wombat

Between the TKS and old airframe and paint, I don't think I can quite make that. I did it once, but I had tailwinds that were closer to 75KT. We could have our LOP discussion here, but so far I have not been able to make it run LOP without stumbling occasionally. Unfortunately I've been too focused on making the individual flights get from A to B to spend much time actually playing around with it.

@bloghill Welcome to the Rocket club!! I've had mine for about 1.5 years and 200 hours and love it. @201Steve I tend to get about 190KTAS on mine. I usually fly at the 72% 'Normal Cruise' power setting, I expect the seller was at the 65% 'Economy Cruise' power setting based on his fuel flow statement. While we can fly faster, the fuel consumption is a lot higher. Much of the time I am either going to Seattle and back, which is relatively short (< 1 hour) and is mostly in the climb or descent so a higher cruise power setting won't make much difference. Or I'm on a much longer XC (2S0 <-> KFFL) where I'm fuel limited and I usually then finesse the fuel flow and power settings to get the range & reserve I want.

I don't think there is debate about if ADS-B can save lives. The debate is about if ADS-B's lives saved per dollar is a good deal compared to other safety investments. There shouldn't be a debate though: the ROI on ADS-B is bad compared to other safety investments. Yet people still freak out about ADS-B or lack thereof. Nobody freaks out about not having CIES or other accurate fuel gauges and a fuel computer but the total savings in lives per dollar spent would be a lot higher if we mandated that instead of ADS-B. Also, in the recent mid-air you reference it's just as reasonable to say that ADS-B caused the accident because the person in the best position to see the other plane (The copilot side CAP pilot) stopped looking outside and was looking at his iPad just before the accident. If he didn't have that to stare at he might have continued looking outside and the collision may have been avoided.

My point on all of this is that we should be focusing on reducing the risks that are higher rather than the ones that are lower. That doesn't mean "Don't do anything about the lower ones." It doesn't mean "ADS-B doesn't provide any safety value." But it does mean many pilots have an inaccurately high estimate of risk of midair collisions relative to other things that are likely to kill them and it is causing them to put themselves at increased risk when flying because they are spending time/effort/money both on the ground and in the air on mitigating the already low mid-air collision risk rather than the risks that are significantly higher. Fuel starvation, loss of control, and VFR-into-IMC kills way way more pilots than mid-air collisions. Pilots of all experience levels and certificates. I have a very hard time believing anyone who says "I've mitigated all those other risks as much as I possibly can such that mid-air collisions are now one of the biggest risks I face." I much more strongly suspect that those pilots are unknowingly experiencing the hazardous attitudes of invulnerability and resignation.

There is no amount of situational awareness that is going to have as big of a positive effect on your safety as additional flight instruction and practice will. And 5 people in the pattern when you are 15 miles out doesn't mean much anyway. By the time you get there the situation will be different. Listen to the radio and look out the window. There is no guarantee that everybody is talking on the radio. There is no guarantee that you'll see everybody near you. Yes, having ADS-B in will help some. I've never said it doesn't help. All I've ever said is that people are acting as if it's a huge boost to safety, and it's not. The only way to ensure safety in light GA is to not go fly. Not many of us want that. I mean, here we are, all on a forum for a specific manufacturer of light GA airplanes! I think the ADS-B thing is kind of like the Cirrus parachutes. They do provide some additional safety, but the amount of additional safety they provide is not necessarily the highest value. While it's sometimes fun to poke at Cirrus pilots for their excessive parachute expenses with marginal real-world safety value, there is real and measurable additional safety to be had by having the parachute. Is it as much additional safety as if they had spent that extra money on training? I don't think so. And if someone comes to me and says "I won't ever fly in a plane without a parachute, and you are putting people's lives at risk if you fly them in a plane without a parachute." I'll have the same discussion we've been having here. This thread is intended to ask the question "Why do people get so freaked out about not having this one feature when it is a lower return on investment for safety expenses than other possibilities?"

