Glad to hear your learning to fly. In addition to my aviation photography pursuits (www.Jetpix.com), I am also a 4,000 hr Airline Transport Rated pilot, Gold Seal Flight Instructor, and FAA Aviation Safety Counselor. If you ever have any questions that you may want a second opinion on, please don't hesitate to ask. Also, thanks for quoting my friend, Mary Shafer. She's helped me out a lot with some SR-71 photo work. Mary is a wonderful friend, and great admirer of my work.Anyway, the gist of my post. have you considered the purchase of a NEW Cessna 172 or 182? Cessna began turning them out again a few years ago. I think you'd like the new models. Plus unlike the Cirrus or the Diamond, the windows OPEN, which make them good, inexpensive platforms for aerial photography. I've been shooting from them for over 10 years. and the wing strut is not difficult to work around at all.
Two things I like about 172s: they can fly and land pretty slowly without power (think forced landing), and they are made out of SOFT, ENERGY ABSORBING aluminum. Although I am impressed with the high performance of composite airplanes, the one problem I personally have with most of them is that their best engine out glide speed is fairly high, which means a painful forced landing on anything but a hard surface. The other problem is that while aluminum is relatively soft, and will crumple and absorb and dissipate the energy of a crash before it reaches the occupants, the stiff composite plastics tend to transmit that energy really well to the occupants. Cirrus sort of addresses this by installing an emergency parachute to the airplane itself with a placard stating "Use of this parachute may result in injury or death." Very reassuring! I'm not against flying single engine composite aircraft, But when I fly an F-16, I also have a parachute and ejection seat at my disposal.
All the Best,
Joe Oliva <Joe@Jetpix.com>
www.Jetpix.com
-- Joe Oliva, January 8, 2002
Your comments regarding diesel power are well taken but I'd like to point out that diesel light aircraft power has been the holy grail for over two decades now and it's not clear that we are any closer to seeing it come true.
Here's an article that I wrote on the subject nearly five years ago. Yes, diesels were "right around the corner" then too.
http://www.prime-mover.org/Engines/GArticles/article2.html
Other background can be found at http://www.prime-mover.org/Engines/GArticles/index.html
greg
-- Gregory Travis, January 10, 2002
Like your pragmatic views concerning "The Future," but not sure about voice activation in a 90db cockpit...
-- Carl Phillips, February 1, 2002
You write: > For long cross-country trips with a friend and a dog, > one really needs a 4-seat airplane.I'd add: for anything else, a 1946 Piper Cub, Taylorcraft or Aeronca Champ would teach you more about flying, be more fun to fly, and make you feel much more a part of what's going on around you.
Oh, and they're great for long cross-country trips too - if you're not in a hurry. I spent a wonderful summer flying from NJ to ND, down the Mississippi to SC, back to NJ and finally again to ND. I met many, many great people and learnt how to fly that '46 Taylorcraft in every condition imaginable short of IFR.
Ahhh... That was life at 25 - when I'm 50 I'll do it again!
-- Michael Mee, February 9, 2002
What's all this talk about ballistic parachutes? Shut up and die like an aviator, I say!
-- Michael Newton, March 13, 2002
Hi Philip,I flew our new Cirrus SR20 home today. I might point out in your comparison, the SR20 I bought has a backup electric vacuum pump that automatically comes on if the engine driven one fails (of course V2.0 will be all electric.) Only the AI is vacuum powered. I also have two alternators so if one goes I still have electric. (and 9 V batteries to power the TC if they go as well). Finally the Avidyne is way cool (and a reasonable trade off for the 530 you have vs my two 430's) It shows terrain (with elevation coloring), approaches, towers, airways and way more than the Garmin display. (Still not as good as the MX20 though). The autopilot does not have the cool altitude preset you have but it will fly an ILS localizer and glideslope with less than 1/2 bar deviation (and way better than I can). When you get back from AK you will have to take a ride and let me know what you think. After 4 days of training in Duluth I feel pretty comfortable with the plane but you are right that the higher speeds are more for a new pilot to handle.
David
PS Hope you are having fun in Alaska.
-- David Abrams, July 20, 2002
Hi,I would like to inform that the diesel future has arrived! The DA40 with the Thielert diesel engine is available, and my flying club has received it's first, and is waiting for it's second. The engine is very simple in use with a FADEC taking care of both engine and propeller pitch. The performance can best be illustrated by: 75% power requires 5.2US Gal of Jet A1 per hour, and this gives a cruising speed of approximatelu 120 knots. In Norway, the price of Jet A1 is around 35% of the Avgas price. Now, this is impressive!
Best regards, Fred-Johan Pettersen
-- Fred-Johan Pettersen, October 1, 2003
At the end, when the article ponders a voice-operated interface, I'm reminded of the honda sattelite navagation system I'm familiar with. I realize the author's talking about a system far more capable than that one, but with the voice recognition in the car, it's only really good at simple stuff "Go home", many of the more complicated commands need to be repeated. Also it's almost an axiom, the more stress you're under, the more noise there's likely to be, and the worse a job the recognition software does.
-- Mike Aracic, October 5, 2006