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Below are some of my personal kits choices and some of my thoughts
that went into them. More general thoughts on building can be
found on my Building a Plane page.
My
Decision Process
If I get IPO gold sooner I'll probably start something while I'm
still living out here in California - otherwise my quickest route to aircraft ownership is
a partnership with a couple of my closest, trusted friends (one of
whom is a student pilot and one of whom wants to be). A production plane is the best deal for
cheapest possible - but a kit is the cheapest route to a "real"
aircraft with enough speed, range and capacity to actually go
somewhere with a family of 4.
The kit that is my leading choice is the Express 2000 (www.express-aircraft.com)
- it has a payload of just over 1000 pounds. But that's also based a
useful load of over 1800# with 140 gallons of fuel for almost 7 hours
of fuel for 1800nm in range. Leaving the outboard tanks empty (you can
build it with 2 tanks or 4 - 2 is easier to manage flying but 4 is very
handy for weight management) you get 82 gallons and 4 hours of flying
and 348 pounds of payload back. SFO to Minneapolis is about 1400nm by
air so. Going home it could make the trip on one tank in about 4:45
hours and back in about 5:50 (figuring +/- 30kts of push/pull from
head/tailwinds there versus back). Of course no bathroom so add an hour
each way for a stop and break and it's still very competitive with
commercial flying with that 2 hours in advance thing plus getting to
leave when you want.
Here's my current list of kits in rough order of preference (note
that all kits are 4 seater aircraft - I don't consider a 2 seater a
reasonable choice for the aircraft I want to own due to payload,
speed and range issues - although there is one two seater - a
creampuff wood structure that cruises at 160kts and is fully
aerobatic rated - the Falco (the kit version of a very successful 40
year old US certified Italian production plane design that is still
built today):
A List
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| Velocity XL -
www.velocityaircraft.com - A composite canard pusher. The
FG kit is only $37k - the RG kit is only $6k more. These
are a 260-300hp aircraft with a 180-200kt cruise. As my second
choice the bulk of the details and some photos also have been
moved to their own on my Velocity Page. |
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B List
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| Zodiac CH 640 -
http://www.zenair.com/ - An all metal traditional aircraft. Full
kit is only $25k and faster building. Cruise at 130kts with a 180hp
(Lycoming O-360) engine (only 8-10gph cruise versus 14-18 for the cylinder engines
used by the previous). This kit is available in 7 chunks to help
spread out cost with no cost penalty for partial orders. It is also
doable as a plans built plane but you have to build jigs and do more
bending. With the kit is a no-jig no-weld (all bolts and rivets)
construction. Payload at full fuel is still a very usable 820
pounds. Kit includes the engine mount (usually a $1000 extra item)
and factory matched "firewall forward" (engine plus all needed
accessory) kits are available. Buildable for <$60k VFR to about $80k
for a nice IFR plane. |
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| Cozy -
http://www.cozyaircraft.com/ - A composite 4 seater. It is a
"plans built" plane although a number of suppliers have kits of
materials and various pre-form parts. It is also designed to be
O-360 powered at 180hp for a 190kt cruise. It also has an over 800#
payload (1050 usable). The basic structure can be built for less
than $15k and a flyable VFR plane can be deployed for under $45k. |
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