@EricJ That procedure sounds horribly risky and the businesses that are putting profit over safety and should re-evaluate their culture regarding safety. I recommend that they talk to the FAA to help them come up with a better procedure or work within their organization to come up with a better procedure on their own. Some ideas: Hold somewhere else. Limit training flights that are using that ILS approach like ATC uses flow control at major airports. Perform training flights somewhere else. There are several other airports within 75NM that have precision approaches. Flight Training Devices are also quite effective and can be used to reduce the amount of time a student must fly to gain proficiency, particularly for IFR. That being said, when we look at the main causes of accidents at a national level, here is how they tend to stack up, and given your situation, what I think your relative risk is: Loss Of Control, Inflight You are at high risk for this. Flight training requires performance maneuvers, ground reference maneuvers, and stalls. VFR into IMC You are at low risk of this in Arizona. Fuel You are less likely to have this in a school training environment because almost all flights are < 2 hours and students tend to be diligent about checking before flight and there are no pressures to find cheaper fuel and the additional 'cost' to get fuel added before a flight is minimal. Maintenance You are at elevated risk of this since the pilots are all flying different planes and can't tell what has changed between flights in the same plane. Using the planecrashmap.com website, I looked at the 50 closest accidents to the VOR, and of the two accidents that I found that are mid-air collisions, one looks like aerobatic maneuvering in formation: https://planecrashmap.com/plane/az/N64WD/. and https://planecrashmap.com/plane/az/N2766C/. (Two planes involved, of course. This happened in 1989) and the other looks like training flights: https://planecrashmap.com/plane/az/N4184M/ and https://planecrashmap.com/plane/az/N8115Q/ (Two planes involved, one with a Portable Collision Avoidance System (PCAS) unit, this is from 2012) So even given your situation mid-air collisions are not a major source of accidents although due to your environment you have probably mostly eliminated two of the most common accident causes (Fuel and VFR into IMC). If you want to increase your safety by spending money on hardware, I recommend two things before buying ADS-B: Accurate fuel gauges and a fuel management system. An AoA indicator. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't also have and use ADS-B, but we should be honest with ourselves here that the risk they are mitigating is small compared to others that we are not mitigating, but could, and for less money. It is therefore weird that people focus so much on ADS-B to mitigate the risk of mid-air collisions. It's like a smoker who is worried about leaded gas from a nearby GA airport. Of course I'm not saying that all of the other safety precautions are inappropriate. But I am saying it's inappropriate to fixate on a lesser risk when there is are bigger risks that can be mitigated for less effort. Like when overweight guys spend thousands of dollars to buy bicycles that are 2 Oz lighter... They would be so much better off if they spent that money on a personal trainer or nutrition coach. I agree that it is a higher risk in your operations than in mine. But still smaller than other risks we both face and fail to mitigate. I'll quote @Aaviationist here:

I've heard that before. I find it hard to believe ATC is letting IFR traffic self-separate using ADS-B only with vertical spacing of 500 feet. Can you tell me exactly where this happens and some times I might be able to see this on FlightAware so I can see it for myself? The rate of mid-air collisions has not changed significantly since ADS-B adoption has increased significantly. The rate of mid-air collisions is very small, and even out of those things that might kill you as a pilot in an airplane it's quite small. So why is it that you think this is such a large risk when it is in fact so small? And why do you fixate on ADS-B being a 'solution' to this problem?

I like ADS-B too. It is helpful. But we should be clear that the risk it's helping to mitigate isn't a very big one to begin with. The system was not designed to help mitigate the risk of mid-air collisions, it was designed to help with the cost of ATC RADAR maintenance costs. It's not that ADS-B is worthless or useless, but the reduction in risk it provides is minimal. Maybe think of it like this: Looking at your ADS-B is about the same level of accuracy as getting a report from ATC of other traffic when they are not seeing you directly but using RADAR. If you are in the traffic pattern, it's effectively useless. Like when ATC says "Airport is at 12 O'clock, 10 miles, multiple targets in the pattern, report airport in sight." Once they are done with that, it's up to you and your eyes.

I agree that this is the core issue with a bunch of other people, but I'm not one of them. I'm fine with people not having it and not using it (when it is legal to do so). It's very effective and useful for its primary task, which is to reduce cost for the FAA, and it's marginally useful at best for the task of traffic separation for flights not controlled by ATC. At this point, I don't think there is enough data to measure if it has had any positive effect on safety.

