5 ms·

Can’t support MOSAIC enough. I’ve owned a composite LSA called a Flight Design for about 5 years, been in arguments with a lot of old timers about the safety as

Can’t support MOSAIC enough. I’ve owned a composite LSA called a Flight Design for about 5 years, been in arguments with a lot of old timers about the safety aspects but I consider revolutionary and far safer than a certified aircraft than the statistics will tell you. For example it has a ballistic parachute that will bring the entire aircraft to the ground. Unlike the Lycomings and Continentals the engine wasn’t designed in the 1950s. It’s equipped with real time satellite weather, GPS autopilot, Avionics that would cost you $15-20k to put in a Cessna due to all the red tape. I will get a lot of heat for this but I think the FAA has killed a lot of people. If pilots had low cost access to things like glass cockpits, satellite weather, inexpensive autopilot, and a healthy ecosystem of cheap, modern aircraft with modern engines (Basic things like fuel injection) a lot of pilots might still be alive right now.

SR2Z 1y ago
> I will get a lot of heat for this but I think the FAA has killed a lot of people. On the balance, the FAA has saved more lives than it's cost just because big jetliners hold SO MANY PEOPLE. But otherwise I fully agree with you. It's deranged that students these days are taught to manually lean the mixture until the engine sputters (i.e. the engine begins to DIE), then bump it back up. It's incredibly stupid that an aircraft flying in 2025 has multiple solid state accelerometers and gyroscopes on board as part of people's phones - but the only certified one is a vacuum-powered analog instrument from 1981. And why the hell do we still fuel GA aircraft with a gasoline that's literally ILLEGAL to use anywhere else? Don't even get me started on the DPE or medical systems. These changes cannot come soon enough, because the entire GA world has slipped through the cracks as the FAA has become a disaster.
- dreamcompiler 1y ago
  > And why the hell do we still fuel GA aircraft with a gasoline that's literally ILLEGAL to use anywhere else? Unleaded avgas is a thing now. But it won't work with many legacy aviation engines. I hope this new rule will finally enable some engine (and thus fuel) innovation.
- andrepd 1y ago
  The massive effects of lead poisoning are still seen on a large scale near airports and in areas with lots of avgas powered traffic. That most of it is for essentially recreational purposes makes it even more infuriating.
- rightbyte 1y ago
  > It's deranged that students these days are taught to manually lean the mixture until the engine sputters (i.e. the engine begins to DIE), then bump it back up. Why? That is essentially an engine check. I think you want pilots to understand their machines and to do that you need to operate the engines.
  - SR2Z 1y ago
    I'm not sure I see the value of doing an engine check while flying the plane, or flying carbureted engines without automatic mixture control in general. Pilots will understand their engines' quirks better, but those quirks are stupid and obviated by newer technology.
    - lovecg 1y ago
      Forget mixture, carb ice keeps killing people in 2025. Even just moving everyone to dumb mechanical fuel injection will be a big step forward at this point…
- mattgrice 1y ago
  It's actually wild that you actually CAN manually lean the mixture. What's the last car that was sold without closed-loop EFI? If they were cars, most GA planes would qualify for 'antique' plates. Most of the rest are not technically antique, just antique technology.
  - rasz 1y ago
    I think it was only in the last 5? years you can no longer buy a brand new helicopter with manual throttle control right on the collective. Not even RPM control, just a stupid manual linkage going straight to the carb :|
- metalman 1y ago
  .......attain strait and level flight, reduce airspeed to 65knots.....pull main controls aft till they hit the stops while applying full rudder......bieng able to recover from the "unusual attitude" quicky and cleanly is the skill needed to procede to all of the technological fiddling and gadgetry.....or is this all just a song and dance working up to just eliminating general aviation and making one of the passengers sit up front and wear a nice hat? if not, then what on earth are all of these fancy accelerometers for? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zgfna12Rt-k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zgfna12Rt-k
  - lovecg 1y ago
    For flying in the clouds mostly. These air driven gyroscopic contraptions were fine engineering for their time, but trusting one’s life to one of these when we can have a multiply redundant solid state alternative? No thanks.
sokoloff 1y ago
