Silvaire wrote:
In the US, there is a clear motivation to maintain an Experimental category, to allow risk taking by individuals who choose to take risks in the pursuit of a personal goal, and that the category like any other regulated by written regulations.
Obviously but I doubt that it has much to do with personal risk management but with the simple fact that certified aviation has become too expensive and experimental is not. I would think that is the major drive behind it.
Don’t get me wrong. I do not wish for the FAA to do anything which makes flying even more expensive, on the contrary. My point is, that if the rules under which the experimental class is alowed to fly is good enough for them, then why does the gap betwen them and certified have to be so horrendous.
The difference between say a Columbia 400 (now Corvalis) and a Lancair 4 is not so extreme that it warrants the difference in price tag. All that causes this are the certification processes and other costs involved plus some additional labour at the factory to finish the product, as well as the fact that they have to be equipped with only TSO standard avionics. Which brings up the next thing: The experimental Garmin EFIS costs a fraction of the mostly identical certified one. Same reason.
For me, that is a money making scam and nothing else. Either something is airworthy or not. If so, it should be allowed to fly, regardless of who pretends to build it, or not. I do not see the escape to experimental something desirable but a sign that the certification rules have become excessive and unattainable for most manufacturers. THAT is what needs to change. Then Lancair, Evolution and the others will finally be able to produce finished airplanes for a proper price and maybe even the established makers could finally get a new design certified without bancrupting themselfs or being forced to sell out to China.
The difference between say a Columbia 400 (now Corvalis) and a Lancair 4 is not so extreme that it warrants the difference in price tag
I am not suggesting that a new C400, SR22, etc is good value for money but you really need to see the two close-up… and compare. I have never flown a Lancair IV so can’t suggest you should try that too, but based on all I have heard, there is no comparison either except when going very fast straight ahead, and that is achieved by not having to meet the low speed regime requirements 
that is a money making scam and nothing else
Actually it is the price paid for the ICAO-sponsored protection of flight privileges. I am also not suggesting this delivers value for money, but it is what we have. In the USA, this doesn’t matter, but in Europe it does, very much so (to most pilots).
Those are the two options….
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I doubt that it has much to do with personal risk management but with the simple fact that certified aviation has become too expensive and experimental is not. I would think that is the major drive behind it.
The FAA A-AB regulations have been in place with minor tweaks since the early 1950s when certification was simple, and the intent of E-AB has never changed. People like Steve Wittman and Paul Poberezny were individual experimenters, fast developers and measured risk takers, and they were ones who successfully lobbied for the FAA regulations still in place today. Wittman once tested a new wing design by flying with different wings on each side of the plane…. he didn’t want to wait until he had two of the new design.
You should fly in my friend’s Wittman Tailwind at 200 mph IAS and then tell me if you think a plane just like his should be on the retail market It’s a nice plane but based on the non-existent control harmony my vote is no Enhancing control harmony does not make a flying box go faster. The Tailwind was in any case a very popular E-AB in the 1950s through 70s, about 350 built.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Either something is airworthy or not. If so, it should be allowed to fly, regardless of who pretends to build it, or not.
Again, the FAA, the regulators who work for FAA, and everybody who builds an E-AB aircraft under FAA rules disagrees with you – the category does not provide guaranteed design quality and the builder verifies the design quality, to his own standards only, via flight test. The very intent of the E-AB category is to promote individuals building and flying designs that have not been proven, at their own risk.
Regulations aside, I think what’s happening with the more popular kits over time is a perfectly natural thing – after 100 years (more actually) people have figured out, in general, how to design a light plane. As a result, certification starts to lose its value and with E-AB kit built planes it’s replaced by the experience accumulated by the early builders of a type, and a bit of development done on something that was basically OK without certification in the first place.
Peter and M_D, you sound like two old bureaucrats Certification means a “mass produced” aircraft, designed, produced and maintained according to the same certification regime. That regime also include some stuff about performance and handling, but that has nothing to do with airworthiness. Airworthiness itself is not a synonym to being certified, nor does it mean conformity to some performance and handling characteristics. Performance and handling are exclusively a part of the certification regime. Airworthiness has a much broader scope.
Airworthiness of a certified aircraft only means conformity to the type plus any STCs, – and – that it’s “fit to fly” (actually can be flown, is in working condition regarding wear and tear, corrosion etc). That’s it.
Airworthiness of an experimental aircraft cannot mean conformity to a type, because there are no type certificate. Does it have to be “fit to fly”? of course. But that is also it in this regard. “Fit to fly” however, usually include at least 25 h (sometimes more, sometimes less) of test flying to determine this “fitness”, but those tests do not include to find out if the aircraft handling confirms to the standards of a certified aircraft. That would be insane, and totally irrelevant, because it is not designed and made in accordance to those standards. This doesn’t mean that lots of kit manufacturers design the aircraft so they behave “normal”, but really, it is irrelevant regarding airworthiness. The authorities may also have a say in this though, usually they have, because they eventually issue the C of A proving the aircraft is indeed airworthy in their eyes. The popular kits are typically easy to fly with great performance.
