Hummer vs Skylane

I just realized that my Skylane gets about the same gas mileage as a Hummer.
I burn about 13gal per hour and go about 130 knots... 10nm per gallon, or
11.5 miles per gallon. Now granted I am going in a straight line, and 3
times as fast, but still that is awful mileage. Now my old Cessna 140 did
a lot better, 105mph at 5gph... more like about 20 miles per gallon.

Can anyone boast better mileage?

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005 10:39:59 GMT, "Guy Byars"
wrote:

I just realized that my Skylane gets about the same gas mileage as a Hummer.
I burn about 13gal per hour and go about 130 knots... 10nm per gallon, or
11.5 miles per gallon. Now granted I am going in a straight line, and 3
times as fast, but still that is awful mileage. Now my old Cessna 140 did
a lot better, 105mph at 5gph... more like about 20 miles per gallon.

My 5.9L Durango gets about 13.5 avg statute mpg (mix of hwy + city).
My PA28-180 gets about 145 statute mph on 10gph = 14.5mpg, so the
plane gets better mileage than the truck. Too bad 100LL is $1.00
more expensive than 87 octane. (I just paid $4.04 last week, ouch).

Drag is proportional to speed squared, so the faster you go - the more
difficult it is to maintain a good mpg.

Having said this, many of the glass homebuilts have impressive drag
coefficients and as a result, fly fast on little gas. The Quickie
Q200 and Super Pulsar are both examples of planes that can approach
180mph on 6gph = 30mpg.

-Nathan

At the present price of auto gas 2.20/gal and Avgas $2.91/gal flying to
work is about a wash over driving. I save and hour a day.
Cost for fly Fuel only $17.46. Cost to drive Fuel only $14.14.
I fly to work whenever possible.
Michelle

Guy Byars wrote:

I just realized that my Skylane gets about the same gas mileage as a Hummer.
I burn about 13gal per hour and go about 130 knots... 10nm per gallon, or
11.5 miles per gallon. Now granted I am going in a straight line, and 3
times as fast, but still that is awful mileage. Now my old Cessna 140 did
a lot better, 105mph at 5gph... more like about 20 miles per gallon.

Can anyone boast better mileage?

Guy Byars wrote:
I just realized that my Skylane gets about the same gas mileage as a Hummer.
I burn about 13gal per hour and go about 130 knots... 10nm per gallon, or
11.5 miles per gallon. Now granted I am going in a straight line, and 3
times as fast, but still that is awful mileage. Now my old Cessna 140 did
a lot better, 105mph at 5gph... more like about 20 miles per gallon.

But the 182 looks good while converting all that money to noise. The
Hummer is a god awful looking contraption. More befitting a low wing
driver.

My low wing Arrow gets about 14mpg at 75%, 100 ROP, 175 mph. If I'm
willing to accept 150 and run LOP, I can get it all the way up to 16
mpg. But I don't own a car.

The best solution is always to have tailwinds.

Aaron Coolidge wrote:

My car mechanic's speedboat gets 1 MPG.

Course nautical miles are longer than statue miles...

Not that, that helps much...

On 14-Jul-2005, "Paul kgyy" wrote:

My low wing Arrow gets about 14mpg at 75%, 100 ROP, 175 mph. If I'm
willing to accept 150 and run LOP, I can get it all the way up to 16
mpg.

175 mph = 152 kts. I presume you have a Turbo Arrow, since the top cruise
speed (75%) for a normally aspirated version is around 141 kts.

Our normally aspirated Arrow IV cruises at 135 kts, 65%, 9.4 gph (just LOP)
at around 8000 ft. That works out to 16.5 statute mpg. Out of curiosity, I
recently compared fuel consumption for an extended XC with what my Dodge
Caravan (which gets about 22 mpg highway) would have consumed for the same
trip by Interstate highways. The numbers came out pretty close: 199 gallons
of avgas for the Arrow vs. 187 gallons of mogas for the Dodge. The kicker
is that the round-trip highway mileage would have been 4134 sm compared to
3515 great circle sm.

Yes, the avgas cost maybe $120 or so more than the mogas would have, but in
the Arrow all of the legs between destinations were less than a day, while
by car I would have had to pay for several nights' lodging on the way. And,
I figure my time is worth more than the few pennies per mile extra it costs
to get there in one third the time (or less) by air.
--
-Elliott Drucker

On 7/14/2005 08:54, wrote:

On 14-Jul-2005, "Paul kgyy" wrote:

My low wing Arrow gets about 14mpg at 75%, 100 ROP, 175 mph. If I'm
willing to accept 150 and run LOP, I can get it all the way up to 16
mpg.

175 mph = 152 kts. I presume you have a Turbo Arrow, since the top cruise
speed (75%) for a normally aspirated version is around 141 kts.

Our normally aspirated Arrow IV cruises at 135 kts, 65%, 9.4 gph (just LOP)
at around 8000 ft. That works out to 16.5 statute mpg. Out of curiosity, I
recently compared fuel consumption for an extended XC with what my Dodge
Caravan (which gets about 22 mpg highway) would have consumed for the same
trip by Interstate highways. The numbers came out pretty close: 199 gallons
of avgas for the Arrow vs. 187 gallons of mogas for the Dodge. The kicker
is that the round-trip highway mileage would have been 4134 sm compared to
3515 great circle sm.

Yes, the avgas cost maybe $120 or so more than the mogas would have, but in
the Arrow all of the legs between destinations were less than a day, while
by car I would have had to pay for several nights' lodging on the way. And,
I figure my time is worth more than the few pennies per mile extra it costs
to get there in one third the time (or less) by air.

Plus ... you're flying rather than driving! ;-)

.... a bargain at twice the cost

--
Mark Hansen, PP-ASEL, Instrument Student
Sacramento, CA

IMHO the H1 Hummer looks good but the H2 does not.

Mike
MU-2


"Newps" wrote in message
...


Guy Byars wrote:
I just realized that my Skylane gets about the same gas mileage as a
Hummer.
I burn about 13gal per hour and go about 130 knots... 10nm per gallon, or
11.5 miles per gallon. Now granted I am going in a straight line, and 3
times as fast, but still that is awful mileage. Now my old Cessna 140
did
a lot better, 105mph at 5gph... more like about 20 miles per gallon.

But the 182 looks good while converting all that money to noise. The
Hummer is a god awful looking contraption. More befitting a low wing
driver.

I use a cost per mile for comparison...I get about 320 sm in the car for
a fill-up of about $31.50 or a bit over 10 cents/mile. In the cherokee 180
best guess always depends on the winds but let's assume 120 sm (yes, statute
miles -- similar comparisons and such) at 8 gph. I'm paying $3.00/gal
so that's $24/hr or $24/120 sm. which works out to 20 cents/mile.

So it costs double to fly as to drive, assuming straight line.

But what isn't included in here is cost of my time. For example, a day-trip
from Denver to Sante Fe (or Taos) is not practical in a car but
perfectly doable in the cherokee.