I wouldn't say it helps you look outside more, but I agree with you that it can help you look outside more effectively. And I also agree that if it doesn't help you be more effective at looking outside, you are doing it wrong. One training task that I give to students (only when they are receiving instruction, not when solo) is to fly the traffic pattern without the ASI. Also without the DG, altimeter, or any cockpit instruments at all. I do the reverse of foggles using some sheets of paper. It is still surprising to me how accurate they are on altitude, airspeed, and engine settings just using the feel and weight of the controls, the sound of the air flowing over the airplane, and the sound of the engine. Typically they will be +- 50' on altitude in the pattern and +-5 knots on airspeed, as well as +- 75 RPM for the engine. This doesn't mean I think people should regularly fly without those instruments but it does help them gain confidence to spend more time looking outside and use the cockpit instruments as an occasional cross-check. Chasing needles hardly ever results in a good flight. Human nature in this regard does not have positive dynamic stability. . As an example, as long as people are still above where they want to be, they push forward more on the yoke... So by the time they are back at the correct altitude, they'll have a high rate of descent. They blast through their altitude picking up airspeed... So they start pulling back, and as long as they are below, they'll continue pulling back.... This is pilot induced oscillation. I agree that you should use every tool you can for situational awareness. And ADS-B can improve situational awareness, but I probably wouldn't say it goes a 'long ways'. But maybe that's just me. And I agree with you yet again that people that stare at it are not actually getting as much benefit as they could. Maybe if the FAA mandated it and didn't allow exceptions that would help, but without 100% adoption, staring at the ADS-B data is likely increasing risk more than mitigating it. I agree. And I am trying to figure out what about ADS-B makes people be illogical about it. Perhaps if I had been more careful in my phrasing earlier I wouldn't have gotten people so defensive about it. A tactic that I often employ successfully is to ask questions to which I already know the answers and then try to clarify answers given to me by asking questions that will help the other person think through it logically when they try to answer. How would this have gone if I said "I have an airplane equipped with X systems, but doesn't have ADS-B in and out, and I've got a X dollars budget to improve my safety for this year, how should I spend my money?" And then when someone suggests putting in ADS-B, ask them about accident rates?

I know I'm in the minority which is why I started this thread. ADS-B is not a panacea to prevent mid-air collisions. There are mid-air collisions where all aircraft had ADS-B in and out. There is no affordable silver bullet to stop all mid-air collisions that also allows the current freedom we have to fly. Yes, having all aircraft equipped with ADS-B in and out *could* have prevented this accident. So could removing ADS-B in from both aircraft so the people would know to continue to look outside to see and avoid. As it is, they neglected to see and avoid each other. Underlying all of this is the real data about the relative infrequency of mid-air collisions and the fact that people fixate on it when the risk is so small to begin with. I suspect that many of the pilots that fixate on ADS-B as a 'solution' to midair collisions are a victim of the hazardous attitude of Invulnerability. They see the accident numbers and the relative frequency of accidents for pilot miscontrol, fuel planning, systems operation, and other bad decision making, but think "It can't happen to me! I'm too good of a pilot for this!" and fixate the mid-air collision risk is the biggest risk they face because they feel they can't control it, since every mid-air collision involved another pilot. This lets them acknowledge that there is risk but also avoid the feeling of responsibility for that risk since it can always be the other pilot's fault. Also the hazardous attitude of 'Resignation' as they think there is not only nothing more to improve in the rest of their flying, but that there is no use in trying to do anything more to mitigate the risk of mid-airs... they are thinking "I've already done all I can."

I don't know what else to say other than yeah, that's crazy.

More likely ADS-B and ADS-B fixation CAUSED this accident. People who don't understand what the system is and what it does are part of the problem. There was a radio call telling them where the other aircraft was. So they decided to keep flying towards danger and one person decided to stop looking outside and look at his iPad instead. And as @Hank says, ADS-B was not designed as a safety tool, it was a cost mitigation tool for the FAA so they could decomission some RADAR facilities. If they had wanted to mandate mid-air collision avoidance systems in aircraft, they would have mandated TCAS installs. Now don't get me wrong (although I expect you will anyway). ADS-B can provide some additional safety if used correctly. But this was not a correct use of it. Wow, it's amazing how almost everything you say is completely wrong. #1: I'm sorry, but you are the one that fails to understand the capabilities and limitations of the system, as well as mis-understanding the circumstances around this accident despite it being clear in the NTSB reports. #2: No, the pilot best positioned to see the Swift airplane was looking down at his iPad. #3: No, you are wrong again. If it matters, the airplane I fly most has ADS-B: (GTX-345R, 1090es out and 1090es and 978UAT in) and displays traffic on my G500, GTN-750, and iPad. The other airplane I fly frequently has ADS-B as well: out (uAvionix Trailbeacon 978 UAT) and in (Stratux, 1090es and 978 UAT) #4: What part of "the increase in safety by spending the same amount of money on other equipment would be higher than if we spent that money on additional ADS-B" is not coherent or logical? And as I addressed in (3), you are wrong about my personal choices on equipment. I'll also ask you to provide some substantive information to back up your claim I misused the system. The same with your statement on my impact on safety. Feel free to come to my home airport (2S0) and ask around to other pilots about what they think my impact on GA safety is.

