Endangered Species - Retractable Piston Singles?

No sense of humor, sad. You disproved your own point.


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James331 said:
Form my perspective making people fly a complex for the CPL ride is more about making sure they can do a little more walking and chewing gum at the same time.

I've also noted a large difference between people who can come into the downwind at full cruise power, dump the gear, to VFE, flaps, turning flaps to vref and make the first taxi exit not even spilling your coffee. Now that level of airmanship isn't required to be safe enough to get your log inked for a complex, nor should it be, but it's to be expected of a pro pilot.

Guess what I'm trying to say is it's not so much about just being a complex, it's adding in more controls and seeing if you still have a mastery of said aircraft.
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I have no disagreement with you in this regard, just playing devils advocate as retracts slowly go away. Folks are using manufacturing numbers to represent the fleet, and they're not taking into account that many of those retracts will be owned by people who'd never let them anywhere near the damage and wear and tear of a flight club or school.

I think I'll see the day where a retract single is an oddity kept around at a club simply for the Commerical students, heck the way they're scheduled now is pretty much that.

Here's some fun for you James... would you rather someone got 20 hours + in a twin and did their initial Comm ride in that, vs 10 hours in the twin and the initial Comm ride in a single retract? Money aside, that is. Technically I did that, and I'm not chasing any jobs, so I don't care what anyplace that's hiring thinks of it for me, but I wanted to do the Comm SE ride in my 182.

For some kids, I'd say if they did it in that order, the multi time serves them better in the logbook of real experience rather than the time in a single sucking the gear up and down. Especially if they're bypassing the CFI route and just paying mega bucks to get to the hours needed to fly Commercially.

Obviously I'm not bypassing CFI and kinda have to fly anything that comes along, so I don't care either way, but I felt a lot better in the twin after more hours to prep both the Comm and initial CFI in it, than I need hours in a 182... retract 182 or not.

In general, more flying of *anything* is mo' better, that's for sure. But if you can train up for the multi-retract-Comm you've met the "James standard" and don't really need single retract time. It's just economics at that point.

I know my experience is weird. I was a private pilot for so long I was in one club that had a retract that did NOT fly because folks didn't want to get checked out in it, so I flew the hell out of it everywhere. (172RG) It was a dog, performance wise, but it was always open on that particular club's schedule and kept in a nice insulated hangar, and the owner was screaming mad if anyone got it even so much as dirty, so it was the closest to aircraft ownership one could get back then during my rental years. I looked at the flight logs and I had that airplane essentially to myself for a year once, and put a bunch of hours on it. It didn't go anywhere fast, and didn't do anything the Skyhawk in the hangar next to it didn't do.

That same airplane, when that club folded due to medical reasons for the owner and political reasons at the airport(s) was bought by a more traditional club, and within a couple of years looked like hell. Beat to total crap by Commercial students. It was eventually put out of its misery by a hailstorm.

N5330R. 30 Romeo and I went all over the place together for a couple of years.

If you Google it, you can see how well (badly) it was treated toward the end of its life. Dirty all the time, interior dirty, just beat up, and the hail shots from the salvage offer. When I flew that thing it was spotless, clean, taken care of, and in a hangar safe from hail.

This is pretty typical of how I see single retracts that are used in training treated around here. Schools destroy them.
 
FloridaPilot said:
You are correct, everyone has their own mission. I can understand the need for a twin in more populated cities but a place like Florida you can fly a single and find many places to land if the fan stops turning. There are singles that can fit your mission pretty well too.
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None that I can afford and I've flown almost every square inch of FL, I'd rather not put a zero thrust plane down in the glades. :)
 
GRG55 said:
These are not inexperienced airplane designers. And nobody could possibly think Neibauer didn't know how to design and build an excellent retractable gear for the plane. Think these guys might know something we don't? Or maybe they are all just like selling uncool stuff that doesn't qualify as a real airplane. :D
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I don't think this was a design choice. I think it was a marketing choice. Just like Cessna decided that when they restarted single engine production, they didn't offer a retract. Cessna knew how to do it, yet they decided to offer just fixed gear singles.
 
