...even with the (slightly) more comfortable seat in my plane.

    It's something to consider when designing future personal air transportation. Folks have a much higher standard of comfort now, when it comes to transportation. Wasn't much to compare between auto and aircraft comfort in 1920, but the bar is much, much higher now. This, of course, reduces available payload and makes it tougher to produce a viable machine.


    Ron Wanttaja
    Last edited by rwanttaja; 12-05-2017 at 12:30 PM.

  6. #36

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    Ron Blum,
    I always like new forums. Let me know if want help with a forum.

  7. #37

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Berson View Post
    Ron Blum,
    I always like new forums. Let me know if want help with a forum.
    (with an email address) I’ll throw a PowerPoint by you early in the new year. You have me thinking ... and excited! Thanks!

  8. #38

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    new employment figures are out and positive, job growth goes back, I think 4 years of positive figures

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