I will re-iterate: While mid-air collisions are tragic and horrible, spending money on ADS-B in an attempt to prevent midair collisions at the current relative rate of midair collisions to other accident types is counterproductive. We'd save more lives by putting our money into mitigating other risks. In this case, it looks like the CFI in the Cessna was looking at his iPad for ADS-B instead of looking outside and consequently they impacted the other aircraft. Mistakes may have been made that day but the decision to equip either plane with more or less hardware was not one of them. Both planes were legal to fly in that airspace with the installed equipment and as I have said many times before, if we want to direct our limited safety budget toward producing additional safety, additional ADS-B requirements is the wrong decision.

The same law that gives them the power to prohibit flying with some specific Lycoming connecting rods.

I disagree... This is exactly the sort of thing the FAA can do. "Any type certificated engine or airframe that is authorized or certificated to use ASTM D910 is allowed to also use G100UL in addition to or instead of any ASTM D910 fuel." Signed, some-dude-in-charge.

Based on this data, I have a hard time convincing myself this could possibly be the pilot's fault through engine mis-management. Cylinder #6, that was the one that was damaged and experienced large fluctuations of exhaust and cylinder temperatures, was purely in the middle of the pack for CHTs before the runaway temperature event. (two above, three below Hottest: 411, #6: 386, coldest:353 And it was at that time the coldest EGT, at 1315 while the others were 1341 to 1446 (1341, 1370, 1375, 1392, and 1446 were the others) so it was not significantly out of the range of the others. The most notable thing that is likely a pilot control issue is that within 30 seconds of #6 going from 'middle of the pack' to 'hottest' the EDM-700 was switched from "automatic" to "LeanFind" mode. This indicates to me that the pilot was very likely messing with the mixture. While there is no mixture data with the engine monitor data that is available to us, there is also no reasonable mixture setting that would cause the other cylinders to have no significant changes but #6 to have done this. At 15:57:30 the engine monitor data switches from every 6 seconds to every second, but unfortunately that time frame is kind of critical. It would have been great to have single second resolution from 15:56:30 to 15:57:30. Oh well. I'm wondering if maybe he was experiencing preignition on #6

Does it often get too hot when you are using it in the dark?

I've got similar problems on my plane. Some rivets that are smoking a little, none too bad. But also button-head pop rivets on some permanently mounted access panels on the bottom side of the wing, as well as some countersunk pop rivets on the other access panels. Really worried about how those will affect the paint over the next 15-30 years after I get it repainted.

Yes, if you want to be able to fill up with all three fuels. It'll feel like you are in a race car with sponsor stickers all over it. Or plan your flight around where your preferred fuel is available. Or don't apply the placards and say 'sorry' if you get caught without the STC being applied correctly. Or see if you can convince a friendly A&P that removing those placards and tags constitutes a 'minor modification' that can be logged in your aircraft's maintenance records.

I approve of this. (Well, the altitude won't work for me given my location, but taking the post as I think the author intended, which is 'find an altitude that gives you plenty of opportunity to get specifically DOWN out of icing' I wholeheartedly agree) This is what I've been trying to do over the last 18 months of owning my TKS Rocket

Was there actually anything going on with the engine at the moment other than hours? Temps? Oil consumption or color?

I was thinking that maybe some people were getting a factory rebuilt engine or something like that.

How many people here actually have any manufacturer warranty on their airframe or engine?

Do you have a warranty on your engine or airframe? Or reply if you are expecting to soon have a warranty.