I looked at the i3 and like the design, but it was just too small for me and my family at this point. I wish I could have bought an all electric SUV, but except for Tesla, there simply is no such thing quite yet. I look forward to when there are multiple electric choices in this segment. In time to upgrade this one, there will be many choices.
As for fuel cells, in 10 years time fuel cells will be exactly where they’ve always been – touted as the next big thing. It’s abundantly clear it has very little future for personal ground transportation compared to energy storage. It doesn’t make sense to use fracked natural gas to split water into hydrogen, truck it across nations in pressure tanks that have to be 700bar to contain it as liquid (whilst it still creeps through any metal or plastic with huge losses), then build a network of gas stations that can store it, then put it in a vehicle where it will get 40% efficiency in a fuel cell, as well as being a huge explosion hazard (airships?). Elon is 100% correct on calling fuel cells for what they are.
Shorrick_Mk2 wrote:
LeSving once you will have used aviation for recreation properly e.g. flying around South Africa or island-hopping in the Caribbean you’ll understand the actual recreational value of having a plane that works as a no-nonsense car, as opposed to waiting three days on a strip in the middle of nowhere for someone to show up with a magneto or what not.Speaking of “recreation” – have you ever seen an RV up close? What makes it “recreational” in your opinion?
I see what you are saying. Only I don’t understand your problem. You are talking as if flying around africa and island hopping in the Caribbean is a human right, and that the aviation industry better make equipment that enables a painless a travel as possible. What’s the relevance? A TBM, Caravn or Pilatus would do the job just fine btw, with no sweat, but high cost. Even the simplest microlight would do it, very cheaply, but with lots of sweat 
I’m building an RV in my own shop, so I think I know a thing or two of how it looks up close.
Recreational aviation to me is, flying that is not commercial, and equipment that isn’t necessarily designed or built to standards for commercial use. Exactly what kind of activity is completely irrelevant. Whatever makes you tick. Just don’t complain when “someone” doesn’t put everything on a silver platter for you.
There is virtually no commercial flying in piston GA. See e.g. here. In broad terms, there is
Many past threads; search on terms like
homebuilt privileges
for references.
LeSving keeps referring to the first category as “commercial”.
About the only “commercial” work done in piston GA is ab initio flight training and that has various exemptions from normal commercial transport requirements. For mainly national CAA revenue protection reasons this has to be done in ICAO CofA planes. Accordingly most aeroclub planes are on an ICAO CofA because flight training is a big income stream for most clubs. The UL scene is one exception.
Shorrick – did you get a diesel conversion for your Mooney?
Shorrick_Mk2 wrote:
you have plenty of COTS equipment
What is COTS?
Shorrick_Mk2 wrote:
I don’t think expecting a vehicle that costs between 0.5 and 1m dollars to perform as advertised is “silver – platter”
It depends on what exactly is advertised. Selling (private) aircraft is selling dreams. Whether you achieve that dream is entirely up to you though. For non mass manufactured items, there is no relation between price and the amount of fiddling needed to make it work. There is a relation between complexity and fiddling, and complexity and cost. They both increases exponentially with complexity.
Shorrick_Mk2 wrote:
Now if “whatever makes you tick” is playing with Legos instead of flying, don’t call it “recreational flying” but “recreational backyard building”…
Now we know exactly what your attitude to experimental aircraft is.
Peter wrote:
LeSving keeps referring to the first category as “commercial”.About the only “commercial” work done in piston GA is ab initio flight training and that has various exemptions from normal commercial transport requirements.
What I said was equipment designed and built according to standards for commercial aviation, not necessarily used as such. Which is rather insane when you think about it, knowing that 99% of private GA is recreational GA.
LeSving wrote:
knowing that 99% of private GA is recreational GA.
So your use of a car is recreational? Good, then you probably don’t expect your car to work reliably. Oh no you do, probably because it costs 30k€ new while a simple aircraft costs 300k€ new.
I personally enjoy fiddling with the aircraft and fixing things all the time and the primitive technology makes that possible for me. However if I just wanted to fly with a low tolerance for unscheduled maintenance, I would have gotten rid of it (and any other piston GA aircraft) a long time ago.
Until the early 1990s, private car ownership meant a lot of unscheduled problem fixing and messing around (I remember how my father used to remove the Renault R6 battery every evening in winter and kept it on the radiator over night and spent virtually every weekend fixing that awful car). Nowadays cars are almost trouble free (zero unscheduled maintenance in the last 10 years for me with 8 cars) but private aircraft are still like cars used to be. Not to everybody’s taste.
LeSving wrote:
What I said was equipment designed and built according to standards for commercial aviation, not necessarily used as such.There are no “standards for commercial aviation”. Anyway, the vast majority of the aircraft used for commercial aviation (at least 99.9%) are certified to different (and more stringent) standards than normal category SEPs.
Airborne_Again wrote:
There are no “standards for commercial aviation”.
Semantics IMO. Anything commercial must be certified “according” to ICAO (except maybe some very special local stuff here and there for all I know). ICAO does not concern itself with stuff that is not certified, as per definition. Anything un-certified is local to each country. Anything that is ICAO CoA can also be used commercially, anything that is not, cannot be used commercially. What we need is non commercial and un-certified aircraft that can be used everywhere, but the way international aviation regs are made (ICAO) there simply is no place for it, it cannot exist there. Hence, ICAO is exclusively made for commercial aviation.
Lack of knowledge and semantics are not the same thing.
There are multiple certification regimes, Part 23 is what you would call “recreational” aviation and Part 25 is transport stuff. Both are certified and have ICAO CofA but there are major differences.
LeSving wrote:
ICAO is exclusively made for commercial aviation.
Nonsense.
LeSving wrote:
What we need is non commercial and un-certified aircraft that can be used everywhere, but the way international aviation regs are made (ICAO) there simply is no place for it, it cannot exist there. Hence, ICAO is exclusively made for commercial aviation.
The whole point of international agreements is that the signatories agree on a certain set of rules. In the case of the Chicago Convention there are a number of safety standards. Each signatory state can thus trust that every other signatory state satisfy a jointly accepted minimum level of safety. In the field of aircraft design, this is called “certification”.
So asking for “non-certified” aircraft that can be used “everywhere” is essentially a contradication in terms.
The problem is not “certification”, but the processes required for certification. ICAO should adopt simplified certification regimes like the US and EASA already have. And those regimes should include higher MTOM’s.