> equipped with real time satellite weather Many people have died from believing that their satellite weather was real-time. It’s 3-15 minutes delayed typically. Go up on a VFR day with widely scattered wet clouds and maybe scattered showers or virga. Fly near some of the wetness and notice they are physically quite displaced from where they are on your weather display. In some cases, your weather display will show weather on the left and clear right, while your windshield will show the weather is actually on your right, having moved during that delay. Imagine then trying to navigate that in more serious weather and you’ll hopefully get religion that the display is definitely not real-time and must not be relied upon as if it were. It’s a strategic tool, not a tactical one.
- darig 1y ago
  [dead]
- TylerE 1y ago
  More than a few have died in the last few years treating their iPad with GPS as a replacement for a glass cockpit and instrument rating too...
  - Animats 1y ago
    There are at least five YouTube videos of ATC communications with pilots in trouble because of an IPad failure.
    - crinkly 1y ago
      Doesn't surprise me. I got on a flight that had to go back to gate due to an "iPad failure" about 6 years ago. The captain was apologising as we disembarked. I asked him what happened. He said software issue across both their flight plan iPads. Hardware was fine. Not sure if it grounded other flights but we were back on a different plane about 2 hours later.
      - TylerE 1y ago
scarier 1y ago
>far safer than a certified aircraft than the statistics will tell you I share your frustration with the technological stagnation of general aviation, but this is completely damning. Cirrus added all of the features you mention, at great expense and in a fully certified aircraft, and took decades to show any kind of clear safety advantage over clapped-out Cessnas (as I understand it, the vast majority of improvement came from intensive training in when to deploy the parachute, which was wildly less intuitive than anyone originally realized and likely remains so for pilots without specialized training). Digital instruments, weather displays, and automation have significant benefits for many use cases, but it's unclear that they're inherently safer than legacy systems for amateur aviators.
- lovecg 1y ago
  Not only it took a focused training campaign to get people to use the chute, all the increased training did was take the plane from having some of the worst safety statistics in the first decade to somewhere around average to slightly better than industry average. It’s (mostly) not the plane, it’s the pilot.
- TylerE 1y ago
  A confounding factor here is that when a shiny new "safer airplane" is on the market you know who it attracts? The least safe pilots. All the doctors and dentists bought Cirruses. Risk compensation is real... they put themselves into marginal situations because they're telling themselves they can always just pop the chute.
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    I suppose the safest aircraft is no aircraft.
- tialaramex 1y ago
  > wildly less intuitive than anyone originally realized and likely remains so for pilots without specialized training AIUI the specific problem was that humans are bad at "calling it" and the parachute isn't magic. If you used the chute on time you're saved, if you spend that time working through all other options which don't save you, then deployed the chute with no time, you're still dead. So the training was to teach people to call it - yes maybe I could restart the engine (but if not I die), maybe I could keep looking and see that state road (but if not I die), however I could pull the chute right now and almost certainly live so I need to make sure I do that before it's too late. Suppose in a board game you have three choices. One is worthless, we'll lose, one is 80% chance to draw but otherwise lose, one is a utter gamble maybe 5% chance to outright win otherwise lose. Many players will take the 5% chance. In fact in professional sports not taking that risk often annoys fans - they're here for the thrill. But flying an aeroplane isn't a game, the "outright lose" case is you die and if you have passengers they die too. You should take the draw when it's offered, and if we have to train people to do that then I guess that's what it takes.
dreamcompiler 1y ago
> Basic things like fuel injection Don't get me started. It's virtually impossible to buy a car without fuel injection nowadays, but most GA airplanes still use carburetors. And these are vehicles that are constantly changing altitude, so carburetors are even more unsuited for airplanes than for cars. Okay I lied. You can buy fuel injected engines for airplanes. They are readily available. They merely cost 2x or 3x the price of carbureted engines.
- looping__lui 1y ago
