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Thread: Lancair 360

  1. #11
    rwanttaja's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Infidel View Post
    Yet we must remember; 73% of statistics are generally wrong.
    ...and 95% of them are made up on the spot!

    Ron Wanttaja
    Last edited by rwanttaja; 01-16-2014 at 11:27 AM. Reason: Included typo to show solidarity with Infidel

  2. #12

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    I believe that statistics can be very useful if they are gathered by someone who is not only qualified, but more importantly unbiased. So often statistics, even if true are used by someone who is trying to sell you something, either a used car or something you don't need, or get you to take out a loan on a credit card or vote for their political candidate.

    But, to be specific on our subject, there are factual sources of airplane records. NTSB complies them, among others and AV CONSUMER and AOPA with the excellent NALL report does studies of them. There are airplanes that have shown safety problems, like early Learjets where 20% of them had crashed, and that is not a misprint. Also some problems in the past in Aerostars and Mu2s. Now an "expert", which is often someone who has a financial interest in selling one of these planes, may come up with some good reason to try to explain away the statistics. Sometimes the explanation makes some sense. Diamond 20 has a better safety record than Mu2, early Lear, Cirrus, etc., but pretty obviously part of it is the airplane, ( good stall characteristics) and often it may be the use. The majority of Diamond flights are dual with a CFI and if not at least planned in a training environment., whereas Cirrus, as well as Lancair may be flown cross country and even in imc or worse weather, and of course MU2s of often flown that way. So there is more exposure to weather. However, if you look at accident records of King Airs flown on business trips vs Mu2s flown by professional high time pilots on trips in IMC, one would be foolish not to see that the King Air has a better safety record.

    So what if you want to fly a Cirrus or a Lancair 360 or maybe a P-51? First you can be aware that the first two may not have the same feel of an approach to a stall as other planes. The Lancair is very light on pitch, worse when it is slow, and the Cirrus has spring loading to center the sidestick rather than increased air loads as you add gs to a stall.
    The P-51 has stall warning, but it can be missed in some cases and like a T-6, if you stall it power on and cross controlled it is not as forgiving as a C-172.
    So you can be aware of these caution spots and stay away from them, don't get too low and slow and too many gs and you may be able to fly safely. You can do high end training to be a better pilot particlarly in regards to these areas. But sitting at home and just ignoring statistics doesn't make them go away.
    There are many cases where pilots may accept more risk to fly something that is more rewarding, i. e. like racing at Reno, but they should and do know there is more risk, and they try to train to deal with it.

  3. #13

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    Properly piloted a great aircraft.However, get it wrong low level ( and that could be as high as 1000ft above ground) and you are dead. I have 2 friends and another acquaintance who died when things went wrong. one as a result of an engine failure caused by a maintenance issue.
    Be very careful

    Rob

  4. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by whoop_whoop_pull_up View Post
    I am currently having an internal debate with myself as to whether getting a lancair 360 is too much risk. From what I've read it sounds like a very unforgiving airplane.

    I like the airplane but I am worried that I am getting swayed by the performance figures and not taking to account the airplane flying characteristics, ie high stall speed, possible unrecoverable stalls, etc.

    Any thoughts? I am considering building one btw. Thanks!
    CAFE reports used to be easy to find on the EAA website. Had one on Lancair. Unbiased accurate info on the aircraft they tested. I can't find it right now, somebody will surely pop in with a link for you.

  5. #15

  6. #16
    Thanks everyone I will be attending an eaa meeting and hopefully get some more opinions and thoughts on it. From what I have researched it seems that the higher landing speeds yield a higher fatality rate per accident. However in the lancair series what seems to the trend is not forced landings but rather pilot error( getting too slow and stalling). So if I do go this route I will definitely be doing a lot of dual with a qualified lancair cfi.

    My biggest draw to the lancair is that it fits my mission and my building specs--I want to build a composite airplane.

  7. #17

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    I will offer some non-technical advice. If you aren't sure that an airplane is for you, you have the answer. It is not. Every airplane that I have bought I looked at it and got that "I want it" feeling. Every one. In one case, I was not so warm about a particular ship but after a trial flight, I warmed up more instead of cooling off. Wrote the check. So if you don't look at the Lancair and think that you will be waking up in the morning looking forward to closing the canopy and firing up, look for the airplane will get you fired up.

    A personal airplane is not a lifetime commitment, but it should at least start as something of a love affair.

    Best of luck,

    Wes
    Pitts Special N78PS
    Globe Swift N78041

  8. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by cub builder View Post
    While I'm sure there are those out there that will dispute what I'm going to say here, IMHO, the Lancair 235, 290, 320, and 360 all suffer from similar issues that are fairly common in amateur built planes. They lack sufficient horizontal stabilizer, so tend to be unstable in pitch and are 100% hands on airplanes. That also makes is very easy to overpower the tiny stabilizer with the elevator with very little feedback to the pilot through the controls. That makes the plane very touchy in pitch and more difficult to land than the average plane, including planes that do land in that speed range as the controls get extremely light at slow speeds. It also makes the aircraft more difficult than most to control in an aft CG scenario. Some pilots believe the pitch instability makes the plane feel more sporty.

    The Lancair series was an outgrowth by Lance Neubauer from the KR series, which suffered from the same issues. Lance built a KR-2 first. My KR suffered from the same issues. I flew it 500 hours before I cut the tail off and designed a larger tail for the aircraft, which made it a much more stable machine to fly.

    -CubBuilder
    I agree partially.
    Not all Lancairs are created equal, however. When the MKII tail came out, it dramatically changed the airplane. At the published CG limit it has as much stability margin as a C-172. I thought the RV6 was more sensitive.

  9. #19

    Not all Lancair configurations are the same - in terms of pitch stability

    Quote Originally Posted by cub builder View Post
    While I'm sure there are those out there that will dispute what I'm going to say here, IMHO, the Lancair 235, 290, 320, and 360 all suffer from similar issues that are fairly common in amateur built planes. They lack sufficient horizontal stabilizer, so tend to be unstable in pitch and are 100% hands on airplanes.
    Lancair resolved the pitch stability issues with the MKII horizontal tail. You end up with two entirely different aircraft depending on which horizontal tail is installed. See the link for a side-by-side quantitative comparison of the two stabilizer configuration on the Lancair 360.
    http://www.n91cz.com/Stability/Compa...lity_Study.pdf
    Attached Images Attached Images

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