Sport Pilot Talk

It is all a matter of degree. If you designed a plane with neutral stability it would perform better, but it would be harder to fly. More people would lose control because they didn't have the training, reflexes, and/or ability to be constantly vigilant. There would be an increase in the loss of control accidents and in each case it would be pilot error (failure to maintain control of the plane). GA planes are designed with longitudinal and lateral stability, because the loss of performance was preferable to a higher accident rate. There are many similar compromises in products. If a higher number of accidents occur with a particular design a change is called for.

In an earlier thread you mentioned that I tried to sell my plane prior to delivery because of the fuel feed problem. That was only one reason. My bigger concern is the number of landing accidents. In any case since no one was interested in buying my plane, even though it was at a substantial discount for a new plane delivered direct from the dealer with a shorter wait than normal. I can only conclude that others are starting to look at the plane more critically or maybe it is just over priced.

Art, if you are serious about getting into a different plane, please give us a call and check out the Tecnam series of aircraft we now sell. They are really sweet fliers and unbelievably stable aircraft, more so than any other LSA I've flown. Trim them up and fly with your hands in your lap. Cross winds - no sweat. They have an excellent useful load and the Bravo easily does the full 120kts you were looking for. They have a "both" setting for the fuel (that works), very substantial landing gear, aluminum construction that makes repair simple, long range tanks, and IFR capability. The Echo model has quickly become the favorite trainer of my entire staff, and these are guys who have flown a heck of a lot of planes over their years.

There's a nice write up in AOPA Pilot this month:
http://www.aopa.org/members/files/pilot ... m0711.html

We might know someone interested in your CT as well.

Helen

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Helen Woods
Chesapeake Sport Pilot
Affordable Flight Training and Rentals
Factory Authorized SeaRey Training, Service, and Sales Center
www.chesapeakesportpilot.com

your 3 choices are instability, neutral stability, positive stability. ga aircraft are either positively stable or neutrally stable. i think the ct trends towards neutral stability and that is the way i like it. the nose tends to stay where i put it instead of oscillating back towards neutral. with the countless designs out there it seems ridiculous to dumb down this design to make it as benign as possible.


here is a quote from you from the uneven fuel flow thread




when the housing market went south so did slsa sales, all of them not just ctsw's. ctsw's are still selling, one was sold out of my hangar a few weeks ago. i've seem quite a few sell recently. you have $25,000 worth or options picked by you and are competing with aircraft in stock at the dealers that can be had for a lot less than $120k.

they are not over priced and they are selling. many of us think that your posts are unfair and are likely driving the price down.

Others don't think I am being unfair. In fact, I am not the one who originally raised any of these issues, with the possible exception of the NTSB reports. I and some others seem to feel that posting about CT concerns is a better alternative than keeping quit about them to protect our investment.

posting about ctsw concerns is the right thing to do and we do it all the time. the difference is we try to fairly assess the issues as opposed to condemn the design based on some stats that can be interpreted different ways. i have gained confidence in the design based on these reports, a dozen totaled aircraft without a fatality, useally only minor injuries, this is a design that is survivable in the event of a crash.

this isn't a popularity contest and it isn't decided by vote.

i am trying to put it in a fair context, like for instance by pointing out that the nstb reports that you keep referring to don't fault the design or by pointing out that smoking is a poor analogy. but you keep going back to these same 2 points without addressing the opposing argument unless you think the corvair comparison was a fair one.

the covair analogy seems to be the thinking you are currently hanging your hat on but again, the covair was a flawed design. in the case of the ctsw you are trying to prove the design is flawed by statistics that prove no such thing. you are using the effect to prove the cause, even when the cause is pilot error you are faulting the design and not the pilot. you argument is weak.

the number of ntsb reports are what you find persuasive and yet the content of the reports is to be ignored. the feed back from the hi-time ctsw pilots is of no use to you. your "fairness" is hard to see from here.

