Austintatious

The CG envelope is exactly the same as the 20k... Most rockets have Charlie weights and an extra battery in the tail... The ONLY way I can be too far forward CG is to have 2 225 people in the front seats with an empty baggage and rear seats... this will put me about 1 inch forward and the plane flies just fine ( I know because I flew it this way on the demo flight with the previous owner and figured it out after Buying) Put people or stuff in the back and you find yourself smack in the middle of the envelope. The turbo is easy to manage... the waste gate is automatic. It is wild how little I touch the engine controls. I take off and climb full power... then I back down after leveling off to 29/22, lean to 17.5 gallons and cruise away at anything from 180-210 KTAS (depending on altitude). Descend at 600 FPM, leave power where it is at... then about 10 miles from the field reduce MP to 19 inches. Configure on speed, reduce power as needed, speedbrakes as needed... Leave mix and prop alone till touchdown... If there is a reason to I will increase RPM to 2500, otherwise I do not bother.

Right... but imagine playing this out in a courtroom or even in arbitration... There certainly is a disclaimer on the limits of the system... but if one of those limitations was that the system could not account for a wall of terrain between the aircraft and the airport it points you to... and that was not disclosed.... that would be hard to explain as reasonable.

Are you sure that is true? There are several ways to determine winds... The glide computer on my phone can do it... And does when I am flying my glider... It is able to determine the winds when I circle... it does make some minor assumptions but is pretty accurate. The other way is to use true airspeed, HDG and ground track and the winds can be determined... What cant be known is the winds down at lower levels unless that data is being pulled form somewhere. That all being said... the Glide ratio should always be set lower than the aircraft actual capabilities... this makes the glide ring conservative.

Ohh, one quick thing I want to throw out on the topic of glide... Never raise your nose (slow up) to try to stretch a glide when going into the wind. I'm not going to get too deep into glide polars, but when you are trying to glide into a headwind, "best glide speed" is not actually your best glide speed. And while the ring displayed on the screen is probably accurate, at some point you will be heads out and maneuvering to land. If there are significant winds at the field, when heading into them you need to increase the speed you are gliding at. The rule of thumb is to add 1/3rd of the headwind to your IAS over best glide speed. However you may be able to determine a more accurate amount for your specific aircraft. https://flighttrainingcentral.com/2022/07/best-glide-speed-keep-it-simple-or-extract-the-most-performance/ If you spend a lot of time in different rental aircraft, then the following rules of thumb may be of use. In a headwind, increase your Best Glide airspeed by 1/3 of the headwind component. If your Best Glide is 65 and the headwind component is 15, use 70 knots (65 + 5). In a tailwind, decrease your Best Glide airspeed by 1/5 of the tailwind component. If your Best Glide is 65 and the tailwind component is 15, use 62 knots (65 – 3).

That would indeed be a super lazy way to set up a glide computer. I would doubt it was done that way, can you imagine the liability there?

It blows my mind how insurance has changed... My stepfather bought a KA90 back in the early 90's.... He got into it with no training at all to fly it home with insurance in place. In 2004 I was insured as PIC on a lear 31a with less than 800 hours Total time, though I did have a Ce500 type already. I am not saying that was the smartest thing, but the requirements for insurance have have gotten a little silly. We just got a quote to add a pilot to a policy on a rocket... They wanted an ADDITIONAL 1600 per year ( 50% increase) to name him on the policy... This is a professional pilot with an ATP rating and thousands of hours in jets who flies regularly. They want him to get 5 hours of instruction before he flies alone and will not reduce the premium until he has 50 hours in M&M. The rocket is no more difficult to fly than any other HP/Complex aircraft. Does it have a few idiosyncrasies? Sure... But the reason I enjoy it so much is because of how simple it is to fly. There are really only 2 things one needs be careful of (vs other similar aircraft) or you could really get into trouble.... Be on speed at the threshold and Keep the nose up!I mean honestly, if you do that and be sure to put the gear down before landing, you will be fine. all of the things that add complexity to operating the airplane are either avoidable ( IE: flying high enough to need oxygen) or apply to every other HP/complex aircraft of its type IE: avoiding Icing.

Good luck, you will love the rocket... Absolutely amazing airplane. I'm not up there, but If you find yourself in DFW I could take you up.

