New Mooney Design with BRS Parachute?

[steingar]

2 hours ago, ShuRugal said:

I was not making any statement that no people outside of Cirrus's target audience would find the planes attractive: They are fast and have an excellent useful load for a piston single. That plus the automation makes them good for extended cross country trips, especially when IMC prevails.

I was making the observation that the Cirrus design philosophy appears, to me, to be primarily geared around attracting into aviation people who are not of the aviator mindset, but who do have lots of money. That doesn't mean it won't fit anyone else's mission.

Your hypothesis is actually pretty self evident.  Cirrus marketed to non-pilots from the get go.  So bad it was that they had lots and lots of early fatal crashes despite the BRS.  Eventually extra training brought the rate of fatals down, there is and never was anything wrong with the airframe.

[Jerry 5TJ]

We talk about how to make new Mooney planes better/more appealing/cheaper.  But the de facto Mooney market is old airplanes, and that’s been the case for decades.  

When I bought my first Mooney around 30 years ago it was a (then) 25 year old plane, not one of the handful of new Mooneys produced that year. I bought it because it was among the best designs I could afford.  

Many of the same (now) 55 year old planes are on the market these days.  We buy them because they’re among the best old designs  we can afford.  

Buyers who can afford a $750K machine are voting with their wallets for more modern designs.   

Edited June 3, 2019 by Jerry 5TJ

[Shadrach]

On 5/31/2019 at 10:25 PM, Tommy said:

 Cirrus has to, for aerodynamic reasons that somehow all its ads failed to mention - we are asking BRS as an option. 

Cirrus was able to bypass the spin testing part of certification because of the CAPS system.  Choosing to bypass sped the certification process. CAPS is required for this reason and this reason alone, not for "aerodynamic" reasons.  A true statement would be that the only approved and demonstrated method [to the FAA] of spin recovery is activation of the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System. This is not the same thing as not being able to recover from a spin with conventional inputs.  The company maintains that the airframe was spun by factory test pilots (first CAPS test was done during an intentional spin).  I have not spun a Cirrus personally but was told second hand by a high time pilot that trust and believe that when he intentionally spun an SR22 at altitude he found it to be resistant to spin entry but once in the spin would recover with conventional anti spin inputs. Cirrus are aerodynamically clean, so they build speed and lose altitude quickly (much like a Mooney) in a spin.  I am not sure, but I believe the airframe was subjected to spin testing when EASA certified in 2004 

Edited June 4, 2019 by Shadrach

[Shadrach]

1 hour ago, Jerry 5TJ said:

We talk about how to make new Mooney planes better/more appealing/cheaper.  But the de facto Mooney market is old airplanes, and that’s been the case for decades.  

When I bought my first Mooney around 30 years ago it was a (then) 25 year old plane, not one of the handful of new Mooneys produced that year. I bought it because it was among the best designs I could afford.  

Many of the same (now) 55 year old planes are on the market these days.  We buy them because they’re among the best old designs  we can afford.  

Buyers who can afford a $750K machine are voting with their wallets for more modern designs.   

Indeed, but it's mostly about value.  A 25yr old TLS will do 90% of what a new acclaim will do for 20% of the price.  There are good reasons to buy new airplanes but those reasons usually involve self employed individuals who have the choice of putting money into a depreciating asset or giving it to the federal government.

[exM20K]

3 hours ago, Shadrach said:

Indeed, but it's mostly about value.  A 25yr old TLS will do 90% of what a new acclaim will do for 20% of the price.  There are good reasons to buy new airplanes but those reasons usually involve self employed individuals who have the choice of putting money into a depreciating asset or giving it to the federal government.

That used to be the case, with bonus depreciation applicable to new equipment only. Now it’s new or used.  So the business owner can shop for as much capability as he or she wishes.  Just like a personal use owner.

[johncuyle]

On ‎6‎/‎1‎/‎2019 at 6:20 PM, Tommy said:

So the answer to OP's question: "is Mooney contemplating a BRS version" is to increase useful load....

Ok got it. 

Also do you work for Diamond's sales department? "If you absolutely, positively, must have the safest piston single on the market, you don't even bother to consider anything else, you just buy a DA40." Straight out of the glossy brochure! Big claim! Do you have numbers to back his up?

Maybe you should take a look at this:  https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2017/aair/ao-2017-096/

No, the answer is, "They were.  Then they stopped."  Then that thread ended half way down page one.  

Aviation Consumer/AVWeb have made a big deal out of the Diamond's safety record for years.  Most other publications seem to tout safety.  Safety statistics are hard to come by in piston singles because there's a lot of guesswork in determining how often planes actually fly and how many are really in service.  Older airframes with lots of aircraft registered but which maybe don't fly very often are hard to compare against newer airframes which tend to fly more hours per year seems to be the general consensus.  Diamond aircraft are relatively new and should be relatively easy to compare fatalities against contemporaries such as Cirrus.  If you're concerned about safety and you're looking at a DA40 and an SR20, you buy the DA40.  

[zaitcev]

On 6/2/2019 at 7:20 PM, ShuRugal said:

• There is a whole-plane parachute, for when the unexperienced non-aviator operating the thing puts it into a place even the panic button can't save

The CAPS is useful for a host of other scenarios as well.

 

On 6/2/2019 at 7:20 PM, ShuRugal said:

Any pilot who was awake during his primary training knows that a plane which is under control and can be set down with deliberate intent is better than one which is at the mercy of the winds.

An airplane landing horizontally has more energy than one landing under chute, which puts it at disadvantage any time the landing site is not a runway. For example, when ditching.