Plastic planes are fast but landing speed too high

Emily wrote:
P S wrote:
I received some marketing brouchures from one of the best
selling "composite plane" on the market, with an invitation
to take a ride. Well, I was tempted until I found out how high
the Vso is. The plane goes in on final at 80 kts.

Which means, 80 kias is the speed you use for emergency
landing.

snip

I wasn't aware that 80 KIAS was all that fast.

I happen to like composite airframes. A nice set of Fowler flaps can
help slow you down.

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 08:49:24 +0200, Thomas Borchert
wrote:

P,

And if a new pilot questions the safety issues with a Cirrus, that
pilot will
be called a "troll", and be told "flying anything may not be for
him/her".


Tune your reality distortion field as much as you like, but that's not
how it went.

Speaking of safety... I understand that the accident rate for the
SR-22 is about half that of the rest of the GA fleet and for
fatalities they are even better.. Any one have the specific numbers
on that?

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

In article ,
Dylan Smith wrote:

That's the final approach speed for many high performance singles. Even
the Arrow (which isn't really high performance) has a final approach
speed of something like 90mph (around 80 knots). The Bonanza manual,
IIRC recommends 80 knots for a power off landing.

POH says 78 kts for the Piper Turbo Arrow IV. (max gross wt, aft most
allowable cg)

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 12:58:30 -0000, Dylan Smith
wrote:

On 2006-06-18, P S wrote:
I received some marketing brouchures from one of the best
selling "composite plane" on the market, with an invitation
to take a ride. Well, I was tempted until I found out how high
the Vso is. The plane goes in on final at 80 kts.

Which means, 80 kias is the speed you use for emergency
landing.

That's the final approach speed for many high performance singles. Even
the Arrow (which isn't really high performance) has a final approach
speed of something like 90mph (around 80 knots). The Bonanza manual,
IIRC recommends 80 knots for a power off landing.

Yup and it has a relatively light wing loading right in there with the
Cherokee. The 80 knots is to have enough energy to be able to
sucessfully flare and arrest the rate of descent into a nice landing.


If you don't want a final approach speed of 80, fly something slow.

Diamond DA40?

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

On 19 Jun 2006 17:33:01 -0700, "Robert M. Gary"
wrote:


Roger wrote:
Speaking of safety... I understand that the accident rate for the
SR-22 is about half that of the rest of the GA fleet and for
fatalities they are even better.. Any one have the specific numbers
on that?

Gee, that's not what I heard. I heard they have the worst record of the
high performance fleet. The thinking is that there are a lot of 100 hr
pilots flying across the country in these new "safety" machines.

Heard and see...That's about what Cirrus is saying about their fleet
at the training sessions and again I ask, does any one have specific
figures, or a place to find them such as accidents per 100,000 hours
and fatalities. They've only been around about 5 years for the oldest,
but are outselling everything else so there are already a lot of them
out there.

As to the SR-22 if you want insurance you can afford they have a very
serious training program complete with recurrency.

However, for those who want safety and "economy" the Diamond DA40,
featured in this months "Plane&Pilot" has good performance, good fuel
burn, modern cockpit, competes directly with the Piper Archer and
Cessna 172 with better performance, has good handeling
characteristics, descends slower in a full stall than the SR-22 under
a chute (quoting from the article), and has a full glass modern panel.

But to answer the OP's original statement, the DA40 has docile stall
characteristics and a relatively slow approach and landing. Wing
loading is about 17# per sq ft. and with and injected 180HP engine
behind a CS prop it'll maintain close to a 1000 fpm climb to 8000.

Plus they have been selling over a 100 a year stateside.
Cheap it's not, but then neither are the new 172s and Pipers.

If I had the money and were interested in staying with relatively
simple planes this would probably be it.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

-Robert

On 18 Jun 2006 21:07:25 -0700, "P S" wrote:


Roger wrote:
On 17 Jun 2006 22:19:19 -0700, "P S" wrote:

This appears to be a troll, and even though I happen to dislike the
SR-22 I will come to its defense.

Insulting comments ignored.

And what comments were insulting?


I received some marketing brouchures from one of the best
selling "composite plane" on the market, with an invitation
to take a ride. Well, I was tempted until I found out how high
the Vso is. The plane goes in on final at 80 kts.

And?


Which means, 80 kias is the speed you use for emergency
landing.

Actually I fly a Bonanza/Debonair. Engine out, best glide is
120MPH/105 knots. Engine out, landing is about 90 MPH or just shy of
that 80 knots. Seems normal to me. A normal landing, "by the book"
is slower and takes a fair amount of power. At that speed you do not
have enough energy to flare if the engine quits, which at best means a
very hard landing.

Excuse me for my ignorance, but would forced landings on soft farm
lands
cause the plane to nose over at higher speeds ?