  I hear you in general, but GA engines need to work more reliably and go through way more intense operational challenges than automotive engines. Picture this: you take off at 100°F on the ground at full throttle with only air cooling to save weight and reduce potential failure points, then climb to 10,000 feet where the outside air temperature drops to around 65°F (or even freezing conditions). The baffling is a bit worn, and the pilot maintains 70 knots in the climb, pushing cylinder head temperatures (CHT) to 420°F or higher. Then the pilot gets chatty and pulls the engine back to near-idle while CHTs are still at 350°F, before pushing the nose down to kill altitude—causing CHTs to plummet to 250°F in minutes. Through all these extreme thermal cycles and temperature swings, the engine simply cannot quit on its pilot. GA engines may look antiquated—with their carburetors, magnetos, and mechanical fuel pumps—but this apparent simplicity is entirely by design. These “outdated” systems are actually time-tested solutions engineered for ultimate reliability when failure means catastrophe. While car oils use metallic detergent additives, aviation oils must use ashless dispersants to prevent spark plug fouling that could cause engine failure. The oils must handle sustained high RPM operation and brutal temperature cycling while meeting strict FAA specifications that prioritize proven reliability over cutting-edge performance. Every component, from the dual magneto ignition (no electrical system dependency) to the mechanical engine-driven fuel pump, represents decades of refinement focused on one critical goal: the engine will not quit when you need it most. It’s not that these engines are behind the times—they’re precisely engineered for their mission-critical role where proven, simple systems trump technological sophistication.
  - 3ple_alpha 1y ago
iooi 1y ago
> I will get a lot of heat for this but I think the FAA has killed a lot of people. It drives my crazy that in 2025 ADSB is still not mandatory for all aircraft. I get there's old timers flying their tail wheels from the 1950s that don't have any electrical components, but this would massively improve GA safety. Another one is multiplex radio, again, it's 2025, the technology is there. Why are we still seeing so many blocked communications during emergencies in busy airspaces?
- looping__lui 1y ago
  FLARM as the “uncertified predecessor” in the gliding community was a game changer for safety. Game changer. Completely agree with you.
- jdietrich 1y ago
  I get there's old timers flying their tail wheels from the 1950s that don't have any electrical components Frustratingly, the FAA hasn't certified a straightforward solution to this problem. Here in the UK, we can use a fully standalone ADS-B transceiver that requires no permanent installation. After a rebate from the CAA, it costs about $500. https://uavionix.com/general-aviation/skyecho/ https://uavionix.com/general-aviation/skyecho/
  - tonyarkles 1y ago
    I haven't dug too much into the regulations or power requirements around running ADS-B Out purely off a battery but you can get a TSO-certified beacon https://uavionix.com/general-aviation/tailbeaconx/ https://uavionix.com/general-aviation/tailbeaconx/ and pair it with high-capacity LiFePO4 TSO battery https://earthxbatteries.com/product/etx900-tso/ https://earthxbatteries.com/product/etx900-tso/ for a not-unreasonable price. I don't know if that would actually be acceptable, but it's a pretty straightforward way to add that functionality to an otherwise steam-gauge-only aircraft.
- tialaramex 1y ago
  > Another one is multiplex radio, again, it's 2025, the technology is there. Why are we still seeing so many blocked communications during emergencies in busy airspaces? The difference between the radio on the WW2 era ex-pilot boat I spent time on recently and the radio in a brand new jet liner is crazy. The Global Maritime Distress Safety System - a global requirement from the 1980s - mandates a digital VHF radio service named DSC - it's not very clever by today's standards and it's hardly the easiest to drive UI - but it's night and day compared to what is provided for aeroplanes. First of all, and most crucial for its core purpose, many crucial elements of a "Mayday" call are automated so that rescuers have the most important information right away even if you're panicked and incoherent, and it won't get "blocked" by low priority callers trying to figure out which gate they're scheduled for, or whether they can get the longer runway for this approach. It's almost aggressively bad, I guess they couldn't get an OK to use Morse code?
looping__lui 1y ago
