To be fair, motorcycles are also dangerous statistically.. but once you eliminate the angry squids, the drunks, and the woefully inexperienced superbike buyer, the statistical danger drops substantially.
@@JPINFV I've seen some motorcycle riders that adhere strictly to the rules of the road, like going 55mph on freeways that are posted 55mph, and also add in the safety guidelines that you might learn in a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course - I think motorcycling is pretty safe for those riders. For everyone else, not so much. Aviation is a bit like that. If you operate an airplane the way the folks do who teach safety at airlines (think Mentour Pilot & people like him) it's not risk-free but it's pretty darn safe.
I love these types of videos. Its like Complete Walkaround went: "Hang on, why am I making videos on planes that cost half a million when like 80% of my viewers are probably wage workers or still in school?"
@@benghazi4216 this! I certainly don't mind some of the higher cost airplane videos. It's fun to dream and think "what if". But I do also love these budget plane videos as well.
@@iowafarmboy Yeah, but it has to be somehow applicable to a poor person. I mean which plane is the most economical to fly your sales team from coast to coast is not That interesting. A jet proven in combat for "cheap" is. You can rephrase it like: The plane you would buy if you won the lottery. But hey, I take what I get ^^
I envy the people who discover this channel in a year and have hours upon hours of videos to watch. I love the longer videos. Hope you do more to the length of the 172 video
For April 1, please make a "so you wanna buy a" video for a plane like the Airbus A380, Wright Flyer, VC-25 with C-17 escort, A-10, Falcon 9 rocket, or other unobtanium-type for common folks.
Would love to see the A380 because there are so many of them that nobody wants. Cheap to buy but operational costs that would be truly shocking to many yacht owners
Love your videos, keep 'em coming! Would love to see one on our SubSonex. You might want to look at the numbers you have posted on our Onex, however. 145 knots would be with the AeroVee Turbo, but performance with the normally aspirated AeroVee in cruise will be about 155 mph (135 knots), and you will get more range out of the normally aspirated engine with 3.5 gph in cruise vs. about 5 gph with the turbo. Speaking of range, it looks like your conversion from nautical miles to statute miles is a little off. I think you meant to show 740 Kilometers?
Hey Sonex! Thanks 👍. It's true, this video was from the pioneering days of the channel. I like to think it's matured a bit since then in both details and typos. I get a lot of requests for the subsonex. One day hopefully I'll visit you guys and learn all about them.
You're making Fantastic content here. Cost relatable and interesting aircraft check the two boxes that many of us are interested in. TBM's and vision jets are cool, but I can't even afford to imagine those.
Always loved the Quickie, there was one not far from my childhood home, and I just loved the engineering on it and that it strongly resembled a bug. Pilot/owner let me look inside, I thought I won the lottery. There were a few Long EZs in that same airport, and those too, amazing aircraft. They knew I was a fan when I was basically doing a walkaround inspection and wondering at all the cool ways they built things into it. None of them were the same, one had shark teeth, of course.
Another awesome video. You found the perfect recipe of content, pacing and relevant info in your series. Can’t wait for the next one. How’s the 14 coming along?
Merlin PSA is another fun one that's worth checking out if you're looking for something cool and affordable. It's a high-wing 1-seat that costs about as much as a OneX. Slower than a OneX, but the numbers on it are decent
Can you do a video on the cheapest float planes as the next installment in this series? My wife finally folded and said I can get a plane now that we're both making more money, so I'm in the market and I genuinely don't even know what I should be looking at.
I was at the airport the other day in State College PA and was waiting for a flight. Out of nowhere this little dragonfly looking aircraft flew by climbing after takeoff! It was a Rutan quickie! I couldn’t believe it. Saw it taxiing in later as we were loading up.What a crazy thing to see! I made sure everyone I was with knew!
There's one unfinished Long EZ asking for less than 8k I know. Always interested in having one but I understand it take years, decade even to finish building one, with hired hands building cost easily exceeds 50k.
As a pilot myself who’s seen a thing or two I’ll never get in a Burt Rutan aircraft. Not touching it. I really really found your commentary on the first Rutan design quite entertaining.
How to open up a lot of more kitplanes to the under $50k range: Put in a Yamaha Genesis engine, rated to 180hp up to 10 000 feet. And lighter than a Titan in the same ballpark. You can get the whole snowmobile of the showroom floor for under $15k. Take what you need, and sell the carcass and get a few grand back.
@@CompleteWalkaround Only because it isn't the norm. Works wonders for those who try, and those videos can be found here on RU-vid. I am constantly surprised how much faith people in GA put in these spruced up 1960's engine designs. Is it that ghost of the Porsche boxer in the Mooneys playing tricks on people? Or maybe the Thielert engines?
