4 ms·

My concern about training on an aircraft of this fashion is that you get no exposure to controls such as carb heat, fuel mixture, etc. I wonder if a distinctio

My concern about training on an aircraft of this fashion is that you get no exposure to controls such as carb heat, fuel mixture, etc. I wonder if a distinction will be made (in the not so far future) between getting rated on a combustion plane vs. electric? Much like you get rated for high-performance or twin engines today.

wp1 10y ago
I would gladly pay for 5 hours of training for a combustion endorsement, if I could avoid fuel costs for 40+ hours of training to get my private certificate.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  Fuel for a typical 4-cyl trainer will be around 8 gph at < $5/gal. 40 * 8 * 5 is $1600. 5 extra hours of dual in a rented piston plane is going to run you more than half of that possible savings. The net savings will be several hundred dollars, pretty much a drop in the bucket for flying expenses.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Why would it have to be "extra"? ISTM they could just train as they do now, except that they would concentrate all the ICE issues in the five hours in which they're flying with ICE.
    - sokoloff 10y ago
      Every new airplane type takes some type-specific instruction. True, it could count towards the FAA-minimum 40 hours, but almost no one takes a checkride with 40.0 hours in their logbook. I was a pretty dedicated student and at least a fair stick, and I was still in the 55-57 hour range when I took the checkride. Most people training at towered fields are in the 60-75 hour range at the ride. Fuel isn't the dominant cost in flight training. (Source: I bought my first airplane during flight training and have been flying for almost 2 decades now. Fuel is more than a rounding error, but tends to run around 1/4 of my all-in costs.)
- Zombieball 10y ago
  This is a good point and kind of along the lines of what I was thinking. A fuel endorsement might be what's needed.
danielschonfeld 10y ago
If this proves to be all it's to be, then soon this will make no difference. Just like in the US, getting a driver's license is not required to be done on a stick shift, cause 97% of the cars on the road are automatic. So will getting certified in an electric airplane make no difference compared to its old and 'outdated' internal combustion friends. As far as career progression for a professional pilot, most pilots don't deal with mixture/carb heat etc as jet engine themselves are mostly fully automatic with a start button and a fuel cutoff switch and a thrust lever. And even some of those are coming out too and will become obsolete within just a few years time.
sokoloff 10y ago
Should be no issue. Most people get transition training when starting to fly a new type. Carb vs fuel injection, normally aspirated vs turbo-normalized vs turbo-charged, use of flaps for max performance takeoffs, etc are all minor (but important) differences. Minor nit: high performance is an endorsement, not a rating. (It's a CFI sign-off, not a checkride.)
- Zombieball 10y ago
  Good call out RE: endorsement vs. rating. The proper naming was alluding me (still only a student pilot, ~40hrs, myself as a hobby).
CPLX 10y ago
> no exposure to controls such as carb heat, fuel mixture, etc. Right. None of which are relevant to turbine aircraft anyways, which is the majority of all planes in the sky. It's relevant sure but the big things you learn in flight training are how to figure out where in the sky you are and should be, lift/drag stick and rudder stuff, and endless amounts of regulations. The means of propulsion is important sure but it's a small minority of the info you absorb.
- djrogers 10y ago
  > Right. None of which are relevant to turbine aircraft anyways, which is the majority of all planes in the sky. You won't find a lot of turbines in general aviation...
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    All the bizjets, King Airs, PC12s, TBMs, and Caravans are turbine (and most are GA). Plenty of turbines in GA and they fly a lot of hours. (It's not the majority of airplanes, but it probably is the majority of hours flown.)
AdrianB1 10y ago
In 2016 having a fuel mixture in a plane makes me wonder why is that needed; not only that some popular engines (like Rotax 912 family) do not need it, but processor controlled injection engines definitely do not need it. Fuel mixture is so 1960 and carb heat so 1990... (I'm a pilot in my free time flying propeller driven 2 seaters).
- Zombieball 10y ago
  I don't know about you, but I'm definitely not flying planes made in 2016, let alone this millennia!
sgnelson 10y ago
Serious question from someone who knows very little about planes. Do they seriously still have new carbuereuted planes? I can understand if it's a Cessna from the 50's, 60's, 70's, but I'm surprised they haven't been converted to EFI just from an efficiency and reliability stand point. Does that have to do with all the certification required for aircraft? (ie, if you change the engine, the aircraft has to go through another inspection by the FAA or whomever?)
- Merad 10y ago
  The problem in general aviation is the cost. As the article mentions, even a simple Cessna purchased new costs as much as a house. The result is that there are a LOT of planes flying that date back to the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  Most of the injection systems on piston aircraft are mechanical injection, not EFI, for reliability reasons. EFI with closed-loop lambda control for street cars makes sense because of the widely varied load that a street car has to do and the need to keep the mixture in a close range to keep the catalytic convertor working well under these varied conditions. An airplane engine has a far more steady-state load condition. As a result, fixed ignition timing and mechanical fuel injection with manual mixture control is "good enough" and very simple/reliable. Likewise for carbs and carb heat on the O- engines. It works and works very well. There is a process for modifying certified aircraft. STC (Supplemental Type Certificate) is the primary means for changing engine configuration. It's some amount of work, but isn't prohibitive. (I have STC'd modifications on every airplane I've ever owned. It's not that big of a deal, if your modification has sound engineering basis.) Converting from a carb to fuel injection is possible, but many of those conversions involve installing a fuel header tank that the airframe didn't originally have. Sometimes this changes the fuel system for the worse (eliminating the "both" tank setting) and/or puts a header tank in a place to spray pressurized fuel into the cabin in the event of a forced landing. I looked into converting my 182 to an IO-550 (from an O-470) and that was unappealing to me. Instead, I upgraded to an O-520 (still carb'd, but larger displacement).
- dingaling 10y ago

wp1 10y ago

I would gladly pay for 5 hours of training for a combustion endorsement, if I could avoid fuel costs for 40+ hours of training to get my private certificate.