1 have 270 hours in my ctsw and have yet to see it do anything quirky, dangerous, or uncommanded. it is predicable / honest.

i have asked you a number of times about what your find. any behaviors that would cause you to think it is other than predictable and well behaved? save the "smokers response" and give us a straight answer please.

my experience and your experience as well as others may be anecdotal and it is hard to prove the positive but if there is a negative that we agree on it would be easy to pursue.

when you use my words to prove the negative and i know my meaning wasn't negative than of course i want to clarify.

wouldn't we have to establish that the accumulating statistics are now adequate to make judgments on? wouldn't we also have to establish that the statistics differentiate the ctsw from other slsa? as incidents ( and fatalities ) begin to accumulate for other less popular designs don't they have to be considered to see if the incident rate is typical for the category?

if the ntsb reports faulted the design everytime would you then blame the pilots? makes the same amount of sense.

I am sorry, but the smoking analogy is perfect. Scientists (with the possible exception of those working for the tobacco companies) agree that smoking is unhealthy because of statistics. But the tobacco companies were safe from legal liability for years because nobody could prove that any single occurrence of a disease was caused by smoking and not by defective genes of the smoker. I repeat my contention that when a significant number of accidents occur during the same phase of flight in an aircraft design then I think there is a systemic problem. Here we complete disagree.



The Corvair wasn't specifically flawed; expect that it required a greater degree of skill and concentration under certain conditions than the average driver could manage. It was the number of accidents the highlighted this difficulty even though each accident was attributed to driver error.



It sounds like you are describing a plane with positive stability, which is the ability to return to the original stable flight attitude. Only you said the CT has a neutral stability, which means that if some condition causes the plane to leave stable flight, stability will not be returned unless the pilot takes corrective action. In any kind of turbulent conditions a plane with neutral stability would not be described as predicable and would require constant attention.



Right off I think the fuel measuring system is terrible. You have to read the level in a tube in each wing root. I found that because of parallax the reading from the left seat is different from the right. I also don't think running the fuel through the passenger compartment just to read the level is a good idea.

Actual flight time, I have only 4 hours and so must rely on the NTSB reports and the experience of others. Why do I only have 4 hours? Although I made the final payment on the plane at the beginning of June with the expectation of an August delivery, it is still sitting at the dealer waiting for parts.

the thread is about product safety when using your smoking analogy you fail to consider training



now it's a systemic problem? the thread is about product safety when calling it a systemic problem you bring in training



i think your just making stuff up. the 1960–63 corvairs had a rear-engine, and a suspension design which was prone to "tuck under" in certain circumstances and which required drivers to maintain proper tire pressures which were outside of the tire manufacturer's recommended tolerances for the tire and with an unusually high front:rear differential (15psi front, 26psi rear, when cold; 18 psi and 30psi hot) corvairs suffered the characteristic tuck-under crashes.





now there you go again art, putting words in my mouth. first i said the ct seems to trend towards neutral. second i am describing a plane that is predictable and that doesn't indicate positive stability. again try not to argue your own words as though they are mine. the ctsw is predictable in turbulence, of course i don't rely on the aircraft to always auto-recover, i fly it in turbulence or let the auto pilot fly it. taking corrective action when your attitude is disrupted should be intuitive and if it isn't some work on attitude recognition is called for.


the markings can be adjusted, your fly from the left seat? make sure they are right from there. even if the readings are different left from right they are still far more precise than gauges. the sight tubes are outboard of the wing roots and only visible because of an opening for that purpose. your phrasing seems overstate the reality.



funny how you must rely on the experience of others but anytime an experienced ctsw pilot/owner offers their experience to you, you reject it in favor of your smokers theory. maybe you should say you rely only on the negative experiences of others even if they were at fault?

this morning you complained that there isn't a buyer for your ct even if the wait is shorter. right now the wait is zero, fly away today, but yours is stuck for months with some unexplained issue.

i'm sorry you have issues but i maintain you are unfairly bashing this design.

We come back to the basis of our disagreement. I maintain that the level of training for the CT appears to be higher than required for other planes. More intense training of CT pilots might help but so might so design changes. They have already shortened the wings and at least in the US made the stronger landing gear standard.



Other CT pilots have expressed negative aspects of the plane. Studying failures are a better method of evaluation a product that someone saying I haven't had a problem so there isn't a problem.



