Eurofox vs. Escapade

[[email protected]]

A friend is looking at both of these for a prospective kit purchase.

Eurofox is an Avid derivative and costs much less than the Escapade.

The Escapade claims to be much faster, on the same 80HP Rotax.
Numbers fudged a little maybe?

Anybody here have any experience with either of these?

http://www.eurofox-usa.com/

http://www.justaircraft.com/CMS/

[John]

wrote:

> A friend is looking at both of these for a prospective kit purchase.
>
> Eurofox is an Avid derivative and costs much less than the Escapade.
>
> The Escapade claims to be much faster, on the same 80HP Rotax.
> Numbers fudged a little maybe?
>
> Anybody here have any experience with either of these?
>
> http://www.eurofox-usa.com/
>
> http://www.justaircraft.com/CMS/
Two things I noticed was
1. The eurofox had ~10% longer wingspan and ~14% wingarea
(which makes me wonder how the Escapade has 39% lower stall speed)
2. The Escapade can be made (yes it is kit and euro is assembled) as a
taildragger or tricycle, I know if I was doing specs I'd use the
tail dragger version to gain about 3-5 mph.

So taildragger vs tri gear and shorter smaller chord wing that could be the
difference (don't know bout the stall thing thou). The Escapade kept
switching between the 80 and 100 hp version on it's various specs and also
seems to be in the development state whereas the Eurofox was consistent and
is already availiable in Europe. Cost of about $55 k at current euro
conversions is quite a bit lower than current SLSA's here. Althought I
didn't see any mention of it haveing acheived SLSA status here yet.
John

[John]

John wrote:

> wrote:
>
>> A friend is looking at both of these for a prospective kit purchase.
>>
>> Eurofox is an Avid derivative and costs much less than the Escapade.
>>
>> The Escapade claims to be much faster, on the same 80HP Rotax.
>> Numbers fudged a little maybe?
>>
>> Anybody here have any experience with either of these?
>>
>> http://www.eurofox-usa.com/
>>
>> http://www.justaircraft.com/CMS/
> Two things I noticed was
> 1. The eurofox had ~10% longer wingspan and ~14% wingarea
> (which makes me wonder how the Escapade has 39% lower stall speed)
> 2. The Escapade can be made (yes it is kit and euro is assembled) as a
> taildragger or tricycle, I know if I was doing specs I'd use the
> tail dragger version to gain about 3-5 mph.
>
> So taildragger vs tri gear and shorter smaller chord wing that could be
> the difference (don't know bout the stall thing thou). The Escapade kept
> switching between the 80 and 100 hp version on it's various specs and also
> seems to be in the development state whereas the Eurofox was consistent
> and is already availiable in Europe. Cost of about $55 k at current euro
> conversions is quite a bit lower than current SLSA's here. Althought I
> didn't see any mention of it haveing acheived SLSA status here yet.
> John
$55k for 100hp version

[Jim Carriere]

wrote:
> A friend is looking at both of these for a prospective kit purchase.

I have a suggestion for your friend that is an answer to a question you
didn't exactly ask, but good advice to anyone about to plunk down money
on a kit.

The single best piece of advice I could have got two years ago when I
was in the "research" stage would have been to look hard, very hard into
each kit company's financial health, customer satisfaction (especially
recent builders), and business practices. This is not meant to be a
statement about either of the kits in question, rather it is about all kits.

I wasn't so shrewd before I got ripped off by the now-bankrupt Skystar.
It took me about an hour at the time to think to myself, "They've sold
a lot of kits, been around a long time, that's good enough for me."

Hey, we all make mistakes, hopefully others can learn from them and then
you move on :)

[Jim Carriere]

wrote:
> The Escapade claims to be much faster, on the same 80HP Rotax.
> Numbers fudged a little maybe?

I agree, that seems a little strange.

Then again, I can't find any prop information. Both have three blades
in the pictures, it's safe to assume both use "climb props" (the takeoff
rolls are comparable), umm...