sokoloff 10y ago
Fuel for a typical 4-cyl trainer will be around 8 gph at < $5/gal. 40 * 8 * 5 is $1600. 5 extra hours of dual in a rented piston plane is going to run you more than half of that possible savings. The net savings will be several hundred dollars, pretty much a drop in the bucket for flying expenses.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Why would it have to be "extra"? ISTM they could just train as they do now, except that they would concentrate all the ICE issues in the five hours in which they're flying with ICE.
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    Every new airplane type takes some type-specific instruction. True, it could count towards the FAA-minimum 40 hours, but almost no one takes a checkride with 40.0 hours in their logbook. I was a pretty dedicated student and at least a fair stick, and I was still in the 55-57 hour range when I took the checkride. Most people training at towered fields are in the 60-75 hour range at the ride. Fuel isn't the dominant cost in flight training. (Source: I bought my first airplane during flight training and have been flying for almost 2 decades now. Fuel is more than a rounding error, but tends to run around 1/4 of my all-in costs.)
Zombieball 10y ago
This is a good point and kind of along the lines of what I was thinking. A fuel endorsement might be what's needed.

danielschonfeld 10y ago

If this proves to be all it's to be, then soon this will make no difference. Just like in the US, getting a driver's license is not required to be done on a stick shift, cause 97% of the cars on the road are automatic. So will getting certified in an electric airplane make no difference compared to its old and 'outdated' internal combustion friends. As far as career progression for a professional pilot, most pilots don't deal with mixture/carb heat etc as jet engine themselves are mostly fully automatic with a start button and a fuel cutoff switch and a thrust lever. And even some of those are coming out too and will become obsolete within just a few years time.

sokoloff 10y ago

Should be no issue. Most people get transition training when starting to fly a new type. Carb vs fuel injection, normally aspirated vs turbo-normalized vs turbo-charged, use of flaps for max performance takeoffs, etc are all minor (but important) differences. Minor nit: high performance is an endorsement, not a rating. (It's a CFI sign-off, not a checkride.)

Zombieball 10y ago
Good call out RE: endorsement vs. rating. The proper naming was alluding me (still only a student pilot, ~40hrs, myself as a hobby).

CPLX 10y ago

> no exposure to controls such as carb heat, fuel mixture, etc. Right. None of which are relevant to turbine aircraft anyways, which is the majority of all planes in the sky. It's relevant sure but the big things you learn in flight training are how to figure out where in the sky you are and should be, lift/drag stick and rudder stuff, and endless amounts of regulations. The means of propulsion is important sure but it's a small minority of the info you absorb.

djrogers 10y ago
> Right. None of which are relevant to turbine aircraft anyways, which is the majority of all planes in the sky. You won't find a lot of turbines in general aviation...
- sokoloff 10y ago
  All the bizjets, King Airs, PC12s, TBMs, and Caravans are turbine (and most are GA). Plenty of turbines in GA and they fly a lot of hours. (It's not the majority of airplanes, but it probably is the majority of hours flown.)

AdrianB1 10y ago

In 2016 having a fuel mixture in a plane makes me wonder why is that needed; not only that some popular engines (like Rotax 912 family) do not need it, but processor controlled injection engines definitely do not need it. Fuel mixture is so 1960 and carb heat so 1990... (I'm a pilot in my free time flying propeller driven 2 seaters).

Zombieball 10y ago
I don't know about you, but I'm definitely not flying planes made in 2016, let alone this millennia!

sgnelson 10y ago

Serious question from someone who knows very little about planes. Do they seriously still have new carbuereuted planes? I can understand if it's a Cessna from the 50's, 60's, 70's, but I'm surprised they haven't been converted to EFI just from an efficiency and reliability stand point. Does that have to do with all the certification required for aircraft? (ie, if you change the engine, the aircraft has to go through another inspection by the FAA or whomever?)

Merad 10y ago
The problem in general aviation is the cost. As the article mentions, even a simple Cessna purchased new costs as much as a house. The result is that there are a LOT of planes flying that date back to the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
sokoloff 10y ago
Most of the injection systems on piston aircraft are mechanical injection, not EFI, for reliability reasons. EFI with closed-loop lambda control for street cars makes sense because of the widely varied load that a street car has to do and the need to keep the mixture in a close range to keep the catalytic convertor working well under these varied conditions. An airplane engine has a far more steady-state load condition. As a result, fixed ignition timing and mechanical fuel injection with manual mixture control is "good enough" and very simple/reliable. Likewise for carbs and carb heat on the O- engines. It works and works very well. There is a process for modifying certified aircraft. STC (Supplemental Type Certificate) is the primary means for changing engine configuration. It's some amount of work, but isn't prohibitive. (I have STC'd modifications on every airplane I've ever owned. It's not that big of a deal, if your modification has sound engineering basis.) Converting from a carb to fuel injection is possible, but many of those conversions involve installing a fuel header tank that the airframe didn't originally have. Sometimes this changes the fuel system for the worse (eliminating the "both" tank setting) and/or puts a header tank in a place to spray pressurized fuel into the cabin in the event of a forced landing. I looked into converting my 182 to an IO-550 (from an O-470) and that was unappealing to me. Instead, I upgraded to an O-520 (still carb'd, but larger displacement).
dingaling 10y ago