You might be in for a bad awakening when comparing the reliability and safety statistics of Lycomings to the Rotax engines in Flight Design planes. Even though I entirely share your enthusiasm in general - these “old technologically outdated Lycosaurus engines” are really reliable in comparison… Rotax engines have been extremely popular in Europe for LSA equivalents - but boy do I recall countless stories of engine failures. The most crazy one was of a flight instructor that had a total of 12 (!?) before he quit flying. A lot has to do I believe with the “creative ways the engine and its components are stuffed into different airframes”.
- nosianu 1y ago
  I checked and found some numbers from Australia (they fly a lot down there, and use similar airplanes). Rotax engines were not worse than Lycoming or Continental ones, 1 in 36 vs. 1 in 35. Japiru engines were the bad outlier. "Engine failures and malfunctions in light aeroplanes 2009 - 2014" https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2013/ar-2013-107_research https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2013/ar-2013-107_resear... The relevant excerpt, paragraph breaks added: "Over the 6-year study period between 2009 and 2014, 322 engine failures or malfunctions involving light aircraft were reported to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and/or Recreational Aviation Australia (RA-Aus). These reports involved single-engine piston aeroplanes up to 800 kg maximum take-off weight. Aircraft powered by Jabiru engines were involved in the most engine failures or malfunctions with 130 reported over the 6 years. This represents about one in ten aircraft powered by Jabiru engines in the study set having reported an engine failure or malfunction. Reports from Rotax powered aircraft were the next most common with 87 (one in 36), followed by aircraft with Lycoming (58 – one in 35) and Continental (28 – one in 35) engines. When factoring in the hours flown for each of these engine manufacturers, aircraft with Jabiru engines had more than double the rate of engine failure or malfunction than any other of the manufacturers in the study set with 3.21 failures per 10,000 hours flown." (When you read on, it appears the Jabiru engine was improved and now has less failures)
  - looping__lui 1y ago
    I do not know how widespread Rotax engines are in Australia and how large the GA is there. Also, I do not track standardized failure rates of engine models around the world - but shared anecdotal evidence. Except two instances, ALL reports or stories from friends and acquaintances around engine failures involved Rotax engines (probably 5:1 ratio). Tracking planes with up to 800kg in the study eliminates all Pipers and Cessnas - which I admit I used as a baseline comparison for my statements. I guess the only plane with a Lycoming/Continental engine below 800kg that comes to mind is the Pa18 from the 1940s/1950s. Last year, the LSA association in Germany started a large survey across its members because of the high number of failures with Rotax engines: https://www.daec.de/news/news-detail/service-bulletin-zu-stoerungen-von-rotax-motoren/ https://www.daec.de/news/news-detail/service-bulletin-zu-sto... Now, I definitely do not say that these are bad engines, but there is a lot of chatter in Europe how these engines are plugged into a wide range of airframes and there are more complex system interactions than meets the eye which can cause some problems. Or put differently: C172 and Pa28 are probably among the most common airframes to stuff the Lycomings and Continentals into. I suspect we kind of figured out how to make these work reliably. Rotax works in MANY many different combinations and many different airframes - so there is that.
tonyarkles 1y ago
> Unlike the Lycomings and Continentals the engine wasn’t designed in the 1950s. Rotax 912? :D I've spent a lot of time getting familiar with that engine over the last two years as part of a large UAS programme. Every time I have to do integration work with it (electrical or CAN) I end up having an even-deeper appreciation of how thoughtful the engineering behind it is. Edit: also, since people below brought up 100LL... I also deeply appreciate that it runs fine on plain ol' premium mogas. Both because I'd rather not expose my self to tetraethyl lead all the time and because it's really convenient to be able to just load up a few jerry cans on my way out to the field while getting fuel for my truck.
tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
> Avionics that would cost you $15-20k to put in a Cessna due to all the red tape. A possibly good example of this: I believe that in Switzerland, small planes almost universally carry "FLARM" devices, essentially "TCAS for hobbyists", implemented through unregulated devices from a private company that people just got because they were cheap and useful. Bureaucratic regulation would have most likely killed a project like this.