I'd say weight, but both aircraft specs are given at 1232lbs.

The Escapade's smaller wingspan might make a minor top speed increase.

Top speed can gain a few cumulative knots with drag reducing differences
like aerodynamic fairings, "false ribs" (that maintain leading edge
fabric shape), wheel pants, spring gear instead of bungee gear... But
all the things that are evident in the Eurofox pictures and not in the
Escapade.

Yep, a little strange. That's still a big difference.

[Jez]

"John" > wrote in message
...
> wrote:
>
> Two things I noticed was
> 1. The eurofox had ~10% longer wingspan and ~14% wingarea
> (which makes me wonder how the Escapade has 39% lower stall speed)
> 2. The Escapade can be made (yes it is kit and euro is assembled) as a
> taildragger or tricycle, I know if I was doing specs I'd use the
> tail dragger version to gain about 3-5 mph.
>
> So taildragger vs tri gear and shorter smaller chord wing that could be
> the
> difference (don't know bout the stall thing thou). The Escapade kept
> switching between the 80 and 100 hp version on it's various specs and also
> seems to be in the development state whereas the Eurofox was consistent
> and
> is already availiable in Europe. Cost of about $55 k at current euro
> conversions is quite a bit lower than current SLSA's here. Althought I
> didn't see any mention of it haveing acheived SLSA status here yet.
> John
>

The Escapade has been approved to BCAR Section S in the UK for the past
couple of years and is selling well here. It's currently being approved to
CS-VLA at 499kg MTOW and will be available in that version very soon.

See the UK manufacturers website here: www.realityaircraft.com for
accurate, independent, flight test data on performance, straight from the
certification flight test programme. The Escapade is now manufactured here
in the UK, as well as at the Just Aircraft plant, now re-located from Idaho
to South Carolina.

I part designed the Escapade, so may exhibit a slight bias, please feel free
to ignore it..................

[Smitty Two]

In article >,
Jim Carriere > wrote:

> wrote:
> > A friend is looking at both of these for a prospective kit purchase.
>
> I have a suggestion for your friend that is an answer to a question you
> didn't exactly ask, but good advice to anyone about to plunk down money
> on a kit.
>
> The single best piece of advice I could have got two years ago when I
> was in the "research" stage would have been to look hard, very hard into
> each kit company's financial health, customer satisfaction (especially
> recent builders), and business practices. This is not meant to be a
> statement about either of the kits in question, rather it is about all kits.
>
> I wasn't so shrewd before I got ripped off by the now-bankrupt Skystar.
> It took me about an hour at the time to think to myself, "They've sold
> a lot of kits, been around a long time, that's good enough for me."
>
> Hey, we all make mistakes, hopefully others can learn from them and then
> you move on :)

As someone who is very glad, in the end, not to have bought a Kitfox, I
sympathize with your plight and agree with your recommendations, in
theory. But, how would you actually do those things? Are the books of
private companies open for inspection? Are the books of public companies
trustworthy, and do layman know how to interpret them? This is a real
question, not just rhetorical. How *can* we embark an a five year
project with some real assurance that the company will be there all the
way through?

In my case, after considering Skystar for ten years, poring over
literature endlessly, visiting the factory and taking a demo flight, it
came down to this: When I pointed out to them that their "new" website
was positively rife with atrocious writing -- spelling, grammar,
sentence construction, logical flow of ideas, etc. -- they declined to
fix it.

When a company puts out literature and maintains a website, the writing
is all I've got to judge them on. How are they going to write an
instruction manual if they can't construct a sentence in the English
language? First it was awful, then they were complacent about fixing it.
I went somewhere else. Maybe it was just my dumb luck, but then again,
Van's has a great website. It's thorough, well-organized, easy to
navigate, comprehensive, and has a high signal to noise ratio. And
reasonably well written.