Not unless it is *really* soft as in mud or freshly plowed. Landing
on a field is going to be a "soft field" landing. Without power this
gets interesting particularly in planes that land faster without power
than with power. At any rate in the soft field landing the plane is
landing on the mains and the nose is held up as long as there is
enough elevator authority to do so. In the Deb that is between 30 and
40 MPH. I do not know at what speed the SR-22 can no longer hold the
nose gear off the ground.
So, *typically* the plane will not nose over until the speed has
slowed to the point of no longer being able to hold the nose up.
Although uncomfortable this is usually not a terribly dangerous
situation. Certainly there are exceptions.



No wonder pictures after pictures of the wreckages of such
plane look so horrifying. Oh,, it is all pilot errors, since

Ahhh...fiberglass resin burns. It's usually what happens after the
crash that makes them look so bad. Well, that and the parachute cords
do make the fuselage look a bit untidy. OTOH if it hasn't burned it's
quite easy to fix. I think if you read the accident reports that the
pilot probably walked away from that smoldering pile.

It might have been co-incidents, but all the reports I came across on
these planes had fatalities.


the computers onboard have added such unprecendented
situation awareness, so that even incompetent pilots can
fly at ease.

The computer does nothing except make information available. It is up
to the pilot to assemble the relevant and throw away the irrelevant
plus "look out the windows" to create situational awareness.
Situational awareness to what ever level exists only between the ears
of the pilot. To the pilot who has flown old technology all that
information is hidden behind layers of button pushes that have to be
done in the proper order and it takes a while to learn how to access
all that information, let alone put it to use. So it actually
increases the workload greatly until the pilot has had enough time
behind it for the operation to become second nature, or instinctual.

Reasonable viewpoint.



The testmoney's printed in the brouchure are amazing. And they
reflect the intelligence of the owners, as well as the perceived
intelligence of the future buyers by the sales organization.
[This is a negative statement. So please read the previous
statement again, if you didn't get it.]

These are very good airplanes. That they are fast and slippery is not
a detriment, but rather to good engineering. It is up to the pilot to
learn to fly it like the airplane it is.

The CFIs all said that. But that is not substitute for safer landing
characteristics.

This is where we see the tradeoffs between the bottom end of
performance such as trainers and the top end where you have heavier
jets. Basically the more it weighs and the faster it goes the faster
its landing speed. So almost any time you move up in weight and speed
you are going to be giving up something and one of the first to go is
landing speed.

What ever a pilot is flying they have to learn to think in terms that
apply to that airplane. High performance does not come free, but
rather in a form of compromises of which one is higher stall speed and
thus higher landing speeds. You also have to think in terms of time
per distance, not speed. Flying the Deb IFR I have to be thinking
well ahead. If at 7000 feet I need to start my descent nearly 40 miles
out for the VOR approach. In the old Cherokee 180 it was about half
that.




Can anyone share the thoughts on why the 80 kias speed for
emergency landing is not bothersome ? [The chut is for the wife,
now lets hear the reasons for the husband pilot.]

Why would 80 knots be bothersome unless you are trying to land in a
parking lot? Once you move into complex, high performance let alone
multi engine you may find 80 knots is near the bottom end with many
coming down final much faster.

This is why I do not move to "complex" airplanes, with retractable
landing gears. High performance, maybe. But better with similar
landing characteristics as the trainers.

There aren't many that are landed to really be high performance and
still have the landing characteristics of a trainer. Complex OTOH may
even be STOL. Some of those things can land almost unbelievably slow
and in only a couple hundred feet, but they may be quite demanding of
the pilot.

The Bonanza can be landed fairly slow and in short distances even
though it is fast, slippery, and has a retractable landing gear. OTOH
doing so might be considered demanding by some. It is done with lots
of power, a very steep descent, and a slow touch down with a short
roll out and to do it well takes quite a bit of practice. Power out is
90 MPH, but a normal landing is 80 MPH minus 1 MPH for each 100# under
gross so with me and full fuel that is about 74 or 75 MPH or about 65
knots. Vso when light is only 55 MPH or 47 knots. That would make
the book figures for final at 71 MPH or only 62 knots. That is
getting pretty slow for an airplane that weighs a ton and a half at
gross with a Vne of 225 MPH. OTOH that is with one person and not much
fuel.

And... to be truthful, I don't feel proficient enough to land it at
that speed without getting out there and spending a few hours
practicing. :-))


At least for practicing "spot landings", it should be equally easy to
pin-point
the landing spot with the high performance airplane with comparable
landing
distance.


Also, with such view point in mind, these planes should not be targeted
at new pilots. But obviously there is targeted effort to sell these
planes
to the new pilots.

It may appear that way, but if you actually talk to them AND the
insurance companies, planes like the SR-22 are not for the freshly
minted private pilot.

