Is it bad?

[BonanzaDriver]

Is it bad that I have been eye balling a Lancair Legacy (finished) to replace my bonanza?

230 knots on 13 gph sounds really nice

If only the wife would sign off on it-

Me: "Look at this cool airplane!"
Her: "Experimental? Does that means it runs off of plutonium or something?"
Me: "Nope, it just means it was built by someone that didn't want the cost of certification"
Her: "Oh great, so it'll probably fall apart."

Sigh.

 

[Ken Ibold]

The Legacy is a really nice airplane. The assembly system Lance Niebauer designed on those things makes the airframes very, very strong.

A well-built Lancair is a stronger airplane than a well-built Bonanza. And determining the quality of the build is not voodoo.

 

[tonycondon]

buy it, let her drive a couple trips while you cruise at 230. may change her mind

 

[SCCutler]

I cannot imagine anything wrong with this exercise. Except, when I look at Lancairs, I inevitably look at IV-Ps.

And that, my friends, is the stuff of true mental illness!

 

[tonycondon]

bo driver - buy the lancair, sell your bonanaza to Spike. then everyone is happy

 

[BonanzaDriver]

IV-P's, in my experience, are the stuff that smoking craters are made of.

The gentleman in Bufort, SC, that I go to for recurrent training has told me that of the 4 IV-P pilots that he knows of, 3 are now dead. If you fly an old lear, you'll be fine, but if you think the IV-P will be unforgiving in a stall like a cessna, you will have problems. I have heard that in a stall, the IV-P requires ~10,000 feet to recover in the hands of a test pilot!

Anyway, from what I have read, the Legacy is much more forgiving in a stall, not that I plan on stalling it though.

Spike, buy my bonanza, 91 F33A- that'll be 225,000$ please

 

[Ken Ibold]

IV-P's, in my experience, are the stuff that smoking craters are made of.

The gentleman in Bufort, SC, that I go to for recurrent training has told me that of the 4 IV-P pilots that he knows of, 3 are now dead. If you fly an old lear, you'll be fine, but if you think the IV-P will be unforgiving in a stall like a cessna, you will have problems. I have heard that in a stall, the IV-P requires ~10,000 feet to recover in the hands of a test pilot!

Anyway, from what I have read, the Legacy is much more forgiving in a stall, not that I plan on stalling it though.

The IVP's do have quirky handling, that's for sure. The laminar flow wing gives up lift very suddenly and the very high wing loading takes you down from there. The design was the nexus for the Columbia, but it required huge modifications to become certified and so it ended up a different airplane.

Now the Legacy, on the other hand, is an evolution of the original Lancair, called 235, 320 or 360, depending on the engine. That airplane had its own faults, largely due to the fact that the tail was too small and breakout forces were very, very light. That model is a runway accident looking for a place to happen. The Legacy fixes both of those problems.

Tell your wife the former editor of Aviation Safety AND EAA Sport Aviation would own and fly a Legacy in a heartbeat. (If someone would just follow me with the kids in tow.)

And if she buys that, I have some land you might be interested in...

 

[mikea]

How are you going to get insurance on an experimental...more to the point, how is the builder going to able to sell it without having his net worth and lifetime earnings tag along with it forever?

 

[tonycondon]

How are you going to get insurance on an experimental...more to the point, how is the builder going to able to sell it without having his net worth and lifetime earnings tag along with it forever?

Insurance is easy to get. Falcon insurance does a group policy for EAA members. Liability is always a concern but must not be too big of a deal as experimentals are constantly being bought and sold.

 

[infotango]

Any word on the handling of then new ES-P? I know that the ES is supposed to be a little more gentle, it seems that the addition of pressurization would make for quite a nice little rocket.

 

[Chip Sylverne]

The real problem with that little "experimental" placard is that it pretty much guarantees the plane will only lose value over time.

Too bad too, because I pretty much fell hard for a pretty little thing called the Ravin 500 at the AOPA fly-in. But it would probably be cheaper in the long run just to find a Comanche and rebuild it. Maybe that'll be AOPA's give-away plane next year.

 

[RogerT]

Is it bad that I have been eye balling a Lancair Legacy (finished) to replace my bonanza?

230 knots on 13 gph sounds really nice

If only the wife would sign off on it-

Me: "Look at this cool airplane!"
Her: "Experimental? Does that means it runs off of plutonium or something?"
Me: "Nope, it just means it was built by someone that didn't want the cost of certification"
Her: "Oh great, so it'll probably fall apart."

Sigh.

Take her shopping in it.

 

[PeteJE]

The real problem with that little "experimental" placard is that it pretty much guarantees the plane will only lose value over time.

