Wing development.

[1980Mooney]

On 2/6/2023 at 7:57 PM, PT20J said:

She (the Cirrus regional sales rep) didn’t get contact info from me. I thought that strange. I’ve run a sales team and the first rule is always get contact info for any potential prospect. Then it dawned on me: Cirrus doesn’t have to contact prospects; prospects contact them.

Skip

It is probably because she stays abreast of all the GA aviation forums and reviews the comments in MS about Cirrus, composite planes and CAPS/BRS. I am sure that she knows that the Mooney owners that tend to speak out on this forum are in general haters of all things composite, anything with a chute and anything with fixed gear.  If they are sold out for 3 years as @jetdriven posted, then why would she waste time and energy on the mind numbing task of trying to change minds of Mooney owners in person or here and dispel old wives tales on MS?

If some Mooney owners want to believe and propagate the baseless notion that the CAPS/BRS can't be repacked and pyrotechnics won't be supported in the future then there is no point arguing emotion vs. reality.

It is the same with composites.  If you are driving by looking in the rear view mirror, then yes composites have experienced growing pains.  It was harder than Beech thought with the Starship.  Boeing had a harder time with the Dreamliner than planned but they prevailed.  The technology of fasteners is different and bonding technology has advanced.  But once gotten right, like the Epic 1000, the 787, etc it is superior and the future.  Boeing gets 25% more cycles (and hours of life) out of the 787 than the 747 at 8% higher cabin pressure with greater UL per pound of structure.  People here are "suspicious" about aging composite airframes but seem to have no issue with composite props.....

A big issue was made about the 12,000 hour known life (and likely greater actual).  If you look at Controller there are only 4 Mooneys over 6,000 hours.  A 1963, a 1974 and a 1975 with 6,400-6,500 hours.  There is a J that Korean Airlines flew the hell out of with 10,000 hours as a trainer.  There are 2 37 year old planes with 4,900 hours.  There are many planes that are 30+ years old with 2,000 - 3,500 hours.   With the exception of the trainer, Mooneys will need to fly nearly or in most cases over 100 years to make 12,000 hours.

Fixed gear seems to be an especially emotional issue. 

Cirrus has gained market dominance for a reason. I suspect that they are not sitting on their hands.  AINonline says Cirrus added 450 employees in 2021 and another 400 in 2022.  I wonder what they are working on for the next generation of SEL - most likely it will distance itself even further ahead of the aging "beer can" designs - maybe with bullet proof automatic retractable landing gear and greater performance.  Any potential investor in Mooney likely is thinking about the same thing.

Edited February 11, 2023 by 1980Mooney

[Raymond J1]

Mooney also knows that the composite is the future.

M 10 T was a good project.
Also the skin of the fuselage of M20...

And why not a composite wing.

[EricJ]

15 minutes ago, 1980Mooney said:

If some Mooney owners want to believe and propagate the baseless notion that the CAPS/BRS can't be repacked and pyrotechnics won't be supported in the future then there is no point arguing emotion vs. reality.

I suspect they'll exist, but whether a 2010 Cirrus will have the parts for that particular airplane available in 60 years is pretty questionable.   There'll probably be some other launch method beyond pyrotechnics by then, and will there be a retrofit for an "old" Cirrus?   If history is any indicator, replacement parts for a 60-year-old airplane accessory like a BRS may be very difficult to find.    If the current FAA requirements to use things like PMA replacement parts is still in place, and there is no STC for a modernized replacement...well, you could very well be in a pickle with a 60-year-old Cirrus just like most people these days with 50-60 year old airplanes.

15 minutes ago, 1980Mooney said:

It is the same with composites.  If you are driving by looking in the rear view mirror, then yes composites have experienced growing pains.  It was harder than Beech thought with the Starship.  Boeing had a harder time with the Dreamliner than planned but they prevailed.  The technology of fasteners is different and bonding technology has advanced.  But once gotten right, like the Epic 1000, the 787, etc it is superior and the future.  Boeing gets 25% more cycles (and hours of life) out of the 787 than the 747 at 8% higher cabin pressure with greater UL per pound of structure.  People here are "suspicious" about aging composite airframes but seem to have no issue with composite props.....

Airliners aren't a good reference because their calendar lifetimes, especially for the modern composite airframes, aren't very long.   All of the composite airframes are life limited and with typical airline usage, they're generally out of service long before 60 years rolls around.    So there is not likely to be any experience with long service life aging characteristics for those, and the manufacturers know this so they don't need to put a lot of engineering into how well the composite is going to be holding up in 60 years, or even 50 or 40 or...?

