Sun and Fun 2018 (Weather)

Lol. I expected more from a 300hp 6 seater. They are nice airplanes though

All the new stuff is much heavier than the old stuff. The price we pay for fancy leather seats and interiors, more crap in the panel, better crashworthy seats in some aircraft, etc.

Can’t carry crap, but they’re sure nice inside.

The restart 182s all upped their MGTOW to compensate for them all becoming fat asses. We looked at buying the STC to up ours and realized it doesn’t really work out to be all that useful for our typical missions. We’d end up with a higher useful load than the fat restarts though.
 
All the new stuff is much heavier than the old stuff. The price we pay for fancy leather seats and interiors, more crap in the panel, better crashworthy seats in some aircraft, etc.

Can’t carry crap, but they’re sure nice inside.

The restart 182s all upped their MGTOW to compensate for them all becoming fat asses. We looked at buying the STC to up ours and realized it doesn’t really work out to be all that useful for our typical missions. We’d end up with a higher useful load than the fat restarts though.
My 81 is at 1311lbs which is nice with the 92 gallon tanks, but yea the 3100lb gross would be a bit ridiculous on the 182s with bladders. I've heard that the build quality on the earlier restart 182s isn't as good as it is on the legacy models.

I have the G36 beat with range and payload, but I would love the 176TAS vs the 143TAS that I get :drool:
 
My 81 is at 1311lbs which is nice with the 92 gallon tanks, but yea the 3100lb gross would be a bit ridiculous on the 182s with bladders. I've heard that the build quality on the earlier restart 182s isn't as good as it is on the legacy models.

I have the G36 beat with range and payload, but I would love the 176TAS vs the 143TAS that I get :drool:

Ahh. You would still beat us then! We’re 1133 after the recent panel work and the STC would take us up 150. So I guess y’all aren’t as fat as the S model I flew was. The T182T is a very heavy beast though. Perhaps I was thinking of that instead of the standard restarts.

We have the LR bladders too. The huge ones. 79 gallons useful. We can suck away our useful load in insane amounts of on board fuel. Way longer than my personal bladder wishes to ever be aloft.

Nice for IFR reserves though, and that’s be the mission we don’t see much... fully loaded and needn’t IFR reserves plus a few gallons for wife and the doggies back home. (No kids here. Ha.)

If we’re fully loaded another 150 lbs would give us slightly longer legs instead of having to land every few hours, but when we’ve actually been that full of people and crap, the cabin is ridiculously full. (Three big guys and all our camping crap for a week at OSH.) Stuff is stacked to the ceiling in the back seat next to the passenger and to the window in the cargo area.

If we had a need for a long range mission with huge amounts of stuff we could add the STC and take the back seats out and get a dual W&B with and without the seats in done. It’d haul almost whatever I could cram into my Yukon to get it all to the airport then. We just don’t see a need to do it.
 
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Ahh. You would still beat us then! We’re 1133 after the recent panel work and the STC would take us up 150. So I guess y’all aren’t as fat as the S model I flew was. The T182T is a very heavy beast though. Perhaps I was thinking of that instead of the standard restarts.

We have the LR bladders too. The huge ones. 79 gallons useful. We can suck away our useful load in insane amounts of on board fuel. Way longer than my personal bladder wishes to ever be aloft.

Nice for IFR reserves though, and that’s be the mission we don’t see much... fully loaded and needn’t IFR reserves plus a few gallons for wife and the doggies back home. (No kids here. Ha.)

If we’re fully loaded another 150 lbs would give us slightly longer legs instead of having to land every few hours, but when we’ve actually been that full of people and crap, the cabin is ridiculously full. (Three big guys and all our camping crap for a week at OSH.) Stuff is stacked to the ceiling in the back seat next to the passenger and to the window in the cargo area.