I disagree with the idea we need CS props because of narrow power bands. We don't need constant speed props because of engine power bands. We have them to allow us to fly more quietly and efficiently in cruise while still allowing maximum power at takeoff. The very fact that there are fixed pitch aircraft using the exact same engines as other aircraft with constant speed proves that we dont NEED CS props for power band reasons. It is about having options to optimize for multiple operational regimes. The RPM we run for a given prop size is all to do with Tip speeds. This is why Bigger props turn slower... Take it to the extreme and think helicopter blade. You want to keep the tips subsonic as the drag at the tips goes up very rapidly with tip speed, thus the higher the RPM, the more power lost to simply moving the tips through the air. This is why lower RPM props are more efficient. We just do not care about efficiency during T/O. We could run lower RPMs and get max thrust, but that means longer blades. Those effect other design considerations, for instance my rocket only has about 8 inches of clearance between the prop and ground. Jets are a bit different , For t/o and cruise operation we are full power and anything less and we lose efficiency (BSFC). You cant really compare them to prop aircraft and their engines because of the fact that if you try to reduce RPM with a fixed pitch prop You can only change it so much on account of the air flow eventually windmilling the propeller. This does happen in a turbojet/turbofan, but not at the lower speeds of a piston Fixed propeller. While different, the underlying mechanics are the same in the jet engine vs FP piston and until a Fixed pitch propeller is being driven by the air and not the engine, these two setups operate the same... reduce engine power, reduce RPM and reduce thrust. However once past the 0 thrust threshold in a Fixed prop setup, the prop begins to create massive amounts of drag and the RPM is kept high (way above idle). In a jet the drag does not increase much and the RPM's of the fan/core are able to drop to very low RPM. The only difference with a CS prop is that instead of reducing RPM, we reduce torque. Once again, after the 0 thrust point is hit, the propeller begins to create a lot of drag. Electric motors even with their VERY wide power band, would not make CS prop obsolete, in fact they would make them even more desirable. You would still want to be able to reduce/adjust the RPM/pitch for cruise flight and for T/O you would want the highest RPM possible without driving the tips too close to supersonic or getting past the max power output RPM of the electric motor. This need/desire for an adjustable prop grows the faster the aircraft is capable of flying, even though the electric motor can produce max power over a wide RPM range. This all again refutes the assertion that we have constant speed props because of a narrow power band.

I am not convinced these Toroidal props for air purposes are any good at all. For boats they make sense... The geometry is actually quite different, about as different as water and air. The Toroidal props for air looks horrendously bad to my eye. And so far, all the people on Youtube that have tried them say they are silly and do little to reduce noise.

No, I got on the phone to Dmax and put to rest that nonsense.

have several the same way... they drive me nuts if I look at them too long. Mine (84 M20K) are held in by "pop" rivets.... I had an avionics shop give me a heart attack when they suggested this wasn't even legal and That I may have to have them all re done with screws and backings. I would bet money if all mine were fixed I would gain 5 knots. I'm tempted to try pulling them out with a car body suction cup.

I would highly recommend a Mountain High system... You could get away with a small portable bottle using that system. No install cost easy to get refilled. Here is an altitude/duration chart Click on "cylinder size and duration " Look at the EDS numbers in black. https://www.mhoxygen.com/product/aluminum-cylinders/ For a point of reference, a 16" x 4.5" cylinder weighting 5 lbs would give a single person over 12 hours of O2 at 15,000 feet. If you had 4 people onboard that is 3 hours worth of O2. Of course you wont need o2 for much of the climb and descent.

Can you give some first had info on how the cabins compare? Or any other thing you can? ALso, did you see the Glassair 3 they flew to 33,000 feet ? https://glasair-owners.com/glasair/flying-glasair/glasair-super-iii/

Nope, not at all... I was in a crash in one about 13 years ago. Still have a bad taste in my mouth. Besides, it is not really that much faster than the Rocket nor does it have much more range... Dont get me wrong, it is faster and has more range, but at a staggering increase in cost.

Nice, My stepfather owned a Machen(sp?) 700 and I flew it quite a bit... really nice airplane. IIRC we did about 232 knots on 44 GPH, that was pulled back of course. I do not plan on doing any sort of personal flying that would necessitate a twin for safety.