[1980Mooney]

3 hours ago, EricJ said:

I suspect they'll exist, but whether a 2010 Cirrus will have the parts for that particular airplane available in 60 years is pretty questionable.   There'll probably be some other launch method beyond pyrotechnics by then, and will there be a retrofit for an "old" Cirrus?   If history is any indicator, replacement parts for a 60-year-old airplane accessory like a BRS may be very difficult to find.    If the current FAA requirements to use things like PMA replacement parts is still in place, and there is no STC for a modernized replacement...well, you could very well be in a pickle with a 60-year-old Cirrus just like most people these days with 50-60 year old airplanes.

I fail to understand why you think this would be any different from how any ongoing airplane manufacturer makes decisions about product support for legacy aircraft.  For example, how is the risk different from fretting about Textron supporting the original 1956 Skyhawk 172?

In 2007 Cirrus introduced the G3 with an improved electronic CAPS rocket ignition.  All prior models have been upgraded at time of chute repack.  Improvements continue with a focus on compatibility.  

In 2017 Cirrus set a goal to produce 1,000 aircraft per year by 2027.  They produced the 8,000 plane in 2021.  Using your "60 year old Cirrus" example, your question is will Cirrus be supporting 2000 era planes in 2060.  Conservatively projecting that they will aveage about 750 planes delivered per year over the next 40 years then the fleet will be over 35,000 planes including attrition. 

• I would ask the question "why wouldn't parts be available?"

Of course if they are like Mooney and go bankrupt a few times as well as cease manufacturing complete aircraft a few times and now likely permanently then all bets are off.

Cirrus-Aircraft-The-History.pdf (steelaviation.com)

 

[EricJ]

3 hours ago, 1980Mooney said:

I fail to understand why you think this would be any different from how any ongoing airplane manufacturer makes decisions about product support for legacy aircraft.  For example, how is the risk different from fretting about Textron supporting the original 1956 Skyhawk 172?

It may not be, but history has shown us repeatedly that is not possible to predict what may happen over time.  Bankruptcies, acquisitions, management changes, market and economy changes, technology changes, legal changes, societal changes, environmental changes, etc., etc.   All these things have demonstrated to have unexpected effects so that it is much more likely for things to change than stay the same.  Any 60-year-old airplane is going to be an antique to compared to new ones, and support from a manufacturer, if they still exist, would be expected to be less important to the manufacturer than new.

It's not at all unusual for a manufacturer to just stop support for old products.   Piper still exists, Comanches still exist, but support is sparse.

3 hours ago, 1980Mooney said:

• I would ask the question "why wouldn't parts be available?"

 

Because history has repeatedly shown us that it is highly possible that they won't.

[Schllc]

The reservation I have with composites is a residual from my days with bicycles. 
Aluminum and steel frames always showed very clear signed of imminent failure from over stressing, and always had significant utility after those signs appeared. 
Composites showed zero sign until complete failure, and then they were unusable. 
Under ideal conditions, composites are clearly superior, but ideal conditions do not always exist. 
There is no reliable way to check to see if a composite airframe has ever been overstressed unless it has failed. 
Reason being, composites have no modulus of elasticity, and when the limit is exceeded there is a wildly variable range of strength retained.  With metals, this is much more predictable. 
Does this make one better than the other?
I’m not experienced or smart enough to make that determination. 
Metals are defiantly more predictable, and while I don’t mean to denigrate the modality of current convention, I know which I prefer. 

[Schllc]

With regard to cirrus’s success…

My opinion is that it has very little to do with performance, and everything to do with marketing. They were smart enough to create a network of flight school training, financing, leasebacks and targeted advertising that converted and entire segment of people who would have likely never even considered owning a plane, much less becoming a pilot. It really was a stroke of genius.  The parachute definitely didn’t hurt them,  I personally believe the pure role of the parachute in the success is debatable. 

 

[jetdriven]

People have to get adjusted to FAR 23 aircraft.  The maintenance manual has a clear list of repairs zones where you can do field  style repairs, but there are a lot of places where you must contact the manufacturer for Support . There is some pilot here in A Cessna 170 who ran into the right side rear of the wing of a cirrus SR 22 here at our old airport. It made it thru the aileron, and rear spar, and into the skin up almost to the main spar, but not quite. Anyways the repair manual is very specific, to remove or attempt to remove the wing halves or the entire wing you must contact the factory for service support, and any repairs in the no repair zone also the same thing. So I contacted Cirrus, and it's going to be $13,000 just to draw up an engineering report to tell us how to fix it, then  we have to buy all the parts from them but he said it's going to stretch way over 100 grand. And this is with the manufacturer providing parts which they may not always provide say, an outboard wing spar half or a skin  for a 20 year old Cirrus.  Try  to get parts for a first generation eclipse 500.
Anyway the plane still sits here. Some guy bought it off eBay for 100 grand, he thought he was going to fix it up, and when you get smacked upside the head with this, he's looking for a way out but he's way upside down in it. 

