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Pipistrel Panthera (combined thread)

with Avgas you rely on ONE supplier and ONE refinery for Europe

I am pretty sure that's not correct, but would need to do some digging to prove it.

The TEL additive does have very few makers though.

Diesels will make it to be a big independent engine market force one day, but it won't be anytime soon.

As regards the Austro engine, if I was an airframe manufacturer I would be extremely wary of buying an engine from a competing airframe maker, and especially from Diamond who "made the best of their warranty options" when the "Thielert business" blew up.

I know the US engine makers are hardly a paragon of business ethics either, but if you are say Continental and you are selling a diesel to several different aircraft makers, you are going to have to behave very differently if there is some issue.

Club Med? By the time I heard of the much more relevant 18-30 Club and saw pictures of their wet t-shirt competitions, I was too old to go on one

A TB20 with the SMA engine would be a great airplane

One had been flying for many years. It is currently in France somewhere, AFAIK. Some work on it was done by Britten-Norman on the Isle of Wight, presumably under contract to Socata - it was seen in their factory on the IOW. Socata abandoned the project c. 10 years ago, for various reasons, some of which I understand were to do with the severe vibration. If you fly in a DA42 you see the engine moves around by a massive amount; obviously they used very "floppy" engine mounts. I have some photos of the Socata-SMA project, somewhere...

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Silvaire,

That's a very good point but you'll pay for it in complexity and (non-fuel) cost. It's a case of being forced into diesels by government. On their own merits, at current crude oil prices, with current technology diesels are worse.

Well, yes and no. Yes because there is a move to ban Avgas (in the US certainly) and hindering of Mogas as a fuel, but no becasue Avgas simply makes no business case for the refineries. We had a guy from the biggest importer here at a meeting not too long ago and he sais the infrastructure cost for Avgas is simply crazy. It is the only leaded fuel they make, they have to keep open an outdated structure to do it and they need special trucks to ship it, all that for a quantity they say does not merit the income. Basically, if there was no cross-sponsoring, he said Avgas would have to cost $20 a gallon today....

I am in the US because of the last round of nonsensical anti-market nonsense, early 70s style. It won't work now, just as it didn't work then. I joint you in throwing up :-)

I hear you and I have been thinking of doing the same for years. Too late for me now, but I have to admit I was too naive to believe that Europe could ever go that far. By now however, even emigration is no longer a too attractive option seeing as things go down the drain just about everywhere. Europe however seems really determined to show the world how socialism should have worked.... they will fall on their faces but the price for this wisdom will be quite heavy.

4:15 AM is an early riser in my book, Mr Mooney. Benjamin Franklin would be proud :-)

LOL, well, I am not sure if he would, as I was on night shift :)

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Peter,

I am pretty sure that's not correct, but would need to do some digging to prove it.

We were told that all fuel companies take their Avgas from a single refinery in France, which is the only one to retain the capability of making it.

As regards the Austro engine, if I was an airframe manufacturer I would be extremely wary of buying an engine from a competing airframe maker, and especially from Diamond who "made the best of their warranty options" when the "Thielert business" blew up.

Well, actually we all were expecting Diamond to fall when Thielert went bankrupt. They were in a really bad situation and had they not decided even before to develop their own engine and were in the middle of development, they might have folded. I remember talking to Christian Dries during that time and it took all they could muster and a lot of improvisation to survive this.

As far as I know, Austroengine have always been open to the OEM market but simply can't keep up production so far in order to supply more than Diamond takes up. Centurion, the former Thielert, are now out of bancruptcy and will work agressively on the mods market. Had their engine been then what it is now and had they followed a less agressive but viable business plan, Diesel would not have lost 10 years and confidence as it did.

I agree with Achim and others that the Continental / SMA Deal will probably make a huge difference in the OEM and aftermarket mod availability. Incidently, I was talking today with an engineer here in Switzerland who also works for a Cessna dealership and Continental seem to be saying that they will launch a pretty agressive campaign for the TD300 engine as a direct replacement for the O360 to IO 360 line of products of both Lycoming and Continental. Frankly, had this option been available when my O360 needed its big overhaul, I'd probably gone for it.

If you fly in a DA42 you see the engine moves around by a massive amount; obviously they used very "floppy" engine mounts. I have some photos of the Socata-SMA project, somewhere...

Interesting. I'd be surprised if SMA has done nothing in terms of product development in 10 years. I have flown in both the DA42 and DA40 and vibration wise, I did not notice anything I'd not see in Avgas powered planes. Also, these use Thielerts and in one case, Austroengine. The Austroengine was much quieter and less vibrating than the Thielert ones.

I know one guy operating a SMA 182 in a paradrop club, they are full of praise. They also had a Thielert driven Robin which they sold. What I hear from DA42 operators here at ZRH is that they are very happy with the current state of things, particularly those who upgraded to the Austro Engine but also those who fly with the Centurion 2.0.

We have to face it, Avgas is on the way out. We have too many opponents to it, nobody other than the GA owners themselves really want to keep it. So if politicians demand for the demise of this the last of the leaded fuels, fuel companies will comply with a sigh of relief. If there is a replacement which fully can replace it also for high power engines, fine, if not, we will have a huge problem if the Diesel OEM's do not come true.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

As I think I've said, I don't doubt that one day diesels will be an important force.