@@CompleteWalkaround I know you like your numbers so here is a video filled with engine prices, and specs, with the Yamaha as the underlying topic. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tS5g45nIXXw.html The cost difference is palpable with some choices, like the comparable Rotax 915iS being almost 50 grand more expensive. That's more than I ever spent on a car.
YAY you did some experimental's!....darn you didn't do the Bede BD-4. If you want to showcase great performance(speed, economy, range, payload) for less money it's tough to beat. Cheers!
Woah, I thought the Long EZ cruised at like 180 knots, turns out those numbers are for souped-up fully retractable Vari EZ builds. Strange how a plane with such a modest cruise speed has such a ridiculous range. You're talking about over 12 hours in the saddle with one of these things.
I think 125 kts is minimum cruise for maximum range. The Long-EZ can easily cruise at about 150 kts even with a 108HP O-235 (that it was designed around) and push about 170 kts if you want to consume more go-go juice. However most are built with 150-160HP O-320's that give better climb performance for a slightly higher fuel burn and can easily hit 180 kts (or 200MPH). Some have even built them with 180-200HP O-360's and those will really scream. If you want the fastest canard, your basically looking at the retractable-gear version of the Long-EZ, the Berkut 540, with a 260HP IO-540 that pushes it to 300 kts!
Ceiling is pretty well set based on the type of engine not really the plane. Non-Turbocharged pistons engines are going to be mid teens. Turbocharged pistons will be mid 20s generally. Non of the engines in this video are turbocharged. You start getting turbo charged singles around the heavy 4 place planes, or most all the 6 places. for piston twins, its about 50/50, many have turbocharged and non-turbocharged versions. For crossing the Rockies, pretty much anything turbocharged will fly over them. Anything non-turbocharged is going to leave you traversing the canyons. Which is not a huge deal. So long as you know what you're doing.
Really cool to see cheap stuff here but I'd prefer 5 videos (over 5 weeks) with the actual cost breakdown (especially hangar and insurance because you've shown an origami plane that takes no space and a dangerous one that sees half as many landings as it sees takeoffs)
I flew a Q200 for 260 hrs. 170-175 mph at 5-5.5/hr was typical with O-200 engine and wood prop. Top speed 180 mph. Landed hot at 80 mph over fence. Hard to get out of air without belly brake out. I sold it for $13,500 in 1995. The Q2 was way to underpowered...not good.
Is there a plane that starts off reasonably priced but with technical skill one could build it out to be faster/ better/ cooler? Similar mindset to having a muscle car or Japanese sport tuner?
Hi Great question. So, sort of, but not to the extent that you can with sports cars. You can't take a small plane and just put a 1000 horsepower engine in. The engine is very heavy, so you need more/larger airplane to handle that weight and force. So you just end up with a bigger plane. You can also reduce drag, but that doesn't have a huge effect unless you make major changes to the airframe. This stuff is possible, but probably cheaper to just get another airplane. I'm not an expert on this stuff by a long shot. If you aren't already familiar check out Mike Patey. He does a lot of really amazing stuff like this. He has a RU-vid channel.
I really want to get something like a fighter plane. I want a bubble canopy. Single or front/back seating, and retractable gear. What cool toys are available to me for, say, $200,000 or less? Gotta keep my daydreams within budget.
I wonder about safety a fair bit. When I commenced flying training I knew light aircraft had slightly higher death rates than motor cycling. But in bikes I suspect a subset of riders have most of the crashes... those who approach it with the poorest attitudes. Perhaps an 80 20 thing. And in flying, we know that certain aircraft have patterns of crashes because of the types of people more likely to fly them. Bonanzas and overconfident doctors and lawyers . And I wonder if the quickies are like that? If the design is sound but the deaths have mainly been among people who weren't sufficiently prepared? They were able to acquire the aircraft but didn't know they needed more training in the human factors of safe decision making? I don't know for sure but I wonder.
I might be interpreting this all wrong, but maybe the extremely high number of quickie incidents is due to runway mishaps: "as the rudder pedals in Quickie Q2 were cable-linked directly to a steerable tailwheel bellcrank, and then via secondary cables to the rudder - this per-plans configuration led to multiple runway mishaps resulting from damage to the fiberglass tailspring that supported the tailwheel bellcrank and subsequent loss of directional control". So maybe in-flight performance of the plane was allright and this one construction flaw was the reason behind such horrid crash statistics. Somebody would need to go through the incident reports to confirm or refute this assumption, though.
Be sure to check out the Verhees Delta D2, then, it really is one of the coolest and cheapest planes you can get. And has great performance too! My personal favorite.