OTOH if you want extremes, I know of one pilot who earned his PPL in a
Glasair III and that makes the SR-22 look like a pussycat. This is a
plane that has a rate of descent at idle that would scare most pilots
the first time they experience it.


Who cares if a plane lands at 50 or 150 IF you have enough runway and
particularly if all else fails you have the BRS? If you dwell on the
negatives then flying anything is not for you.

That is extrapolating too much. There are a couple of single engine
airplanes
that meet the safety requirement for me. I have been urged by people to
look at the new composites. Obviously, the responses so far have
confirmed
what I suspected, that is, it is fine for you if you either think the
engine will
never quit on you, or if it quits, flying it onto the farm lands or
rolling hills
at 80 kts is as safe as gliding at 65 kts and touching down at 40-50
kts.

It depends on what you want. There are new composites that are aimed
at the same performance range as the Cessnas and Pipers. They have
relatively docile handling and fairly slow landing speeds.

If the composite burns easily, it will be even more important to be
able to
glide at slower speeds.



Of course, when you are not good enough to build such a thing,
you tell buyers, "you don't need it".

The chutes are a "last ditch" resort and have saved lives. Odds being
what they are, the purchaser/pilot *isn't* going to need it.

The chutes can only be used at certain altitude, and within certain
range
of airspeeds. But the high stalling speed problem exists with other
composite
planes as well.

But not on those that are aimed at the same market segment as the 172,
or Cherokee.


I don't think these composite planes are not good. They do well
in the better cruise speed, fuel efficiency and removal of the
retractable
landing gears. They do not do well in the forced landing department.

And if a new pilot questions the safety issues with a Cirrus, that
pilot will
be called a "troll", and be told "flying anything may not be for
him/her".

Not really. It's more of a wording and approach that tends to
categorize posts.

Good Luck,

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

So long.


Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

Robert,

Gee, that's not what I heard. I heard they have the worst record of the
high performance fleet.


As I recall, Dick Collins did a comparison between the new C182 and the
SR22, and they came out on a par.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

P S wrote:
I received some marketing brouchures from one of the best
selling "composite plane" on the market, with an invitation
to take a ride. Well, I was tempted until I found out how high
the Vso is. The plane goes in on final at 80 kts.

Which means, 80 kias is the speed you use for emergency
landing.

No wonder pictures after pictures of the wreckages of such
plane look so horrifying. Oh,, it is all pilot errors, since
the computers onboard have added such unprecendented
situation awareness, so that even incompetent pilots can
fly at ease.

The testmoney's printed in the brouchure are amazing. And they
reflect the intelligence of the owners, as well as the perceived
intelligence of the future buyers by the sales organization.
[This is a negative statement. So please read the previous
statement again, if you didn't get it.]

Can anyone share the thoughts on why the 80 kias speed for
emergency landing is not bothersome ? [The chut is for the wife,
now lets hear the reasons for the husband pilot.]

Of course, when you are not good enough to build such a thing,
you tell buyers, "you don't need it".

Your beef isn't really with plastic planes, it is with fast planes.

Monk

On 2006-06-20, Roger wrote:
However, for those who want safety and "economy" the Diamond DA40,
featured in this months "Plane&Pilot" has good performance, good fuel
burn, modern cockpit, competes directly with the Piper Archer and
Cessna 172 with better performance, has good handeling
characteristics, descends slower in a full stall than the SR-22 under
a chute (quoting from the article), and has a full glass modern panel.

I got to fly a DA-40 in 2002. It really is nice - great visibility out
of the cockpit too owing to a generous window area and your position
relative to the wing.

As for performance, it outperformed our club's 200hp Arrow in climb rate
and cruise speed for the loading we had. The other nice thing about it
was essentially "three doors" - the hinged canopy so the front seaters
can board from their own side without having to climb over the seats and
a back door so the back seat passengers don't have to squeeze by the
front seats.

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

From the March 2004 issue of Aviation Safety:

Fatal Accidents/100,000 flight hours:

182S/182T - 1.09
SR20 - 3.91
SR22 - 1.34
DA20-C1 - 0.28
DA40 - 0.0 (not a typo on my part!)
LC-40 - 0.0 (Lancair)


--
Best Regards,
Mike
http://photoshow.comcast.net/mikenoel

'The first rule of intelligent tinkering is save all the pieces.' - Aldo
Leopold
"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
oups.com...

Roger wrote:
Speaking of safety... I understand that the accident rate for the
SR-22 is about half that of the rest of the GA fleet and for
fatalities they are even better.. Any one have the specific numbers
on that?

Gee, that's not what I heard. I heard they have the worst record of the
high performance fleet. The thinking is that there are a lot of 100 hr
pilots flying across the country in these new "safety" machines.

-Robert