gsengle said:
They made a choice. Remember we are still working out the best way to do composites and retractable gear and the best way to do it in a composite wing is not as far along.
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I can't say that I agree with that. :D

The retract gear on my composite works just fine. ;)
 
The numbers rarely lie, specially if you look at them closely. Cirrus is selling lots of singles because they are offering a very good compromise of most everything a new airplane buyer is looking for. Many of these folks want to utilize the airplane for business and want to fly day or night in most kind of weather with a great Autopilot while feeling secure in a last option. Many of these folks see the Cirrus with CAPS as a great alternative to a twin with lower operating cost. While there are still many of us that think twice about extended operations in a single after dark, the Cirrus offers some piece of mind there. It is comfortable with a good useful load. Finally, it's clean composite design allows it to perform very well even with the gear hanging out. Cirrus has managed to put together a package that is very appealing to most pilots, specially the newer generation that want the airplane to be as comfortable as their BMW. From a purely aerodynamic standpoint, all things being the same, the retract will go faster that a fixed gear. The additional induced drag from the heavier retract gear is peanuts compared to the parasitic drag. The fixed gear is simpler, however, and requires less maintenance. It's all a compromise and Cirrus has the winning formula for the moment. If I could afford a new airplane I would give it serious consideration. Since I don't have the money, I will continue to be content with my 50 year old Mooney (67C), with the manual gear that requires almost no maintenance, and cruising at 145 Kts, on 180 HP on 8.7 GPH. With the gear out it will not go over 120.


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denverpilot said:
I have no disagreement with you in this regard, just playing devils advocate as retracts slowly go away. Folks are using manufacturing numbers to represent the fleet, and they're not taking into account that many of those retracts will be owned by people who'd never let them anywhere near the damage and wear and tear of a flight club or school.

I think I'll see the day where a retract single is an oddity kept around at a club simply for the Commerical students, heck the way they're scheduled now is pretty much that.

Here's some fun for you James... would you rather someone got 20 hours + in a twin and did their initial Comm ride in that, vs 10 hours in the twin and the initial Comm ride in a single retract? Money aside, that is. Technically I did that, and I'm not chasing any jobs, so I don't care what anyplace that's hiring thinks of it for me, but I wanted to do the Comm SE ride in my 182.

For some kids, I'd say if they did it in that order, the multi time serves them better in the logbook of real experience rather than the time in a single sucking the gear up and down. Especially if they're bypassing the CFI route and just paying mega bucks to get to the hours needed to fly Commercially.

Obviously I'm not bypassing CFI and kinda have to fly anything that comes along, so I don't care either way, but I felt a lot better in the twin after more hours to prep both the Comm and initial CFI in it, than I need hours in a 182... retract 182 or not.

In general, more flying of *anything* is mo' better, that's for sure. But if you can train up for the multi-retract-Comm you've met the "James standard" and don't really need single retract time. It's just economics at that point.

I know my experience is weird. I was a private pilot for so long I was in one club that had a retract that did NOT fly because folks didn't want to get checked out in it, so I flew the hell out of it everywhere. (172RG) It was a dog, performance wise, but it was always open on that particular club's schedule and kept in a nice insulated hangar, and the owner was screaming mad if anyone got it even so much as dirty, so it was the closest to aircraft ownership one could get back then during my rental years. I looked at the flight logs and I had that airplane essentially to myself for a year once, and put a bunch of hours on it. It didn't go anywhere fast, and didn't do anything the Skyhawk in the hangar next to it didn't do.

That same airplane, when that club folded due to medical reasons for the owner and political reasons at the airport(s) was bought by a more traditional club, and within a couple of years looked like hell. Beat to total crap by Commercial students. It was eventually put out of its misery by a hailstorm.

N5330R. 30 Romeo and I went all over the place together for a couple of years.

If you Google it, you can see how well (badly) it was treated toward the end of its life. Dirty all the time, interior dirty, just beat up, and the hail shots from the salvage offer. When I flew that thing it was spotless, clean, taken care of, and in a hangar safe from hail.

This is pretty typical of how I see single retracts that are used in training treated around here. Schools destroy them.
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Frankly I wasn't that impressed by twins, just didn't seem like much for work than a complex plane.