[Jim Carriere]

Smitty Two wrote:
> As someone who is very glad, in the end, not to have bought a Kitfox, I
> sympathize with your plight and agree with your recommendations, in
> theory. But, how would you actually do those things? Are the books of
> private companies open for inspection? Are the books of public companies
> trustworthy, and do layman know how to interpret them? This is a real
> question, not just rhetorical. How *can* we embark an a five year
> project with some real assurance that the company will be there all the
> way through?
>
> In my case, after considering Skystar for ten years, poring over
> literature endlessly, visiting the factory and taking a demo flight, it
> came down to this: When I pointed out to them that their "new" website
> was positively rife with atrocious writing -- spelling, grammar,
> sentence construction, logical flow of ideas, etc. -- they declined to
> fix it.
>
> When a company puts out literature and maintains a website, the writing
> is all I've got to judge them on. How are they going to write an
> instruction manual if they can't construct a sentence in the English
> language? First it was awful, then they were complacent about fixing it.
> I went somewhere else. Maybe it was just my dumb luck, but then again,
> Van's has a great website. It's thorough, well-organized, easy to
> navigate, comprehensive, and has a high signal to noise ratio. And
> reasonably well written.

It sounds like... you chose wisely. Do you really mean you are glad not
to have bought a Kitfox, or do you mean not to have bought from Skystar?

All good points. You ask, "How do you actually do these things?" Well...

Buyers need to get specific answers to questions that may not even occur
to them. You can start gathering information about a company using the
net. The standard caveats apply about getting many opinions, reading
between the lines (how people answer and what they don't say can mean
something), going to different sources, and realize some of it will be
hearsay or incorrect.

Most airplanes have online builders groups, you don't have to look hard
to find them. The Kitfox community has an excellent email list
(provided by Matronics), it is archived all the way back to when it grew
out of the old Yahoo group (both were/are archived daily). There were
recent first-hand complaints of problems and less than straight
treatment of customers on the archives before I forked over my money
about two years ago. I just never looked.

Lots of builders put their logs online (pictures, comments, and all).

This newsgroup is also an excellent source of quantity and quality of
expertise and opinion. 'Nuff said.

Then there's the old fashioned way of talking to people. Pretty much
every EAA chapter has a website that lists their members and aircraft.
One or two chapters will be within driving distance. The rest
_probably_ have phone or email...

Magazines will always paint a rosy picture, that is their nature.

About company websites, as much as I hate to admit it (I'm a technical
guy at heart), salesmen and first impressions are important. In
contrast to the Skystar website's poor quality, the kits were generally
very well engineered and documented. Yep, puzzling.

A few specific and pointed questions at current builders and flyers may
either solicit a solid, reassuring "no, of course not" response, or a
suspiciously vague response. Ask the company too. If they don't get
defensive or cagey, that's a good sign. So what kind of questions do
prospective customers ask?

Here is a starting point. My biggest contentions with Skystar are/were:

It was routine practice for components to be on backorder for months,
although I was never told this until after my kit arrived. Again, there
was talk online of long backorders.

I was promised specific months for production and delivery, only to find
out, during a visit to the factory a few weeks prior to delivery, my kit
(already paid for in full) was sold to another customer without my
approval or notification. Again, at the time there was talk on the
email list of major delays in kit delivery, which since makes me believe
"sold to another customer" was a ruse. Several months later a new
person on the email list was told his kit was mistakenly sold to another
customer. Hmmm. He made a lot of the same mistakes I did.


I could go on. I bet you ask questions like this, you'll get some
valuable answers--positive or negative. Like I said, learn from
mistakes and move on. :) The smiley face is because no matter what,
I'm building my own airplane.


PS- the guy who accepted my payment, gave me production and delivery
dates, neglected to tell me about backorders, or tell me when it was
apparently sold out from underneath me is a character named Ed Downs.
Let me rephrase that. He told me it was sold when I asked him face to
face, standing in the factory less than a month before my original
delivery date, whereabouts my soon-to-be-delivered kit was. I still
didn't clue in to the big picture for a while after that.

Hope this helps a few people. Run on sentences and all :)