If we had a need for a long range mission with huge amounts of stuff we could add the STC and take the back seats out and get a dual W&B with and without the seats in done. It’d haul almost whatever I could cram into my Yukon to get it all to the airport then. We just don’t see a need to do it.
Yea, the R model is the useful load king as far as 182s go. My empty weight is 1789lbs and the restart S models tend to be around 1920lbs. We filled her up with full fuel, 3 guys, and bags going to Oshkosh (582nm) last year and had a little over 2 hours worth of fuel left lol. Pretty ridiculous
 
Talked to the developer of Heaven's Landing airpark, Mike Ciochetti. He is a former race car driver in ARCA and was hoping to go NASCAR until an injury in an ARCA accident sidelined him.

And looked at airplanes. Lots and lots of airplanes.

All in all, a great time.

Dog what's the scoop on Heaven's? Doesn't appear to be a lot of homes being built there. What did he have to say about it?
 
Their map shows which lots are available and which are taken. A large number are taken. I can't speak to the status of the builds.
 
i see discussion of useful load arguments on the G36...classic

For what it's worth from a purely informational standpoint. my particular 2012 182T has a a useful load of 1077.7 Lbs. pretty dang good. I easily take trips with 4 people down to the keys from where I'm at with IFR reserves and bags.

The only downside is the landing weight being 150lbs lower than the takeoff weight. But usually not an issue unless you happen to be loaded on gas and decide to take a short trip.

the above is not any argument in the debate occurring just a factual informational tidbit. The fact remains that I still only cruise at 140ktas also

back to the Sun-N-Fun topic. great year as always! 9th in a row for me and 9th in a row flying in. Loved it. Have some good pics I'll of course post up here sometime soon. Friday seemed more crowded than saturday, i think it was due to today (sundays) weather. The night airshow last night of of course was great!
 
Had a great time at Sun n Fun, looked pretty well supported but we’ve seen it busier. Lots of guys began to leave on Saturday to beat the bad weather coming through on Sunday. And it was the right call to close the event at lunch time on Sunday.

Had one little incident which made my wife and me smile...we’d had a pretty tiring day on Friday walking around the site and we must have looked pretty bushed as we made our way back to the main area ( we’re both 69 yrs young) anyway this lady driving a golf cart stops and says “ You guys need a ride?” ...oh yes thank you, then she says you guys members of EAA ? ..I say no sorry we are AOPA ...to which she then said ...sorry I can’t give you a ride...and promptly drove away leaving us stood there feeling perplexed ....:rolleyes: ..snobbery within the EAA ranks ? ...Ha Ha ...
 
Had a great time at Sun n Fun, looked pretty well supported but we’ve seen it busier. Lots of guys began to leave on Saturday to beat the bad weather coming through on Sunday. And it was the right call to close the event at lunch time on Sunday.

Had one little incident which made my wife and me smile...we’d had a pretty tiring day on Friday walking around the site and we must have looked pretty bushed as we made our way back to the main area ( we’re both 69 yrs young) anyway this lady driving a golf cart stops and says “ You guys need a ride?” ...oh yes thank you, then she says you guys members of EAA ? ..I say no sorry we are AOPA ...to which she then said ...sorry I can’t give you a ride...and promptly drove away leaving us stood there feeling perplexed ....:rolleyes: ..snobbery within the EAA ranks ? ...Ha Ha ...

It's an insurance thing lol
 
Had a great time at Sun n Fun, looked pretty well supported but we’ve seen it busier. Lots of guys began to leave on Saturday to beat the bad weather coming through on Sunday. And it was the right call to close the event at lunch time on Sunday.

Had one little incident which made my wife and me smile...we’d had a pretty tiring day on Friday walking around the site and we must have looked pretty bushed as we made our way back to the main area ( we’re both 69 yrs young) anyway this lady driving a golf cart stops and says “ You guys need a ride?” ...oh yes thank you, then she says you guys members of EAA ? ..I say no sorry we are AOPA ...to which she then said ...sorry I can’t give you a ride...and promptly drove away leaving us stood there feeling perplexed ....:rolleyes: ..snobbery within the EAA ranks ? ...Ha Ha ...

