31–40 of 45 posts
What I thought was original in this approach was how can you sue the manufacturer of a kit plane over its design if it's open source? Course lawyers will surely try so it has to be tested in court first.
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This comment misses the point and doesn't compare apples with apples. This is a 2 seat aircraft designed to operate in the Light Sport category which is very different from an Ultralight. Light Sport aircraft cost $70k and up.
You can purchase a Cessna 150 for under $15k. And that's not a light sport.
For those unfamiliar with planes, you can buy a used ultralite plane for under $10,000 in working condition. Something that has been proven to fly reliably.
Or you could buy a certified cessna 150 for $15k. Much less likely to kill you or have an engine failure. Anyway this isn't really anything new. You can already build your own plane from plans, and the plans only cost about $100 (a very small portion of the cost of building): http://www.quickheads.com/index.php?option=com_ixxocart&Item...
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You should also point out that's a 20 year old Cessna 150.
The last Cessna 150 was made in 1977 so it would be at least 35 years old.
It was my first time flying such a primitive old plane and honestly I hadn't had such fun since my first solo. I was walking round with such a grin.
Old planes aren't bad at all. They are tried and tested, meanwhile this design doesn't exactly look as modern as a Diamond or similar cheap to run glider-come-airplane so it's hard to be excited in all honesty.
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The last Cessna 150 was made in 1977 so it would be at least 35 years old.
And so what! The engine certainly would be more modern. I just had some excellent fun flying in a Piper Cub on Sunday, it's about 3 times my age. Planes are not like cars, entire chunks of them are replaced on a regular basis materials prone to rust and similar corrosion aren't normally used. It was my first time flying such a primitive old plane and honestly I hadn't had such fun since my first solo. I was walking r…
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I think it refers to the Hunter S. Thompson quote: "No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride." Basically meaning you may be getting in over your head, but you'll probably have a good story to tell if you don't end up dead. Similar to the idiom, "in for a penny, in for a pound."
I'm more inclined to think they were drawing a comparison between buying a ticket to ride a plane vs placing a bounty on a ticket/bug to be fixed.
This is great, I've been wanting to get into aviation for some time but the barrier of entry is steep. Using their plans as a guideline for building an ultralight instead of a light sport aircraft would reduce the cost dramatically. Ultralights have much lower limits but don't require any formal training/licenses. In the end you could probably build an ultralight for the cost of a pilots license.
Damn, that didn't work.
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This comment misses the point and doesn't compare apples with apples. This is a 2 seat aircraft designed to operate in the Light Sport category which is very different from an Ultralight. Light Sport aircraft cost $70k and up.
There are reasons why LSAs cost $70k. They're not looking to fly anything until 2015, and that's lots of time for reality to seep in. I wouldn't be surprised if they discovered that $15k was optimistic by a factor of about 5....
I'm assuming they're planning on making it a partial kit, and if you're expected to 3d print some of the parts $15k for "other" supplies (mostly avionics and engine) sounds pretty reasonable to me.