I think you are blinded to the faults of the plane. Clearly neither one of us will be able to convince the other.

i do tend to think more in terms of compromises than faults. an example would be that if you added more engineering to the nose gear you would also add weight and subtract useful load.

the ctsw is well designed and engineered and has few outright faults but i do see them, an example would be the location of the throttle/choke friction lock. if it gets loose you need tools to adjust it. seems dumb.

because i can't agree that the fuel system is faulty doesn't mean i'm blind it might just mean that i have a lot of experience with it and know it to work well.

i'll admit that i am blind to your safety/landing issues but after all of these months of pointing at this problem(s) you have failed to point at 1 single problem.

you keep pointing at the number of ntsb reports but discount what they say in order to shift the fault from the pilot to the design. you haven't established that their is enough data to be meaningful. you haven't established that the ctsw has an incident rate greater than other slsa (early data on other designs suggest similar rates)

you would like me to open my eyes and see what you see, well it would be a lot easier if you could see what you see.

it all boils down to who am i going to believe "you or my lying eyes"? since you have no specifics, an example might be, you could point out that when the design stalls in a landing configuration it is prone to drop a wing suddenly without warning. now if this were true ( it isn't ) i would have something concrete to confirm. but you have nothing.

along with my experience flying the ctsw i have a bit of experience observing people landing the ctsw on their demo rides or in their transition training. a few have the ability to land the ctsw well right from the first attempt but many need to adjust their target sight picture.

the guys that have trouble fall into two categories.

1st catgegory is weak stick and rudder skills that leads to over controlling and often they have forgotten how to use their feet and the ctsw requires rudder input. this category is observable from the cockpit and until the skills are improved the pilot shouldn't and doesn't even attempt landings.

now the landings, this is very observable from the ground and i've seen it many times. the struggling ctsw pilot's landings tend to run out of energy to far above the runway. without a visible cowling the picture must be judged with references that you can see. this low energy state if not countered with the throttle results in rapid sink and a hard landing or a bounce. prior to the bounce the pitch attitude was too high and now it is even higher and the energy state is even poorer and if the pilot doesn't abort the landing attempt he is now well over his head.

if the pilot has a good sense of where the ground is and a good sense of his pitch attitude and doesn't fail to advance the throttle if he balloons a bit the ctsw become very easy to land.

so art, until you can point at a problem as opposed to just knowing that there is a problem color me blind.

your habit or requirement to disregard the input of hi-time ctsw pilot/owners but in stead to rely only on ctsw pilots that crashed on an early landing attempt defies logic. you say this input indicates a problem and you are right but you refuse to believe the problem is a lack of training in favor of condemning the design with no specific problem.

i'm not trying to convince you art, i'm trying to defend the design from an unfair, powerful public attack.

regards,

ed cesnalis

Ed has nailed the “landing” aspect of the CT to a “T” in his last post so there’s no since in pushing on there. I thought maybe I’d work on the “fuel” opinions a little bit.

I think you first must remember the CT is a light sport aircraft with 21st century design German engineering and thought. I believe part of the design feel was to “keep it simple”.

Keeping that in mind, there are probably at least a hundred less parts in the CT fuel system then one that has electric fuel gauges and fuel switches. The two observations here of course are fewer things to go wrong or fix and a little less to remember when flying. That makes complete sense to me.

Okay now let’s say nothing is perfect! If you have the system with the fuel gauges and switches – it’s not perfect is it! More stuff to break, more costly to repair and there are things we have to remember when flying.
Remembering that nothing is perfect…then the CT fuel system is not perfect either. It is however, simpler – less to go wrong and less to repair. But, like any other fuel system you have to remember to monitor it while in flight.

So, let’s say you do fly out of trim a bit and you need to move some fuel from one side to the other - a little pedal/slip does the trick.
To me the question boils down to would you rather have the extra expense of the fuel gauges and switches taking up space in your cockpit plus the possibility of more things to go wrong and fix or some actual sight gauges to monitor and a push on the rudder peddle to level things up?

