How does it communicate with ground station? Voice recognition and speech synthesis?
It's announce only (though it avoids running over other communication on the frequency).
Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
231–237 of 237 posts
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#232Why do they cost $3M?
The labor, insurance, and safety / regulatory certifications required of a low volume production aircraft.
Only about 1000 single-engine piston aircraft are sold every year worldwide, and only about 500 single-engine turboprop.
It's a market with higher certification requirements, but much smaller unit volume than boats and cars, so much more certification, R&D, admin cost has to be covered by each unit sold.
See eg. https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/wordpress/2019/02/26/2...
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Establishing, maintaining, and handling the inevitable connection issues of the data connection necessary to remote pilot an aircraft is a lot more work than integrating a "best route" algorithm with existing autopilot features, automated radio communication, and calming cockpit UI.
I was assuming that this was a solved problem, given how prevalent drone warfare is now.
The military can easily afford other aircraft to serve as relays and satellite data connections that a general aviation pilot probably can't.
Even then, it's problematic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gyro powered steam gauges are all but gone from aviation. The GA fleet is even shedding them at a promising rate. MEMS based independent systems with backup power are solid state and far more reliable than a janky vacuum pump driven by the engine running a couple clockwork instruments.
Most of the GA fleet is still vacuum powered for backup.
Why do people keep parroting this? I know of exactly zero aircraft currently produced that are retaining the vacuum system and I've seen very few retrofits that retain the vacuum on the engine. The aircraft in operation with vacuum systems use them as primary systems but are moving away from it with each annual.
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
A "good" landing is one which people can walk away from and a "great" landing is one where you can use the cruise missile again so by definition, a cruise missile can complete neither a "good" nor a "great" landing by design.
"One unusual capability of the Snark missile was its ability to fly away from its launch point for up to 11 hours, and then return for a landing. If its warhead did not detach from its body, then the Snark could be flown repeatedly." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-62_Snark
Of course cold war shenanigans would prove me wrong.... I stand corrected
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's "a little extra risk"? A 5% chance you'll die? 1%? 0.1%? Compared to what? Those are actually very large risks when the cost is your life. When the survival rate of using CAPS is an order of magnitude (or more) safer? Use the chute. Not to mention how bad a decision it would be to dead stick if there are passengers on board.
> When the survival rate of using CAPS is an order of magnitude (or more) safer? [citation needed]
13:1 better survivability with CAPS deployed:
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
A 20mph vertical impact into someone's roof really isn't the worst of outcomes.
I'm not sure 20mph is correct. The POH says it's the equivalent of being dropped from 10 feet. It's not something I want to experience but it doesn't really sound that bad.
Ok. I was wrong.