But I hear ya, and if I had my way I'd happily trade the complex time for tailwheel or glider solo time, based on what I've seen think that would help folks more.
 
retracts singles aren't going away, so I don't consider them endangered. Cirrus has disrupted the market in many ways and for a lot of folks it's a nice added safety to not worry about the gear for a 5-15 knot speed trade off. That is what Cirrus offers, a nice safe contained package that feels sleak and modern and seems to make very few adverse compromises
 
hindsight2020 said:
why is the expense and complexity of a retract is par for the course in a twin but all of a sudden blasphemy on a single?
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Nobody said retractable gear on a single was blasphemy (although I got the impression some think fixed gear on any airplane should be declared so :cool:). The observation and data in the OP is that despite the availability of some excellent, reputable choices (Bonanza, Mooney, Malibu) very few new buyers of high performance piston singles appear to opt for retractable gear now.

Historically piston twins generally flew at higher speeds than comparable size piston singles: Baron vs Bonanza, Cessna 310 vs Centurian, etc. Even a 10% increase in cruise speed, 150 kts to 165 kits for example, exacts a serious parasitic drag penalty (roughly 21% increase). You'll note the single engine examples cited from that era are also retractable gear.

All that changed with materials technology; the plastic composites pioneered in the Experimental world by Rutan, Glassair, Lancair and others. Now we have high performance certified 4/5 place airframes efficient enough to cruise on one engine at speeds equal to some of the highest hp piston twins ever built.

It's pretty damn impressive that a Cirrus SR22T with the gear hanging in the breeze at 20,000 ft can cruise at essentially the same speed as a Cessna 414 Chancellor with the upgraded RAM IV 325 hp engines/props.

I think there are multiple reasons why the Klapmeier brothers and Lance Neibauer designed the Cirrus and Columbia/TTx, respectively, with fixed gear. Among them the extra costs and time to FAA certify the airplane with the more complex gear, the ability with composites to manufacture very slick gear leg and intersection fairings, the ability with composites to economically build compound curve pressure recovery wheel pants lowering the drag penalty even more, as well as the diminishing returns of marginal incremental cruise speed when these airplanes are already so fast. Just a guess...;)

On that last point, if the Cirrus gear could be retracted, as the plane accelerates the parasitic drag on the rest of the airframe is increasing with the square of the velocity change. I seriously doubt Cirrus can get even 10 kts more out of that airframe with the same hp.
 
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denverpilot said:
Who's making new ones at the trainer level? Not the go-fast level?
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:yeahthat:

Mooney, maybe. If they actually follow through with a retractable version of the M10.

More importantly who is making a truly new retractable piston single at the high performance level? Spare us the recycling of the Valkyrie et al; let's be serious and show us any examples from reputable aeronautical firms that actually have the development budgets to see a new design through to not only certification but also production.
 
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GRG55 said:
More importantly who is making a truly new retractable piston single at the high performance level? Spare us the recycling of the Valkyrie et al; let's be serious and show us any examples from reputable aeronautical firms that actually have the development budgets to see a new design through to not only certification but also production.
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Fair enough... but there's obviously still a demand for them out there so in the sense of "endangered" meaning they're at risk of going extinct I don't see that. Maybe right now there aren't many (any?) Legacy manufacturers introducing new models of them, that doesn't mean they're dead, just means the Legacies have an established product line and the costs of introducing a new twin right now aren't worth it with Cirrus having success with a fixed gear and the current market (both new and used) satisfying demand. Endangered to me would mean it's on the brink of dying completely due to lack of demand (like canard and pusher prop designs, etc.)

We also established earlier on that multi's aren't dead or endangered since there are some specific roles where they fill a gap left by singles (payload, need that second engine redundancy, etc.), but other than Diamond DA62 I'm not aware of any Piston, Beech, or Cessna introducing new piston twins either
 
denverpilot said:
Who's making new ones at the trainer level? Not the go-fast level?
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I believe people are just jumping into old Mooney's No point in producing a new retract trainer airplane when not many will buy it. Retract airplanes should be a step up anyway IMO.
 
denverpilot said:
Who's making new ones at the trainer level? Not the go-fast level?
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Piper still builds the Arrow although it's generally in larger orders for flight schools.