But in this business there are multiple potential fish to fry and one cannot fry them all concurrently.

For example there is EASA FCL and EASA's politically motivated shafting of FAA licensed pilots. These people (the bulk of Europe's IFR community) need to make a decision on what to do about 2014. The cost will depend on whether the CBM IR arrives, its exact form, but it will never be less than €thousands because - taking the very best scenario - some "examiner-specific" training will be required. The worst case is the full current JAA IR conversion route. Unsuprisingly, almost nobody is doing anything. I did mine because I had a bit of time and did not want to take any risk on losing the 15hr conversion route post-2012, but I underestimated the effort too. The exams were not hard but were a load of utter shite.

The supposed demise of avgas is another one. How much money are you willing to throw at this, at some option which has had only a few years in the market (and most of whose adopters will keep their mouth shut about any problems because they don't want to screw their dealer warranty / relationship) when actually you can still get avgas, and the cost of any conversion is so high that not doing it will keep you in avgas for much longer than the rest of your life? For a mere €150k or so you can buy a mint condition TB20 which at ~1350nm has enough range to go anywhere in Europe. And enough range to overfly any country where you don't want to land. I can't be bothered to even worry about avgas... So what if Dubrovnik is the last avgas before Corfu... that's only 100-200nm, and you can fly from the very top of Croatia all the way to the far end of Crete nonstop, with avgas at both ends and halfway.

EASA's screwing around with maintenance is another one. There are solutions to that, too. The bottom line is that those who take their plane to the dealer for a service and leave the key and a blank signed cheque on the seat, are going to get shafted even more than they always used to get shafted.

it took all they could muster and a lot of improvisation to survive this

I think the customers holding the baby at the time of that "improvisation" were wishing they bought a used but fairly nice TBM700, as it would have cost them less.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Avgas simply makes no business case for the refineries.

I am paying $4.20/gallon for unleaded auto fuel, and $5.50 or so for Avgas. That's about 0.26 Euro per liter more for Avgas, and its available at every attended airport within thousands of miles. Apparently the business case is not too bad. The cost and supply issues with AVGAS in Europe are the creation of governments which are basically opposed to GA developing within their borders. In the US, which for that reason will continue to be the predominant market for GA engines, there is no reasonable scenario in which 100LL Avgas will be 'banned' until it is already a non-issue because of unleaded Avgas availability.

In the short term, say the next 15-20 years, its clear to me that the world market for aero-engines will be predominantly gasoline engines. Diesels will slowly, slowly improve (meaning ownership costs coming down) during that period. After the early adopters during that period have paid for development, forced by their governments to do so, I think diesels could perhaps become a economically viable competitor to avgas engines in the US... which will by that time have been long since running on unleaded fuel. The latter factor could make diesels a specialty/overseas item forever.

So I think if if you really do need a turbo diesel so you can buy and burn kerosene in your light aircraft, be prepared to pay more for it due to complexity and limited market.

Don't forget that small aircrafts is a half dead industry in the US, too. If this industry is ever to see substantial growth, it will be in the developing countries. Not the worst thing for Europe to have the right products and technology to supply to those markets. The 1950s engines with leaded fuel are not going to cut it.

Don't forget that small aircrafts is a half dead industry in the US, too. If this industry is ever to see substantial growth, it will be in the developing countries. Not the worst thing for Europe to have the right products and technology to supply to those markets. The 1950s engines with leaded fuel are not going to cut it.

The number of pilots in the US is declining but in my local area we have maybe 1500 GA operations per day and new aircraft (homebuilts) are flying regularly. I think based on the current numbers and the policies of governments worldwide, North America will continue to be the predominant market for GA engines for the foreseeable future. That market will be buying the cheapest thing going, not the thing that best matches the problems in somebody else's small overseas market.

Repressive third world countries becoming big GA markets seems a bit dubious to me, a pipe dream.

Repressive third world countries becoming big GA markets seems a bit dubious to me, a pipe dream.

Same thing used to said about cars in developing markets. BTW, not all developing counties are repressive or in the third world.

That said, I am not sure GA growth is likely in those markets as cheaper air travel and technology may mean that the groundswell of interest is never able to develop.

EGTK Oxford

That said, I am not sure GA growth is likely in those markets as cheaper air travel and technology may mean that the groundswell of interest is never able to develop.

I agree.

I'm sure there's a developing country that isn't basically repressive to General Aviation, but my limited experience prevents me from thinking of one :-) Some South American countries are kind of OK.

Yes; I don't think anybody knows which way China is going to go.

It may turn out to have a "great future" for a very long time

GA represents one of the greatest liberal ideas and that place isn't going to be ready for that for a long time.

When I lived in Czechoslovakia (1957-1969) only the most trusted Communist Party creeps, crawlers and brown-nosers were trusted to go anywhere near GA, not least because it was trivial to escape the country that way. The head of the uranium mines, Karel Bocek, flew a Morava twin around the place, but funnily enough even he was not trustworthy enough and he escaped c. 1972.

OTOH, China has a casual attitude to risk (commercial and human) and they may well embrace new technology readily.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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