I hitched a ride on a golf cart from the seaplane area back to the main entrance area and was not asked that. That’s odd.
 
We were among those leaving on Saturday. Definitely the right call as yesterday was miserable back home in central Georgia. We had arrived on Wednesday, so we still had plenty of time to see all we wanted to see. The crowds were pretty light on Wed and Thur - had plenty of time to talk to exhibitors. Fri was a good bit busier with a lot more densely packed exhibit hangars. Don't know about the crowds on Sat as we left at 9am. It was pretty wild seeing all the traffic targets on Foreflight inbound as we were heading out on Sat. And it was also cool to have to sit at the hold short line for Rwy 9R while the Shell Aerobatic team landed in front of me as we were departing.
 
I would think useful load would be higher than that in a G36. Are the A36's that low?

Yes, they are that low. It's pathetic.

Lol. I expected more from a 300hp 6 seater. They are nice airplanes though

Well on the G36, if you wanted more range out of the aircraft you can simply get Osborne Tip tanks which is 20 Gallons on each side for a total of 114 Gallons, not only that your useful goes up 200 lbs as well so you are in the 1200+ useful range. So at about 15 gallons an hr you are over 7 Hours of flight time going 174 knots. With separate cabin doors you can store full sized bikes, bags....etc. Although out of my price range for now, it's still pretty impressive. I do like the A36 better though because you will get more bang for your buck!
 
They were noticeably absent.

It's amazing how fast they fell. Just two years ago they were the buzz of General Aviation. They had a giant tent at Sun and Fun and I remember people packed the tent just to take a look at the new product. A few accidents later which (IMO) wasn't Icon's fault......here we are and believe it or not those people that put money down on the airplane are probably not getting their money back.
 
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@donjohnston Was this you on Saturday at Sun and Fun buzzing around?
 

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Glad I drove....

Wish we had drove too. LOL. To say it was a hairy experience is an understatement. Tower turned us into oncoming traffic on the north side of Lake Parker (still not sure why) which was followed by a hard right bank to the south (to avoid the traffic heading directly towards us). We ended up entering the holding pattern on the south side of the lake. Thankfully we only had to circle once.
 
It's amazing how fast they fell. Just two years ago they were the buzz of General Aviation. They had a giant tent at Sun and Fun and I remember people packed the tent just to take a look at the new product. A few accidents later which (IMO) wasn't Icon's fault......here we are and believe it or not those people that put money down on the airplane are probably not getting their money back.

I had thought about calling them and asking if I could schedule a demo flight at Peter O Knight but I decided to pass on this trip. I’d still like to do it though.
 
It's amazing how fast they fell. Just two years ago they were the buzz of General Aviation. They had a giant tent at Sun and Fun and I remember people packed the tent just to take a look at the new product. A few accidents later which (IMO) wasn't Icon's fault......here we are and believe it or not those people that put money down on the airplane are probably not getting their money back.


They marketed it like a jet ski. Imagine if the same proportion of Waverunner owners had been killed; how would that product be selling? Folks don’t like their toys to be associated with fatalities.
 
I had thought about calling them and asking if I could schedule a demo flight at Peter O Knight but I decided to pass on this trip. I’d still like to do it though.

I didn't know...are they still doing Demo flights?
 
Personally I think it will be terrible if that company goes under because a habitual drug user made an illegal flight under the influence and killed himself. We, general aviation, need to stop this eating our young, destroying fine companies because of a customer's ridiculous decisions. I hope ICON can come through this.
 
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They marketed it like a jet ski. Imagine if the same proportion of Wave runner owners had been killed; how would that product be selling? Folks don’t like their toys to be associated with fatalities.

From what I remember 2 Icons went down. Both issues were pilot error!
 
From what I remember 2 Icons went down. Both issues were pilot error!

True.

Doesn't matter for marketing to people looking for a jet-ski sort of toy. Marketing to knowledgeable pilots, sure, we get it. But that's not how they are trying to sell these things and not how they are priced.
 
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