Too bad too, because I pretty much fell hard for a pretty little thing called the Ravin 500 at the AOPA fly-in. But it would probably be cheaper in the long run just to find a Comanche and rebuild it. Maybe that'll be AOPA's give-away plane next year.

Some, maybe, but I just don't think that is true with any of the Vans airplanes. That market commands high resale prices and they have only gone up over the last 7 years or so I have been following them.

 

[John Recine]

Okay as a regular neophyte in the airplane buying and selling business, why are experimental aircraft expected to have a poor resale value as time goes on?

 

[Ken Ibold]

Okay as a regular neophyte in the airplane buying and selling business, why are experimental aircraft expected to have a poor resale value as time goes on?

For most models, it's simply limited demand. Most tend to be niche airplanes, and the quality of the build is all over the board, so prospective buyers opt for certified rather than undertake the learning curve associated with determining how well made it was. But there are other factors.

* Many builders use hardware/auto store parts that simply don't hold up well.
* Some designs have poor habits in one or another part of the flight envelope.
* Many builders modify the design to fit their tastes or body type, and other people don't appreciate them. (Lots of people have thought they could modify a Pitts to fly better than Curtis' design. Most have been wrong.)
* Some airplanes don't fly well because they're just not straight.

Now, I'm not saying homebuilts ... er, experimentals ... are worse airplanes or that experimental is the wrong route to go. Some experimentals are built better than what comes out of any factory. Experimentals open up the ability to use non-certified avionics and other leading-edge electronics. Do-it-yourself maintenance can save you money (but see point 1 above).

It's kind of like restaurants when you travel. Do you stick with the predictable value of a Chili's or Bennigan's, or do you reach for the unknown, fully aware you may find a gem or a lemon, but you won't know until it's too late. Well, aircraft are kind of like that, too.

 

[John Recine]

Thanks, I appreciate the lesson certainly all valid points just never thought about it in that light. Always thought in certain degrees of really neat airplanes by a committed builder. I suppose all builders do not consider the end result as a contratpion that cannot be short cut. I build as if my life depends on it, I would hope all the other builders build the same way.

At this point I suppose I do not know enough to take the short cuts and consider every stick and every glue joint I set as critical components.


John

 

[mikea]

Okay as a regular neophyte in the airplane buying and selling business, why are experimental aircraft expected to have a poor resale value as time goes on?

Mainly because the guy who built it can't sell it because his net worth will be attached to it until the end of time. The only way out of that is to not have net worth a lawyer would be interested in.

 

[Henning]

Is it bad that I have been eye balling a Lancair Legacy (finished) to replace my bonanza?

230 knots on 13 gph sounds really nice

If only the wife would sign off on it-

Me: "Look at this cool airplane!"
Her: "Experimental? Does that means it runs off of plutonium or something?"
Me: "Nope, it just means it was built by someone that didn't want the cost of certification"
Her: "Oh great, so it'll probably fall apart."

Sigh.

Yeah, I been a eyeballin them too.... Just tell the wife, "Not Plutonium, Nitro Methane..."

 

[Henning]

Okay as a regular neophyte in the airplane buying and selling business, why are experimental aircraft expected to have a poor resale value as time goes on?

Says who? Priced a Lanceair IVP? There's a profit there for a builder.

 

[Henning]

IV-P's, in my experience, are the stuff that smoking craters are made of.

The gentleman in Bufort, SC, that I go to for recurrent training has told me that of the 4 IV-P pilots that he knows of, 3 are now dead. If you fly an old lear, you'll be fine, but if you think the IV-P will be unforgiving in a stall like a cessna, you will have problems. I have heard that in a stall, the IV-P requires ~10,000 feet to recover in the hands of a test pilot!

Anyway, from what I have read, the Legacy is much more forgiving in a stall, not that I plan on stalling it though.

Spike, buy my bonanza, 91 F33A- that'll be 225,000$ please

You're hearing stories about the stall, power on can be recovered before the VSI drops past zero. Is it a Cessna or Piper Spam Can? No it is not, it requires attentiveness, it's not a machine for sloppy pilots and has tha ability to bite you. It was never meant for a neophyte pilot. It is though a proper flying high performance aircraft which responds in the manner that you would expect, nothing untowards happens within a normal flight envelope. If you get outside that envelope though, it is not as forgiving as something that was designed so it couldn't hurt you. That's why you go 60% faster for the horsepower.

 

[bbchien]

Heavily wing loaded. Fly it as such. NEVER get behind the power curve except on short final. Watch pitch like a hawk- they fly beautifully but IMO for the average GA pilot, needs a stick shaker. Could use a bit steeper dynamic pitch stability curve- pretty much the nose stays where you put it in comparison to say a Wichita 300 horse ship.