I think when the designers sat down to figure this plane out they said what can we do to improve on old design…they made some changes. I think for the better, maybe not perfect but I certainly would rather have this system in my airplane that the one in the 172 whose gauges I had to flick with my finger nail and hope they were accurate!

The CT fuel system certainly adds to my margin of safety and for the “life of me” I can’t see how anyone can argue against that.

Roger

My '71 Cardinal has just an on/off switch for fuel. All subsequent years went to a left/both/right/off switch. I'd rather have the latter switch, the on/off is an irritation but not a fatal flaw.

"now the landings, this is very observable from the ground and i've seen it many times. the struggling ctsw pilot's landings tend to run out of energy to far above the runway. without a visible cowling the picture must be judged with references that you can see. this low energy state if not countered with the throttle results in rapid sink and a hard landing or a bounce. prior to the bounce the pitch attitude was too high and now it is even higher and the energy state is even poorer and if the pilot doesn't abort the landing attempt he is now well over his head. "

So is the CT a flawed design, or are bad pilots (some with many many hours) buying it?

Maybe they should etch something on the canopy if its hard to judge attitude due to a lack of cowling.

Sounds to me (with no dog in the fight) that the design could be improved.

i think you heard me wrong. i didn't say that the attitude is hard to judge, i said that you might require some transition training. once you adjust your sight picture you find the vision is outstanding and judging is easy, just different.

the transitioned, (many hours) ct pilot isn't "buying it" the guys that have aren't always bad pilots ( some were )

any slsa is a big adjustment for a general category pilot. a gross weight of 1,320lbs has implications in wind shear.

the ct is both a fast useful slsa it is also used on fields of less than 1,000'. as you "improve" the design to make it more like all others you will reduce it's performance. it's good to have designs at different levels of performance. missions differ and designs should differ as well.

the ct's wide performance envelope coupled with it's quickness has made flying fun again. i'm glad to have a current model just in case they get improved

I demoed a Sportcruiser this week and this what I observed. The SC had a fuel selector valve, toe brakes, carpeting, very quite and the landing gear looked strong. The plane is produced with general aviation quality parts. I didn't see anything that looked like it was from a motorcycle. The visibility was excellent. I flew a CT recently and it definitely had stick bump, but none with th SC. I'm not sure as to how much slower the SC is to the CT, The SC is in MPH so that might lead to some confusion if it's not recognized in a comparison. The dealer stated that he has twelve on order with most of them already sold.

Charlie Tango....I have owned an Allegro 2000 for 10 months now. I have never flown any other airplane. I am 57 years old. I now have over 60 hours of dual and still do not feel I have enough training or experience to take my checkride. You are correct, in my eyes , that training is an issue. Because of a move I changed instructors to someone who had never flown a Light Sport Plane. After fyling in my Allegro and then a CT. His opinion is that both are very nice airplanes but would require different and possibly more training than the 152 he trains in.
End result is nothing wrong with the airplanes. Just different to fly (more stick/rudder skills) than most trainers..
By the way I love to fly my Alergo 2000, very responsive, great economy, and should be checked out soon!!!! I hope that others will put in the time in the cockpit so as to add another element to their decision making!

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Owner of N3081X (Cover Girl) A Beautiful Allegro 2000 as seen on the cover and inside of several magazines!!

ka7eej,

we just spent a few days flying our ctsw's out of page, az. best scenery in the world i suspect. you live in a fine ( but serious ) place to fly light sport.

i think the ct got a bit of a bum rap when it comes to landings, truth is that aircraft limited to 1320lbs have common issues that require skills not necessarily as important in heavier aircraft. ( the ct might be more difficult than some slsa )

i considered an allegro but given the cross country requirements in the far west i focused on that.

checkrides are an interesting subject. i was more than ready for mine and yet dreaded doing it. to some degree it is a bit like other requirements like your solo x-country, it is an event to get behind you so that you can begin ( again ) to learn how to fly.

i think you are right in that in some respects training is paramount in slsa but the checkride in no way marks the end of the process, in fact it is more like the beginning.

thanks for the support, enjoy your allegro.