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Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

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Re: Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

#121

Post by blueskin_ »

benburleson wrote: post #110
krschultz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine owns an airplane, and his brother is a pilot in the USAF. I asked him this once and his opinion was that 2 engines makes the plane more complicated and increases the chance of pilot error. He had suffered 2 or 3 engine out incidents in his single engine plane, and landed all 3 with no issue. Obviously if your plane doesn't glide very well then the redundancy of a second engine is necessary (i.e a jet…

I always assumed "gliding well" is a fundamental principle of an airplane.

Just about any can glide, but not necessarily well.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

Re: Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

#122

Post by S201 »

pingswept wrote: post #88
lpolovets wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps 3-5x as fast in terms of time because you don't have to stop at red lights and you can take the "as the crow flies" path instead of zig-zagging. Pretty sweet deal for $30k!

True, but it takes around 45 minutes to prepare a plane for flight and about 20 minutes to put it away. Also, you have to drive to and from the airport. Planes are incredible, but you have to fly pretty far before they're a timesaver.

Where did those numbers come from? Preflight and run-up can be done in 20 minutes once you've done it many times and securing after a flight is as simple as turning everything off and pushing the plane in the hanger or parking on the pad. That's maybe 10 minutes at most.

The only really time consuming part would be making and filing a flight plan. If you've done the route multiple times, you already have the flight plan and if you're operating under VFR (visual flight rules), you don't need to open/close it.

Source: I'm currently a student pilot and have done this process many times.

Re: Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

#123

Post by Filligree »

arh68 wrote: post #112
dagurp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the ground effect. It's impossible to get a feel for it on a simulator.

Do you think a 3-D image could enhance the 'feel'? Could a flight sim feel significantly more real w/ Oculus Rift?

I can see VR being a dramatic improvement for flight simulators, but you'll still need a good flight model.

Re: Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

#124

Post by sokoloff »

mercutio2 wrote: post #120
sokoloff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what 4.1% annual inflation compounded over 10 years will do. In real dollar terms, that price is very close to what it was 10 years ago.

Where do you get 4.1% inflation from? CPI for the USD hasn't gone up by that much in a single year for the last decade, annualized inflation is closer to 2.5% over that period.

4.1% is the 10th root of 150% minus 1.

"OMG, this cost went up 50% over ten years!" sounds like a dire situation, when in fact it's a tiny margin over whatever inflation measure you prefer.

If you take 2.5% as the annualized inflation, that's 28% over that 10 year period, meaning the other 17% increase is 1.6% "real dollar increase" per year. Hardly frightening, IMO.

Re: Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

#125

Post by lutusp »

arh68 wrote: post #112
dagurp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the ground effect. It's impossible to get a feel for it on a simulator.

Do you think a 3-D image could enhance the 'feel'? Could a flight sim feel significantly more real w/ Oculus Rift?

A 3D simulation would represent a big improvement for formation flying or landing and taking off, but not so much for flying at altitude for obvious reasons.

But the absence of body accelerations in a simulator is a big obstacle standing in the way of realism. Big, expensive simulators have a cockpit mounted on hydraulic actuators to partially address this issue -- the cockpit moves around to provide some accelerations and try to improve the subjective sense of being in motion.

Re: Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

#126

Post by lutusp »

Udo wrote: post #44
lutusp wrote: post #2

It's important to say that the general aviation population has gotten much smaller over the last few decades. It was a lot more popular 25 years ago when I flew much more than I do now. A number of aircraft manufacturers have stopped building small general-aviation planes for a number of reasons including liability and a reduction in public interest. I started flying about 1980. By 1992, 12 years later, about half th…

> about half the pilots I knew in 1980 (instructors as well as students) had been killed in flying accidents. That's extreme. Is there any pattern? Where are you located?

> That's extreme.

Yes, it is extreme, not the average. I should have added that the pilots I knew were largely instructors, stunt pilots and skydivers (and pilots who flew skydivers to altitude). So not a typical population.

Re: Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

#127

Post by thedufer »

benburleson wrote: post #110
krschultz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine owns an airplane, and his brother is a pilot in the USAF. I asked him this once and his opinion was that 2 engines makes the plane more complicated and increases the chance of pilot error. He had suffered 2 or 3 engine out incidents in his single engine plane, and landed all 3 with no issue. Obviously if your plane doesn't glide very well then the redundancy of a second engine is necessary (i.e a jet…

I always assumed "gliding well" is a fundamental principle of an airplane.

Many military aircraft are designed to not glide well, because gliding well means that a plane is less agile. Most modern fighter jets go almost immediately into a tumble if they lose power, since they require constant computerized corrections to remain stable.

Its probably a bit more important in a hobbyist or even a commercial plane.

Re: Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

#128

Post by lutusp »

zipppy wrote: post #116
jeiting wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be fantastically unlucky, by my research (I'm afraid I've lost the citation) the number of pilots who die in flying accidents is about 1/50. How many pilots did you know?

2% of pilots _dying_ is still pretty high -- higher than I expected. Someone mentioned it being akin to motorcycling riding, but I can't imagine that 2% of motorcyclists die from it.

> Someone mentioned it being akin to motorcycling riding, but I can't imagine that 2% of motorcyclists die from it.

The rates for motorcycle accidents and deaths is really very high:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_safety#Accident_rate...

Quote: "According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2006, 13.10 cars out of 100,000 ended up in fatal crashes. The rate for motorcycles is 72.34 per 100,000 registered motorcycles."

That's about 5 1/2 times greater.

Re: Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

#129

Post by [deleted] »

bergie wrote: post #89
sokoloff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what 4.1% annual inflation compounded over 10 years will do. In real dollar terms, that price is very close to what it was 10 years ago.

Euro area inflation has been way lower than that, it seems. Including negative % on some years

[deleted]

Re: Questions People Ask When I Tell Them I Own an Airplane

#130

Post by mcv »

pingswept wrote: post #88
lpolovets wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps 3-5x as fast in terms of time because you don't have to stop at red lights and you can take the "as the crow flies" path instead of zig-zagging. Pretty sweet deal for $30k!

True, but it takes around 45 minutes to prepare a plane for flight and about 20 minutes to put it away. Also, you have to drive to and from the airport. Planes are incredible, but you have to fly pretty far before they're a timesaver.

I believe there's a town in California where everybody has their own hangar, instead of garage.
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