Cessna's new LSA: "Skycatcher"

Morgans wrote:

"Jim Stewart" wrote

It can run at 5800 rpm, but it depends on your
prop pitch. My CTSW never exceeds 5100-5200 on
full throttle climbout and cruises just wonderfully
at 90-95 knots and 4200 rpm or so.

It just sounds wrong to me, to hear an engine running a sustained 5800
RPM. I do want to go 120 knots though, so if that means it has to run
5800 RPM, it is a big turn-off for me.

Just to clarify, the 912 is rated for 5800 rpm for
5 minutes, 5500 continuous.

You know how sometimes people have a hang-up, for no good reason, but
there is a reason?

That is me and Rotax.

We had a SeaDoo that had a rotax (I forgot now) I think around 600 cc
engine. It was a piece of crap, from start to end. You fix one thing,
and there was another problem. Lots of money flushed down into that
hole in the water.

Ended up getting a new short block. Ran it for about a year, with some
improvement in reliability, but not much. I got it running fairly good
and sold it. I told the new buyers about its questionable reliability
(so I could sleep nights), but they still wanted it. It was a deal.

All I can add is that 2 strokes are 2 strokes
and 4 strokes are 4 strokes. I'd never be
comfortable being pulled through the air with
a 2 stroke unless I had a chute and a place to
make an emergency landing.

Now, I KNOW that the 912 is a completely different beast than that 586
(or whatever) 2 stroke, but I can never imagine getting into a plane
with an engine that is made by the same company. Not logical, but just
the same, my mind is over ruling my brain! or something like that

Well, your attitude is justified. I like the
912. Behaves like a big electric motor for me.

Update: 416 orders as of the end of the day on Tuesday the 24th.

I talked to the sales folks today, and learned that the yoke is in
fact a Stick, and works as one would expect - it just happens to be
mounted under the panel instead of on the floor. The twist movement
evident in the demonstrator will probably be gone in the real thing.
BTW the flight controls are not connected in the demonstrator and are
fixed in position (the stick moves but does nothing).

I tried it on for size again and found it comfortable (plenty of
headroom and elbow room), but no easier to get into or out of.

According to the salesman, if I ordered one today I would probably
take delivery in 2010. That's a long wait.

David Johnson

"Matt Whiting" wrote
Is the prop RPM in cruise really any lower than a Conti? Most reduction
units are simply to get the prop RPM low enough to decent efficiency and
seldom get much lower than a direct drive airplane engine.


The reduction gear ratio on the 912S is 1:2.43. This means a prop RPM of
2386 rpm at max power and around 2000-2100 rpm in cruise. Very sweet and
efficient.

"buttman" wrote

Well I've never flown any of those planes. All the high wings I've
ever flown have always had electrical flaps, and the only mechanical
flapped plane I've flown was a low wing. I didn't think it was
possible to have a cable or a shaft go through the floor, up the sides
of the door, then across the roof.

Well, high wing airplanes do have ailerons, and somehow the designers manage
that control linkage. Flaps control linkages are in principle no different,
in fact they may be easier to implement.

"Morgans" wrote

It just sounds wrong to me, to hear an engine running a sustained 5800
RPM. I do want to go 120 knots though, so if that means it has to run
5800 RPM, it is a big turn-off for me.

Well, if you want to compare apples to apples, remember the Conti has to run
at 2750 rpm in that situation.

Dave,

Update: 416 orders as of the end of the day on Tuesday the 24th.


Millions of flies...

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Snowbird wrote:
"Matt Whiting" wrote
Is the prop RPM in cruise really any lower than a Conti? Most reduction
units are simply to get the prop RPM low enough to decent efficiency and
seldom get much lower than a direct drive airplane engine.


The reduction gear ratio on the 912S is 1:2.43. This means a prop RPM of
2386 rpm at max power and around 2000-2100 rpm in cruise. Very sweet and
efficient.



I don't have the efficiency curves handy. That sounds pretty slow for a
small diameter prop.

Matt

"Matt Whiting" wrote

Makes a lot of sense to me. You need two bottles for the input fluids and two
more for the output fluids. 2 + 2 = 4 so I'd say Cessna was just planning
ahead! :-)

Is anyone else having a problem of posts repeating themselves a few days after
the original post?

I suspect that it is on my end, but I don't even know where to start looking.

This post came on the 22nd, and it reappeared again today. I am getting this
type of thing 20 or 30 times per day.

I just switched computers, while mine is on loan.

Anyone have any ideas? Using OE on a XP machine. Charter Cable is my service
provider.
--
Jim in NC

"Morgans" wrote in message
...

"Matt Whiting" wrote

Makes a lot of sense to me. You need two bottles for the input fluids
and two more for the output fluids. 2 + 2 = 4 so I'd say Cessna was just
planning ahead! :-)

Is anyone else having a problem of posts repeating themselves a few days
after the original post?

I suspect that it is on my end, but I don't even know where to start
looking.

This post came on the 22nd, and it reappeared again today. I am getting
this type of thing 20 or 30 times per day.

I just switched computers, while mine is on loan.

Anyone have any ideas? Using OE on a XP machine. Charter Cable is my
service provider.
--
Jim in NC
I'm getting it too. nntp.charter.net

Al G

In rec.aviation.piloting Al G wrote:
"Morgans" wrote in message

Is anyone else having a problem of posts repeating themselves a few
days after the original post?

I'm getting it too. nntp.charter.net

Charter appears to have outsourced its news service to Highwinds Media.
Cox (another cable TV company and my ISP) used to run its own news
servers, but also outsourced to Highwinds a while back. You could tell
when that happened because the news service started to suck. I (and
other Cox customers) have been seeing the same thing over the past few
days: missing posts, and old posts showing up again.

Highwinds appears to optimize for the porn and warez downloaders at
the expense of making text groups work correctly. You can complain to
Charter, but if they're anything like Cox, nobody on the first-level
support desk has even heard of Usenet.

The solution is probably a third-party news service that isn't a
tentacle of or reseller of Highwinds. I haven't (yet) been annoyed
enough to make the switch.

Matt Roberds