For reasons too long to go into... My partner (in 2 Rockets) and I have been talking about a possible upgrade... We would REALLY like to be doing 250knots or more. We were looking at a Lancair propjet and frothing at the mouth. Our dream was quickly shattered when we were quoted 40k a year in insurance premiums. The Piston Lancair 4s are in a similar but not as crazy position with insurance being in the 18-24k a year range. The propjet was within our budget both to purchase and to operate, until we considered the insurance. We then started thinking about a different route altogether. That being a sort of side grade to a 2 place SEL, like a Lancair 320 or Glassair III. These still have insurance issues but It would be possible for us to own one outright and avoid that mess. But these aircraft are only slightly faster than the mooney and are much smaller and we are still talking experimental. Most any twin will be slower, and the ones that are faster are double or more the operating cost per mile. There are no Certified 4 place Piston singles that I can find which are faster than the Rocket, other than newer moonies. A Certified single with a turbine engine instantly puts you around 1.2 million dollars to get into a Meridian and the operating cost are nuts and they aren't really THAT much faster, though they do carry 6 people. So, I am still considering a side grade to a Glassair III... but dang if this whole idea of changing has not made me really really appreciate what I already have.

Yea I mean WRT cruise speed... I leave out of Galveston a lot and I rocket (pun intended) right up to 10.5 and go straight over all the Houston mess. So believe me I know!

I can chime in with rocket numbers from experience with 2 aircraft. The only difference aerodynamically is that one does not have a step and it has a smaller towel bar type antenna... The other has a step and a blade antenna. Both have smooth bellies. What Dan says above is the most important takeaway for the rocket... The juice being worth the squeeze. I typically fly 30/22 at 17.5 GPH... at 10k I see around 185 KTAS and at FL210 I see about 210 KTAS at the same settings. You can basically Rule of thumb ballpark an extra 2 knots per 1000 feet. You can put the power up higher, but you absolutely trash your economy. You will easily burn another 3-5 gallons for 10 more knots. I have only seen this make sense in really big headwinds that couldn't be avoided... and it didn't save any gas but the time was shorter with the same burn or close to it anyway .... so why not. That all being said, I love the rocket. The power is great for climbing, taking off at high elevations or at max gross where I still see 1000FPM at about 130-40 KIAS. Then you pull it back and still go fast pretty economically. In a tailwind, you can get silly. Pull it way back to 26/22 and about 14 GPH and still true 165 (10k) or 185 (20k). When you have a 30+ knot push you would be foolish not to. When I am really stretching it, I will descend at 19/22 at about 10 GPH 500 FPM... and If I am up at FL210 that could be 40 min of descending.

I cant wait to make that switch. Break... This is quite the thread. Gami wants $550.00 for my aircraft for the STC... I do have to laugh though. All the talk about saving money on oil changes and overhauls that has been spouted... all GONE with the idea of paying a dollar more per gallon... An oil change for me cost 150 dollars including oil analysis. I do them every 30 hours. That 5 bucks an hour operating cost for oil. Assuming that Synthetic oil wouldnt cost more (yea right!) and I double my interval... that saves me 2.50 per hour. To buy a Factory new engine for my aircraft would cost 70k with a 1600 TBO... That is 43.75 an hour. Assuming I get DOUBLE TBO before I replace with a NEW engine... That saves me 21.87 an hour. Between those two "savings" I will be saving less than $25.00 an hour. I average about 20 gallons an hour burn.... So 1.00 per gallon more immediately evaporates most of the savings, which to calculate I have given EVERY advantage possible... If we consider just a factory Overhaul at around 35k... well, I wont be saving a dime when I burn 100UL. That all being said... I am tempted to purchase the STC just for resale appeal AND for fear that if this thing takes off and we are left with no other choice... why wouldn't they raise the price of the STC? I get how the FAA system works, but I just cant help but find it really funny that the FAA gives FLEET WIDE approval (every engine/airframe ) yet they would violate us if they catch us using it without having handed GAMI $2.00 per HP.... what a complete joke. Aviation is so fun!

Hey guys, Looks like this is a case of bad timing... I have already purchased a new one.

I don't know how it happened... I noticed in the picture I posted there seems to be a screw head that looks like is right on the crack... the new part does not have this screw head. Until I get the part off and can examine it closely, I don't know what may have happened and don't want to speculate yet. All I know is that my partner in the airplane flew it just before this problem was found... He is not an amateur nor one to make a hard landings, nor one to not notice the effect I noticed nor one to lie about it if he had, I trust him explicitly.

Tell me about it... never thought it would be so hard to find someone to take $100.00 an hour. It has been the bane of my aircraft ownership experience.

Not unless i am willing to risk the nose wheel breaking off!

I have the new part in hand... but as usual, finding anyone to do the work is proving challenging. I have a call in to Broadies at KFTW and am waiting to hear back... If anyone knows anyone in the DFW area that is capable of swapping this (a compression tool is required) I would love the contact info.

yea, that is what I am thinking as well. 2500.00 in the grand scheme of things isnt all that bad... this is why we chip into the kitty.