SR2Z 1y ago

> I will get a lot of heat for this but I think the FAA has killed a lot of people. On the balance, the FAA has saved more lives than it's cost just because big jetliners hold SO MANY PEOPLE. But otherwise I fully agree with you. It's deranged that students these days are taught to manually lean the mixture until the engine sputters (i.e. the engine begins to DIE), then bump it back up. It's incredibly stupid that an aircraft flying in 2025 has multiple solid state accelerometers and gyroscopes on board as part of people's phones - but the only certified one is a vacuum-powered analog instrument from 1981. And why the hell do we still fuel GA aircraft with a gasoline that's literally ILLEGAL to use anywhere else? Don't even get me started on the DPE or medical systems. These changes cannot come soon enough, because the entire GA world has slipped through the cracks as the FAA has become a disaster.

dreamcompiler 1y ago
> And why the hell do we still fuel GA aircraft with a gasoline that's literally ILLEGAL to use anywhere else? Unleaded avgas is a thing now. But it won't work with many legacy aviation engines. I hope this new rule will finally enable some engine (and thus fuel) innovation.
andrepd 1y ago
The massive effects of lead poisoning are still seen on a large scale near airports and in areas with lots of avgas powered traffic. That most of it is for essentially recreational purposes makes it even more infuriating.
rightbyte 1y ago
> It's deranged that students these days are taught to manually lean the mixture until the engine sputters (i.e. the engine begins to DIE), then bump it back up. Why? That is essentially an engine check. I think you want pilots to understand their machines and to do that you need to operate the engines.
- SR2Z 1y ago
  I'm not sure I see the value of doing an engine check while flying the plane, or flying carbureted engines without automatic mixture control in general. Pilots will understand their engines' quirks better, but those quirks are stupid and obviated by newer technology.
  - lovecg 1y ago
    Forget mixture, carb ice keeps killing people in 2025. Even just moving everyone to dumb mechanical fuel injection will be a big step forward at this point…
mattgrice 1y ago
It's actually wild that you actually CAN manually lean the mixture. What's the last car that was sold without closed-loop EFI? If they were cars, most GA planes would qualify for 'antique' plates. Most of the rest are not technically antique, just antique technology.
- rasz 1y ago
  I think it was only in the last 5? years you can no longer buy a brand new helicopter with manual throttle control right on the collective. Not even RPM control, just a stupid manual linkage going straight to the carb :|
metalman 1y ago
.......attain strait and level flight, reduce airspeed to 65knots.....pull main controls aft till they hit the stops while applying full rudder......bieng able to recover from the "unusual attitude" quicky and cleanly is the skill needed to procede to all of the technological fiddling and gadgetry.....or is this all just a song and dance working up to just eliminating general aviation and making one of the passengers sit up front and wear a nice hat? if not, then what on earth are all of these fancy accelerometers for? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zgfna12Rt-k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zgfna12Rt-k
- lovecg 1y ago
  For flying in the clouds mostly. These air driven gyroscopic contraptions were fine engineering for their time, but trusting one’s life to one of these when we can have a multiply redundant solid state alternative? No thanks.