The only relevant thing really, with certified aircraft, is that they are in compliance with ICAO. This will make international operation a tiny bit easier.
you sound like two old bureaucrats
That may be but I also see aviation from the wider perspective of flying somewhat outside my own country… I would have struggled massively to get so much value out of flying as I have if I was flying a homebuilt. And I don’t think I am alone. The travel pattern (“mission profile”) is very obvious both from knowing many of the pilots and from e.g. FR24. Many previous threads, too. Of course they are exceptions and they post on the forums.
Peter wrote:
That doesn’t actually happen under VFR if you have a reasonably high performance plane (say a TB20 or above) because you just climb VMC on top.
Hmmm, I was told that there is no “VFR on top” here in Europe…
Clearly, it is a great advantage to have (flown it in the US and enjoyed it), just received wrong info perhaps?
Mooney_Driver wrote:
For me, that is a money making scam and nothing else. Either something is airworthy or not.
I think you might be surprised that a lot of pilots/engineers in the US just love to fly. Some of them make an airframe for themselves, and then their friends ask if they can have the design. Then that snowballs, and before long, it is a business. They didn’t intend it that way, it just happened.
A lot of progress is made through the experimental category. Rutan’s designs wouldn’t have been possible without it.
I’d say the Long-Eze is an incredibly safe aircraft (the cabin is basically layer after layer of solid composite… never heard of one breaking up, except for a nose-dive, and even then it only cracked), even though it is also inherently a little trickier to fly than Cessna 172.
I’d wager that without the experimental category, and the kits, composite aircraft might not actually be flying today in certified designs.
It was groundbreaking work by a group of experimenters who utilized th stuff and demonstrated its capabilities.
So, yes, there’s more risk involved (thus the reason one must label the entry of the aircraft with large ’"EXPERIMENTAL" lettering), but my experience of the US aviation community is that it is made up of more enthusiasts than entrepreneurs.
They do it because they love it.
Vans makes great aircraft because he loves designing them.
Making that available to other people is brilliant, and makes the airplanes even safer through feedback and community.
For many years, the UK and I believe Ireland had a “sight of surface” requirement (a restriction on the UK or Irish issued license, thus active worldwide) for VFR but that ended c. 2012. It was also not present if the pilot held the IMC Rating or the IR.
Peter wrote:
For many years, the UK and I believe Ireland had a “sight of surface” requirement (a restriction on the UK or Irish issued license, thus active worldwide) for VFR but that ended c. 2012. It was also not present if the pilot held the IMC Rating or the IR.
You’re making my day.
Keep talking, I’m listening!
I take back my comment about hangaring 4-6mos a year.
VFR on top makes a lot possible (given cloud breaks)
Mooney_Driver wrote:
We know that but it is not relevant to the rest of Europe
Should I really care? I live where I live. I think Silvaire put it very nicely up there when he wrote “What I’m saying quite specifically is that I think people engaging in legal activity in the US would not greatly value the critical and moralistic opinion of people in countries far away, where their activity would be vastly more constrained”
Peter wrote:
That may be but I also see aviation from the wider perspective of flying somewhat outside my own country…
The truth is you have only experienced certified aviation – and – you are flying a foreign registered aircraft (N-reg with much more practical and humane maintenance regime) on the “motorways” of the heart of Europe’s EASA-land, on autopilot, where snow, cold, darkness, terrain and real storms are no concern 99% of the time. (what once was EASA-land, who knows how things goes…) Translating this to any other everyday context, and you would easily be called narrow minded and hypocritical. Someone would even call it elitist, a faint scent of “SkyGod”, but I wouldn’t go that far (just saying, don’t necessarily mean it, all things considered)
I mean, we all got what we got, and we deal with it as best as we can. Lucky for me we got a very nice experimental regime (if nothing else), and very few self proclaimed PPL “aviation moralist” defending the “virtues” of more bureaucracy.
The truth is you have only experienced certified aviation – and – you are flying a foreign registered aircraft (N-reg with much more practical and humane maintenance regime) on the “motorways” of the heart of Europe’s EASA-land, on autopilot, where snow, cold, darkness, terrain and real storms are no concern 99% of the time
Someone would even call it elitist, a faint scent of “SkyGod”, but I wouldn’t go that far (just saying, don’t necessarily mean it, all things considered)
Fortunately, LeSving, you know very little about IFR in a light aircraft and you know even less about where and how I fly.
For example my longest trips, e.g. EGKA-LGST (via 1 or 2 stops) were done both VFR and IFR. I have landed at over 150 different airports around Europe.
But so long as you keep flying inside Norway and always make sure the cloudbase is at least 2000ft above the rocks, you will be just fine and many here will continue to enjoy your contributions
I am all in favour of the homebuilt regime, and have said so many times. I just wish it didn’t have the drawbacks which it has in Europe, and hope that EuroGA has been useful in illuminating them for others so they work around them. I also criticise anything and everything that deserves it 
