I think.Henri Nicollier, Claude Piel, Jean Delmontez were all still designing up to recent times ( I think most are dead now as they would all be in their 90’s) and yet very few even in ga circles have ever heard of them
I’ve certainly heard of them. France produced many designs as homebuilt one-offs, some of which were also put into serial production. And don’t forget Henri Mignet 
The same is BTW true for Bölkow in Germany. Both of their all metal designs (the 208 and 209) started out as one-off homebuilts.
gallois wrote:
Whilst I can see France dropping down the G20 list and maybe even out of the G7 I can’t see us dropping as far as becoming a 3rd world country in my lifetime.
I doubt that too. France is much stronger than most people take it for. They see “laisser faire” but actually the government can be surprisingly ruthless if it needs to. The French aviation industry is one of the strongest in the world, 2nd to the US only, primarily because there was a load of great designers, visionaries and at the same time very clever politicians to go with them. Without France no Airbus, no Thales, a lot less light GA. Concorde, Caravelle, Dassault Mercure, all were ground breaking designs which made Airbus in it’s current incarnation possible. And Airbus today IS the worlds prime manufacturer, 2nd to none.
Also it should not be forgotten that France IS a nuclear power and also owns one of the worlds most elite military units with the Legion. And many people have had to find out to that trying to screw France over usually means a swift reaction. They are not called “la grande nation” for nothing and they don’t need a MAGA guy to tell them.
More on Luis Peña – here’s an article from the web which lists his planes. I flew with him in the Canari des Cimes, landing at a pretty extreme mountain airstrip built by a friend of his.
https://www.homebuiltairplanes.com/forums/threads/avions-pe%C3%B1a.32721/
There’s an article in SudOuest from last year about the completion of his seventh plane, the BiLouis, but it’s behind a paywall. He flew it for the first time at the age of 83.
Unfortunately I had a bit of a disagreement with the management of the Aeroclub, so I won’t get another chance to fly with him. Pity.
I have never had problem like this. Anyone I invited gladly joined with the only problem of time flexibility in case of possible postponed return (e.g. due to weather).
Of course, the passenger is very happy 
IIRC the article you refer to in the SudOuest was not about the BiLouis he built but about a father and son who had bought the plans and built one together at Vannes?.
They intended to use the aircraft for limited aerobatics and a lot of father – son bonding.🙂
Okay, okay !
“The vast majority of people” can’t design an aircraft on their own. I certainly would not have anywhere enough time to learn how to do that. And even if you did, you would still need some runways (not just your own grass strip but to go places), which will only be viable if other people are flying.
I’m really blown away by the costs of a new aircrafts vs the cost of a new car, especially considering the relative complexity of the design (i.e. modern cars are incredibly more complex than aircrafts, although they’re somewhat less reliable). Cars simply have huge markets which swallow design costs and justify huge investments in manufacturing. The very small GA market is the sole reason why everything is assembled by hand and why certification costs have a measurable impact on purchase price. I understand very well that, even someone like Diamond with a backlog of a few years (of aircrafts costing $500k to $1,7M !) is unwilling to put more money in additional automation or factories, because the market is so small and the long-term risk to put hundreds of millions into non-productive automation research (let alone manufacturing certification) is really big. The price of avionics is equally affected: in terms of digital capabilities, a G1000 is roughly a hardened iPad (a bit of a stretch, but you get the point), yet it costs something like $25k.
That’s why I really wish a lot more people join in flying to drive the costs down ! It would in turn make GA more accessible, therefore more people would fly etc.
Peter wrote:
Of course, the passenger is very happy
I’m really new to this, so I genuinely wonder what makes you unhappy / uneasy about flying with certain passengers? Or what would make your significant other unhappy that you fly with others
IIRC the article you refer to in the SudOuest was not about the BiLouis he built but about a father and son who had bought the plans and built one together at Vannes?.
It’s paywalled though with a bit of ingenuity you can read the whole text.
maxbc wrote:
I’m really new to this, so I genuinely wonder what makes you unhappy / uneasy about flying with certain passengers? Or what would make your significant other unhappy that you fly with others
Peter has mentioned this before. The idea is that your wife/GF will be upset if you (as a male) fly with other women. I honestly can’t understand why unless the wife/GF has an unusually jealous and suspicious personality and/or the man is unusually flirty towards other women. Of course that happens.
I’m really new to this, so I genuinely wonder what makes you unhappy / uneasy about flying with certain passengers? Or what would make your significant other unhappy that you fly with others
Most men find the latter is the case: flying with female passengers gets “tricky” if you are married/etc – if you do it regularly. Not universal but very common.
There are also various “hostage to fortune” situations e.g. taking a woman passenger to a fly-in (probably acceptable, as a one-off) becomes a universally-unacceptable “trip with another woman” if nobody else turns up at the fly-in (which certainly does happen).
This topic has come up before and lots of people like to occupy the moral high ground on it. I recall one discussion in one of the “women in GA” threads where it was said that if a woman turns up in GA, most men will ignore her. A few will do the exact opposite. I’d say it is probably because most men are afraid that someone will feed something back home (e.g. a photo) and they will get into trouble. I actually know of exactly one such situation, where a photo did just that.
Why is this important? I believe that the lack of women in GA is a huge reason for the decline.
That’s why I really wish a lot more people join in flying to drive the costs down ! It would in turn make GA more accessible, therefore more people would fly etc.
I am not sure money is the #1 problem. I think GA is an unusual hobby in that it is highly addictive so lots of people work hard to hang in there despite being barely able to afford to. You would not get that in e.g. powerboat racing. Also there are sharp tradeoffs between ownership and access which keep costs high (rental is a poor option). At whichever price point, you will find participants who are only just hanging in there. If a plane cost 200k or 500k, you will get the same number of people saying they can’t afford it.
You can get ULs for 200k. Why 200k?? Because people will pay it and will be happy with a 200k shiny plane which is actually quite limited.
Certification itself is not expensive. Not for an established player like say Garmin which knows the whole process, and indeed can do a lot of it in-house. But the need for certified parts (ICAO, etc) keeps prices high. And in most business nobody wants to bomb the market; if you can sell a $300 box for $10k, a new player in the market will come in at $8k, not at $1k which is what would happen in “normal manufacturing”
There are so many things which need changing…
I honestly can’t understand why unless the wife/GF has an unusually jealous and suspicious personality
Swedish women sound quite interesting, not to say “open minded” (a dodgy phrase these days) But hey all of us always knew that!