sokoloff 1y ago

> equipped with real time satellite weather Many people have died from believing that their satellite weather was real-time. It’s 3-15 minutes delayed typically. Go up on a VFR day with widely scattered wet clouds and maybe scattered showers or virga. Fly near some of the wetness and notice they are physically quite displaced from where they are on your weather display. In some cases, your weather display will show weather on the left and clear right, while your windshield will show the weather is actually on your right, having moved during that delay. Imagine then trying to navigate that in more serious weather and you’ll hopefully get religion that the display is definitely not real-time and must not be relied upon as if it were. It’s a strategic tool, not a tactical one.

darig 1y ago
[dead]
TylerE 1y ago
More than a few have died in the last few years treating their iPad with GPS as a replacement for a glass cockpit and instrument rating too...
- Animats 1y ago
  There are at least five YouTube videos of ATC communications with pilots in trouble because of an IPad failure.
  - crinkly 1y ago
    Doesn't surprise me. I got on a flight that had to go back to gate due to an "iPad failure" about 6 years ago. The captain was apologising as we disembarked. I asked him what happened. He said software issue across both their flight plan iPads. Hardware was fine. Not sure if it grounded other flights but we were back on a different plane about 2 hours later.
    - TylerE 1y ago

scarier 1y ago

>far safer than a certified aircraft than the statistics will tell you I share your frustration with the technological stagnation of general aviation, but this is completely damning. Cirrus added all of the features you mention, at great expense and in a fully certified aircraft, and took decades to show any kind of clear safety advantage over clapped-out Cessnas (as I understand it, the vast majority of improvement came from intensive training in when to deploy the parachute, which was wildly less intuitive than anyone originally realized and likely remains so for pilots without specialized training). Digital instruments, weather displays, and automation have significant benefits for many use cases, but it's unclear that they're inherently safer than legacy systems for amateur aviators.

lovecg 1y ago
Not only it took a focused training campaign to get people to use the chute, all the increased training did was take the plane from having some of the worst safety statistics in the first decade to somewhere around average to slightly better than industry average. It’s (mostly) not the plane, it’s the pilot.
TylerE 1y ago
A confounding factor here is that when a shiny new "safer airplane" is on the market you know who it attracts? The least safe pilots. All the doctors and dentists bought Cirruses. Risk compensation is real... they put themselves into marginal situations because they're telling themselves they can always just pop the chute.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  I suppose the safest aircraft is no aircraft.
tialaramex 1y ago
> wildly less intuitive than anyone originally realized and likely remains so for pilots without specialized training AIUI the specific problem was that humans are bad at "calling it" and the parachute isn't magic. If you used the chute on time you're saved, if you spend that time working through all other options which don't save you, then deployed the chute with no time, you're still dead. So the training was to teach people to call it - yes maybe I could restart the engine (but if not I die), maybe I could keep looking and see that state road (but if not I die), however I could pull the chute right now and almost certainly live so I need to make sure I do that before it's too late. Suppose in a board game you have three choices. One is worthless, we'll lose, one is 80% chance to draw but otherwise lose, one is a utter gamble maybe 5% chance to outright win otherwise lose. Many players will take the 5% chance. In fact in professional sports not taking that risk often annoys fans - they're here for the thrill. But flying an aeroplane isn't a game, the "outright lose" case is you die and if you have passengers they die too. You should take the draw when it's offered, and if we have to train people to do that then I guess that's what it takes.

dreamcompiler 1y ago

> Basic things like fuel injection Don't get me started. It's virtually impossible to buy a car without fuel injection nowadays, but most GA airplanes still use carburetors. And these are vehicles that are constantly changing altitude, so carburetors are even more unsuited for airplanes than for cars. Okay I lied. You can buy fuel injected engines for airplanes. They are readily available. They merely cost 2x or 3x the price of carbureted engines.

