Kahuna said:
<Vern>
"There's no comparison except for those who have to feed their egos by going faster than someone else."
Vern what are you talking about? Thats silly. Using that logic, why not just put a 120hp engine on, and go 30mph slower than everyone else? You will get great economy and only get there a few minutes later on your 500mile flight.
Adam... I think your thread has been hijacked. Sorry!
Best,
I'm not sure I agree with Vern on that.
Well, about that "thread" thing; look through a lot of threads here on VAF and you'll see a "hijack" pattern with lot's of guilty parties.
And no, all I'm referring to is the
difference in performance and cost between a well equipped '8 and Rocket, and a well equipped '7 and the (non-existent) M1.
For what you get for the
difference, it just doesn't make that much sense to me. It's kind of like the horsepower vs. speed thingy where there's a point where you have to add a disproportionate amount of horsepower to get only a few % points in speed.
The proposed higher cruise speeds for the M1 clearly come from bolting lots more horsepower up front and not from the airframe so much if at all.
The average fuel consumption at 75% for an O-540 is around 14.1 GPH which is higher by 50% MORE than an O-360 would use at similar power settings. I know a lot of you airplane guys are rich beyond my wildest dreams (
), but spending $15 per HOUR for fuel to get somewhere a few minutes earlier is, for me, poor economy. I'd rather work on building an ultra-clean airframe and get another 10mph or so from that.
There's also the practical side of building even beyond the added costs in that I don't think anyone would argue that Van's has taken his kit designs to the point where we're really close to cheating on the 51% rule... his kits are that easy to build when compared to most anything else out there.
Does anyone really think that a brand new M1 design wouldn't take half
again as long to build?
I know it's fun to speculate about what could be with a new AC design, but I like to get to the down and dirty about things right away and the M1 starts to fade a bit when you consider the investment in cost, time, and operational costs compared to the '7 that can be "almost" as fast in cruise when it could realistically see 210mph cruise speeds when rigged right.
Do 'ya think there may be a
reason(s) why the M1 is still not available after all these years? Do 'ya think I may have touched on some of those reasons?
That's all I'm sayin'