[Fly Boomer]

On 2/11/2023 at 11:42 PM, jetdriven said:

Anyway the plane still sits here. Some guy bought it off eBay for 100 grand, he thought he was going to fix it up, and when you get smacked upside the head with this, he's looking for a way out but he's way upside down in it. 

I buy lots of things online, but I'm always careful on eBay.  I might take a chance with $50 or $100 understanding that I may lose it, but 100 grand?  I guess if you have a billion in the bank, and more coming in every day, 100 large isn't a real concern.

[KSMooniac]

On 2/11/2023 at 8:05 PM, Schllc said:

The reservation I have with composites is a residual from my days with bicycles. 
Aluminum and steel frames always showed very clear signed of imminent failure from over stressing, and always had significant utility after those signs appeared. 
Composites showed zero sign until complete failure, and then they were unusable. 
Under ideal conditions, composites are clearly superior, but ideal conditions do not always exist. 
There is no reliable way to check to see if a composite airframe has ever been overstressed unless it has failed. 
Reason being, composites have no modulus of elasticity, and when the limit is exceeded there is a wildly variable range of strength retained.  With metals, this is much more predictable. 
Does this make one better than the other?
I’m not experienced or smart enough to make that determination. 
Metals are defiantly more predictable, and while I don’t mean to denigrate the modality of current convention, I know which I prefer. 

I respect your opinion, but much of what you wrote here is simply not true.  I'm an engineer in the aircraft industry, and halfway specialize in composite structure.  I think you mostly have terms mixed up or mis-used.  Composites definitely have a modulus of elasticity as it is a basic material property.  Steel and titanium have higher modulii than most "common" composite materials in fact, meaning they are stiffer.  You might be thinking of plastic behavior after a material is strained beyond it's elastic limit... metals typically have a plastic zone where they will permanently deform before failure while most composite material systems do not.  

Composite material systems in modern aircraft are typically only designed to work to about 50% of their ultimate capability, even with a 1.5x factor of safety added to the loads.  That means a normal category aircraft designed to 3.8 g positive has to demonstrate 5.7 g's of strength without failure, and because of the inherent conservatism, the same plane might be able to actually "pull" more than 10 g's before failure.  A Mooney might be able to pull more than that (many anecdotally have!) but I would tell you they're too heavy.    Composite structural failure is predictable in the modern era with modern tools, but not easy or intuitive.  The processing/fabrication is critical, and not everyone does it well... Textron screwed up badly after they bought the Columbia line many years ago, and failed to recover from that mistake.

If your previous experience is mostly with high-end racing bicycles that fight for grams of weight, you can likely get catastrophic failures with steel, ti, or composite frames or forks.  CERTIFIED aircraft construction is far, far different and much more robust.  

(for the record, I own a 46 year old metal Mooney and am happy with my decision!  I also bought an RV-6 tail kit while employed by a composite kit-->certified manufacturer.  If buying today and my choices included equivalently-priced and capable composite or metal options, I might have a harder time deciding.)

[jetdriven]

2 hours ago, Fly Boomer said:

I buy lots of things online, but I'm always careful on eBay.  I might take a chance with $50 or $100 understanding that I may lose it, but 100 grand?  I guess if you have a billion in the bank, and more coming in every day, 100 large isn't a real concern.

this guy literally showed up with a wingtip and an aileron and thought hew would fly it home. I told him on the phone, before, that my gut feeling was 10 grand for an engineering report and 50-100K to fix it.

[Schllc]

2 hours ago, KSMooniac said:

I respect your opinion, but much of what you wrote here is simply not true.  I'm an engineer in the aircraft industry, and halfway specialize in composite structure.  I think you mostly have terms mixed up or mis-used.  Composites definitely have a modulus of elasticity as it is a basic material property.  Steel and titanium have higher modulii than most "common" composite materials in fact, meaning they are stiffer.  You might be thinking of plastic behavior after a material is strained beyond it's elastic limit... metals typically have a plastic zone where they will permanently deform before failure while most composite material systems do not.  