looping__lui 1y ago
I hear you in general, but GA engines need to work more reliably and go through way more intense operational challenges than automotive engines. Picture this: you take off at 100°F on the ground at full throttle with only air cooling to save weight and reduce potential failure points, then climb to 10,000 feet where the outside air temperature drops to around 65°F (or even freezing conditions). The baffling is a bit worn, and the pilot maintains 70 knots in the climb, pushing cylinder head temperatures (CHT) to 420°F or higher. Then the pilot gets chatty and pulls the engine back to near-idle while CHTs are still at 350°F, before pushing the nose down to kill altitude—causing CHTs to plummet to 250°F in minutes. Through all these extreme thermal cycles and temperature swings, the engine simply cannot quit on its pilot. GA engines may look antiquated—with their carburetors, magnetos, and mechanical fuel pumps—but this apparent simplicity is entirely by design. These “outdated” systems are actually time-tested solutions engineered for ultimate reliability when failure means catastrophe. While car oils use metallic detergent additives, aviation oils must use ashless dispersants to prevent spark plug fouling that could cause engine failure. The oils must handle sustained high RPM operation and brutal temperature cycling while meeting strict FAA specifications that prioritize proven reliability over cutting-edge performance. Every component, from the dual magneto ignition (no electrical system dependency) to the mechanical engine-driven fuel pump, represents decades of refinement focused on one critical goal: the engine will not quit when you need it most. It’s not that these engines are behind the times—they’re precisely engineered for their mission-critical role where proven, simple systems trump technological sophistication.
- 3ple_alpha 1y ago

iooi 1y ago

> I will get a lot of heat for this but I think the FAA has killed a lot of people. It drives my crazy that in 2025 ADSB is still not mandatory for all aircraft. I get there's old timers flying their tail wheels from the 1950s that don't have any electrical components, but this would massively improve GA safety. Another one is multiplex radio, again, it's 2025, the technology is there. Why are we still seeing so many blocked communications during emergencies in busy airspaces?

looping__lui 1y ago
FLARM as the “uncertified predecessor” in the gliding community was a game changer for safety. Game changer. Completely agree with you.
jdietrich 1y ago
I get there's old timers flying their tail wheels from the 1950s that don't have any electrical components Frustratingly, the FAA hasn't certified a straightforward solution to this problem. Here in the UK, we can use a fully standalone ADS-B transceiver that requires no permanent installation. After a rebate from the CAA, it costs about $500. https://uavionix.com/general-aviation/skyecho/ https://uavionix.com/general-aviation/skyecho/
- tonyarkles 1y ago
  I haven't dug too much into the regulations or power requirements around running ADS-B Out purely off a battery but you can get a TSO-certified beacon https://uavionix.com/general-aviation/tailbeaconx/ https://uavionix.com/general-aviation/tailbeaconx/ and pair it with high-capacity LiFePO4 TSO battery https://earthxbatteries.com/product/etx900-tso/ https://earthxbatteries.com/product/etx900-tso/ for a not-unreasonable price. I don't know if that would actually be acceptable, but it's a pretty straightforward way to add that functionality to an otherwise steam-gauge-only aircraft.
tialaramex 1y ago
> Another one is multiplex radio, again, it's 2025, the technology is there. Why are we still seeing so many blocked communications during emergencies in busy airspaces? The difference between the radio on the WW2 era ex-pilot boat I spent time on recently and the radio in a brand new jet liner is crazy. The Global Maritime Distress Safety System - a global requirement from the 1980s - mandates a digital VHF radio service named DSC - it's not very clever by today's standards and it's hardly the easiest to drive UI - but it's night and day compared to what is provided for aeroplanes. First of all, and most crucial for its core purpose, many crucial elements of a "Mayday" call are automated so that rescuers have the most important information right away even if you're panicked and incoherent, and it won't get "blocked" by low priority callers trying to figure out which gate they're scheduled for, or whether they can get the longer runway for this approach. It's almost aggressively bad, I guess they couldn't get an OK to use Morse code?