The reality is there are plenty out there. My flight school just bought an Arrow from the 90s and it's like a new plane. Very few flight schools buy new...


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hindsight2020 said:
why is the expense and complexity of a retract is par for the course in a twin but all of a sudden blasphemy on a single?
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Of course twins with fixed gear exist, like C-23A Sherpa. In case you aren't facetious, observe that a typical twin is faster. Cirrus SF50 has a folding gear and it's a single from Cirrus. So it's like the gear arrangement is a question of religion.
 
zaitcev said:
Of course twins with fixed gear exist, like C-23A Sherpa. In case you aren't facetious, observe that a typical twin is faster. Cirrus SF50 has a folding gear and it's a single from Cirrus. So it's like the gear arrangement is a question of religion.
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Isn't this a C-23A Sherpa?

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FloridaPilot said:
No point in producing a new retract trainer airplane when not many will buy it.
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Meanwhile, in Russia, someone ordered 12 of these babies (and promise to buy 330 more if things go well):
 
zaitcev said:
Meanwhile, in Russia, someone ordered 12 of these babies (and promise to buy 330 more if things go well):
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Here are some other retract trainers! (Beech, Pilatus, Embraer)

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Tantalum said:
A tiny bit off topic... but does anyone else think the TTx has an odd looking nose gear?
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The topic came up in one of interviews that I've read. It was not with the actual designer of Columbia, but an engineer with Cessna (before Textron). He claimed that the additional drag of the round strut was not significant enough to think about a complex fairing. I suspect that if they tried to work around it, the front leg would look even goofier than the one at Tecnam P92. The front strut is quite practical. Look how many people end with a prop strike on Diamond DA20.
 
gsengle said:
Here are some other retract trainers! (Beech, Pilatus, Embraer)
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I didn't bring those up because neither of them is the initial trainer, whereas Yak-152 is intended for students flying their first hours. Their previous workhorse, Yak-18, was also a retract for some reason. Note that I don't have stats for Russian cadets landing gear up. It may be a significant number.
 
zaitcev said:
I didn't bring those up because neither of them is the initial trainer, whereas Yak-152 is intended for students flying their first hours. Their previous workhorse, Yak-18, was also a retract for some reason. Note that I don't have stats for Russian cadets landing gear up. It may be a significant number.
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Neither is the Arrow, but they really are used in large numbers as a complex/commercial trainer... it's just in the vein of counteracting the silliness of claiming retracts are dead...

It's almost like purchasers of a certain popular single are insecure about it. Hey if you like your gear down, go for it...


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Tantalum said:
For endangered I would honestly put things like gyrocopters, canards, and oddities like that.
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What in the world are you talking about? Gyros are absolutely booming all around the world. It's just the regulatory regime in the U.S. is unfriendly to them, thanks to FAA Rotorcraft directorate. In fact, someone even certified Calidus in the Primary category a few months ago, only because it became clear that S-LSA isn't happening. This is something Cessna could not do with Skycatcher.
 
gsengle said:
Piper still builds the Arrow although it's generally in larger orders for flight schools.

The reality is there are plenty out there. My flight school just bought an Arrow from the 90s and it's like a new plane. Very few flight schools buy new...


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Right. So we already have a single-supplier, building for a niche created by a regulation. The big schools don't care much what they charge, especially those attached to a degree program, but the rest of the training industry is pretty much going to start operating on their sloppy seconds, if they aren't already. As the supply dwindles.

Like I said, not "tomorrow" but the numbers are going down.
 
Two of the three fastest certified piston singles are fixed gear. The Cirrus 22T and TTx are fixed gear new designs using the new materials. And the Mooney with it's retractable gear is an old design. It's cheaper to add HP than to build, maintain and use retractable gear.
 
citizen5000 said:
Two of the three fastest certified piston singles are fixed gear. The Cirrus 22T and TTx are fixed gear new designs using the new materials. And the Mooney with it's retractable gear is an old design. It's cheaper to add HP than to build, maintain and use retractable gear.
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You don't understand the physics of the situation. Drag goes up exponentially. Can't just keep bolting on more HP. And no, retractable gear are not hard to build and maintain.