Composite material systems in modern aircraft are typically only designed to work to about 50% of their ultimate capability, even with a 1.5x factor of safety added to the loads.  That means a normal category aircraft designed to 3.8 g positive has to demonstrate 5.7 g's of strength without failure, and because of the inherent conservatism, the same plane might be able to actually "pull" more than 10 g's before failure.  A Mooney might be able to pull more than that (many anecdotally have!) but I would tell you they're too heavy.    Composite structural failure is predictable in the modern era with modern tools, but not easy or intuitive.  The processing/fabrication is critical, and not everyone does it well... Textron screwed up badly after they bought the Columbia line many years ago, and failed to recover from that mistake.

If your previous experience is mostly with high-end racing bicycles that fight for grams of weight, you can likely get catastrophic failures with steel, ti, or composite frames or forks.  CERTIFIED aircraft construction is far, far different and much more robust.  

(for the record, I own a 46 year old metal Mooney and am happy with my decision!  I also bought an RV-6 tail kit while employed by a composite kit-->certified manufacturer.  If buying today and my choices included equivalently-priced and capable composite or metal options, I might have a harder time deciding.)

I don’t really disagree with what you wrote and my statement was definitely limited in scope and experience (I am also a mechanical engineer).  I do disagree with your assessment of my understanding 
I know what I meant by moduli, I mean that after it is exceeded in metal, the metal retains an exponentially higher strength that the composite.
I know the methods of composite construction have been advanced well beyond my experience.  But what I witnessed was not purely anecdotal.
The properties of the base materials are the same, and metal is much more predictable than composite.
The incidence of defects in material and workmanship are more forgiving in metal than composite as well, and the ability to both observe exeedence of capacity and the strength of utility post exeedence is greater in metals than composites.  
Does this mean metal is superior?  In all honesty, I cannot argue this is true. 
While metals deform after exeedence, the still retain a large portion of their strength, composites do not. They are usually barely a fraction after. 
I understand metal much better, and with what I have seen and experienced I would prefer metal, but I’m rapidly approaching an anachronism so…..

[1980Mooney]

2 hours ago, Schllc said:

I
I understand metal much better, and with what I have seen and experienced I would prefer metal, but I’m rapidly approaching an anachronism so…..

But isn’t that true with the market shift and introduction of any new technology? We tend to favor what we know and are familiar with. In the early 1960s American television manufacturers with large service infrastructure of repairman that knew and were most comfortable with vacuum tubes.  They were slow to change as the Japanese took the market with transistors.  Every technology shift is littered with companies that are slow to change because they are comfortable doing what they currently do. Kodak missing out in digital imaging, Corning being the premier CRT glass manufacturer as the world went digital flat screen. GE dominance in incandescent and fluorescent lighting as the world goes to LED’s, etc. 

[Raymond J1]

Enfin, le meilleur avion composite est celui en métal et bois comme le M20 A...

Edited February 15, 2023 by Raymond J1

[Pinecone]

14 hours ago, KSMooniac said:

Composite material systems in modern aircraft are typically only designed to work to about 50% of their ultimate capability, even with a 1.5x factor of safety added to the loads.  That means a normal category aircraft designed to 3.8 g positive has to demonstrate 5.7 g's of strength without failure, and because of the inherent conservatism, the same plane might be able to actually "pull" more than 10 g's before failure.  A Mooney might be able to pull more than that (many anecdotally have!) but I would tell you they're too heavy.    Composite structural failure is predictable in the modern era with modern tools, but not easy or intuitive.  The processing/fabrication is critical, and not everyone does it well... Textron screwed up badly after they bought the Columbia line many years ago, and failed to recover from that mistake.

If your previous experience is mostly with high-end racing bicycles that fight for grams of weight, you can likely get catastrophic failures with steel, ti, or composite frames or forks.  CERTIFIED aircraft construction is far, far different and much more robust.  

ALL certified aircraft are designed to a 1.5X safety factor.  So all Normal Category aircraft are designed to withstand at least 5.7G, and all Utility Category to 6.6G, and Aerobatic to 9G.

And yes, especially older aircraft are much stronger (and yes heavier) that required.

When the air combat place had a wing spar failure in a T-34 (Bonanza/Debonair wing), the aircraft was pulling about 12G while rolling.  A modern finite model analysis of the T-34 showed it would have survived this, is there were not some fatigue cracking to start the failure.  As a reference, the F-15 has a rolling G limit of 2.5G.

When rolling, the upgoing wing has a MUCH higher load that the average load on the aircraft.

Yes, when you start playing with lightest weight, you design to the minimum strength and weight to accomplish the task.  Colin Chapman of Lotus was the king of light weight.  Without the computer modeling, he made each part lighter and lighter, until it broke too soon, and the backed up one or two iterations.  He was quoted as staying, a perfect design of a race car is one that completes the race, then falls apart on the cool down lap.

[jetdriven]

Chapman was quoted as saying "simplify, then add lightness."