looping__lui 1y ago

You might be in for a bad awakening when comparing the reliability and safety statistics of Lycomings to the Rotax engines in Flight Design planes. Even though I entirely share your enthusiasm in general - these “old technologically outdated Lycosaurus engines” are really reliable in comparison… Rotax engines have been extremely popular in Europe for LSA equivalents - but boy do I recall countless stories of engine failures. The most crazy one was of a flight instructor that had a total of 12 (!?) before he quit flying. A lot has to do I believe with the “creative ways the engine and its components are stuffed into different airframes”.

nosianu 1y ago
I checked and found some numbers from Australia (they fly a lot down there, and use similar airplanes). Rotax engines were not worse than Lycoming or Continental ones, 1 in 36 vs. 1 in 35. Japiru engines were the bad outlier. "Engine failures and malfunctions in light aeroplanes 2009 - 2014" https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2013/ar-2013-107_research https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2013/ar-2013-107_resear... The relevant excerpt, paragraph breaks added: "Over the 6-year study period between 2009 and 2014, 322 engine failures or malfunctions involving light aircraft were reported to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and/or Recreational Aviation Australia (RA-Aus). These reports involved single-engine piston aeroplanes up to 800 kg maximum take-off weight. Aircraft powered by Jabiru engines were involved in the most engine failures or malfunctions with 130 reported over the 6 years. This represents about one in ten aircraft powered by Jabiru engines in the study set having reported an engine failure or malfunction. Reports from Rotax powered aircraft were the next most common with 87 (one in 36), followed by aircraft with Lycoming (58 – one in 35) and Continental (28 – one in 35) engines. When factoring in the hours flown for each of these engine manufacturers, aircraft with Jabiru engines had more than double the rate of engine failure or malfunction than any other of the manufacturers in the study set with 3.21 failures per 10,000 hours flown." (When you read on, it appears the Jabiru engine was improved and now has less failures)
- looping__lui 1y ago
  I do not know how widespread Rotax engines are in Australia and how large the GA is there. Also, I do not track standardized failure rates of engine models around the world - but shared anecdotal evidence. Except two instances, ALL reports or stories from friends and acquaintances around engine failures involved Rotax engines (probably 5:1 ratio). Tracking planes with up to 800kg in the study eliminates all Pipers and Cessnas - which I admit I used as a baseline comparison for my statements. I guess the only plane with a Lycoming/Continental engine below 800kg that comes to mind is the Pa18 from the 1940s/1950s. Last year, the LSA association in Germany started a large survey across its members because of the high number of failures with Rotax engines: https://www.daec.de/news/news-detail/service-bulletin-zu-stoerungen-von-rotax-motoren/ https://www.daec.de/news/news-detail/service-bulletin-zu-sto... Now, I definitely do not say that these are bad engines, but there is a lot of chatter in Europe how these engines are plugged into a wide range of airframes and there are more complex system interactions than meets the eye which can cause some problems. Or put differently: C172 and Pa28 are probably among the most common airframes to stuff the Lycomings and Continentals into. I suspect we kind of figured out how to make these work reliably. Rotax works in MANY many different combinations and many different airframes - so there is that.

tonyarkles 1y ago

> Unlike the Lycomings and Continentals the engine wasn’t designed in the 1950s. Rotax 912? :D I've spent a lot of time getting familiar with that engine over the last two years as part of a large UAS programme. Every time I have to do integration work with it (electrical or CAN) I end up having an even-deeper appreciation of how thoughtful the engineering behind it is. Edit: also, since people below brought up 100LL... I also deeply appreciate that it runs fine on plain ol' premium mogas. Both because I'd rather not expose my self to tetraethyl lead all the time and because it's really convenient to be able to just load up a few jerry cans on my way out to the field while getting fuel for my truck.

tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago

> Avionics that would cost you $15-20k to put in a Cessna due to all the red tape. A possibly good example of this: I believe that in Switzerland, small planes almost universally carry "FLARM" devices, essentially "TCAS for hobbyists", implemented through unregulated devices from a private company that people just got because they were cheap and useful. Bureaucratic regulation would have most likely killed a project like this.