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gsengle said:
I really don't get why people think retracting the gear is a hard thing

And the low end of the commercial fleet isn't losing retracts. Just the 4/5 seaters which are personal planes and trainers. And Caravans are a special case... you won't see fixed gear twins. Hell only just recently did Europe allow commercial flying with even a turbine single like the pilatus. (Retract)
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You won't see fixed gear twins?

Try again.

Best Regards,

Twin Otter.
:)
 
Very very few. And they are utility planes not fast twins. This whole thread is silly, retractable gear is not going away.


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gsengle said:
You don't understand the physics of the situation. Drag goes up exponentially. Can't just keep bolting on more HP. And no, retractable gear are not hard to build and maintain.


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The carbon fiber fixed gear on high performance piston singles like the Cirrus SR22T and Cessna TTx have proven fixed gear do not hurt performance appreciably. They both use high horsepower turbos and are 210 ktas plus cruising speed planes. Cirrus did go with a standard trailing link retractable for the jet and that presents new problems for them given the fixed gear on the Cirrus planes is part of the impact solution for the BRS chute.

Fixed Gear Is the New Retractable http://www.flyingmag.com/aircraft/pistons/fixed-gear-new-retractable
 
gsengle said:
You don't understand the physics of the situation. Drag goes up exponentially. Can't just keep bolting on more HP. And no, retractable gear are not hard to build and maintain.


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Bolting on more hp is exactly what Mooney has done since the original Lopresti airframe cleanups. Now their fastest plane has a twin turbo 550 in it. You think they made it go fast some other way?
 
Drag still goes up exponentially and the 50 year old Mooney design has something like 20knots on the gen 6 Cirrus SR22T. The faster you go the more the gear has to go up.

Auto extending the gear in the event of chute pull is *trivial*.


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GRG55 said:
Bolting on more hp is exactly what Mooney has done since the original Lopresti airframe cleanups. Now their fastest plane has a twin turbo 550 in it. You think they made it go fast some other way?
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They have also continued aerodynamic refinements with every single generation.

They've maxed out both at this point and they are the fastest...


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The better question is will the FAA ever remove the retract requirement from the Commercial license?
 
midwestpa24 said:
The better question is will the FAA ever remove the retract requirement from the Commercial license?
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I can't see why. Unless they do a dead end limited commercial cert like what happens if you don't have your instrument.

Look earlier in thread for the discussion of why requiring mastery of a complex plane may be a good idea for screening commercial pilots.


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gsengle said:
They have also continued aerodynamic refinements with every single generation.

They've maxed out both at this point and they are the fastest...


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Yes, and Mooney only sold seven airplanes last year. If that's not "endangered species" territory I don't know what is. ;)

Let's hope the changes Mooney has made, under competitive threat from Cirrus, serve to revitalize interest in their planes. They hope to build and sell 50 to 60 this year. I hope they move every one. But the jury is out until we see how that goes.
 
Again you're making this about your Cirrus insecurity. Mooney was on hold awaiting certification of the two new models, but that aside, this thread is titled Retracts not Mooney. So if you wanna muse about the survival of Mooney Aircraft, have at it, start an appropriately named thread.


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zaitcev said:
What in the world are you talking about? Gyros are absolutely booming all around the world. It's just the regulatory regime in the U.S. is unfriendly to them, thanks to FAA Rotorcraft directorate. In fact, someone even certified Calidus in the Primary category a few months ago, only because it became clear that S-LSA isn't happening. This is something Cessna could not do with Skycatcher.
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Thanks, I did not know that. My observation was based on the birds I see at local airports, had no idea they were booming elsewhere in the world. I'm curious, what makes them desirable over a regular airplane?
 
gsengle said:
Very very few. And they are utility planes not fast twins. This whole thread is silly, retractable gear is not going away.


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Same with BN Islander etc.

I added the :) to make sure people knew I wasn't serious. I would buy a retract just because they look better.
 
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