Dave Higdon/WITCHITA, KANSAS
It IS a long, arduous path from membership of the kitplane-producing community to becoming a certificate-holding member of the production-aircraft industry and not one of the three US companies travelling the route has actually reached its goal - yet.
Although all three companies started their aircraft development programmes at different times, all should complete the certification task later this year, an accident of timing that stems from another common denominator the trio share: they are all technically late. That matters little, however, in a consistently, unabashedly optimistic industry where tardiness generally is a rule rather than an exception.
Coping with delays is but one communal lesson learned by the newcomers, a trio of disparate concerns all with roots in the kitplane industry: Cirrus Design of Duluth, Minnesota, Lancair International of Bend, Oregon, and Rans of Hays, Kansas.
Cirrus, which has been in the development game longer than the others, is in the final stages of certificating its four-place SR20. About a year late, the company expects its type certificate by the fourth quarter, with deliveries from the Duluth plant due to start before year's end.
Lancair, in a way the last to join this party of three, expects an unrestricted type certificate for its larger, faster, more powerful Columbia 300 by late summer. Only a few months or a couple of years behind schedule, depending on where you start the clock, the first two or three aircraft should be delivered by year's end.
Rans, meanwhile, came to the fray shortly after Cirrus and hopes to finish certificating its bargain priced S-7C Courier sport category aircraft later this year. The programme is more than a year behind schedule (although the company never formally set a due date), and the physical plant required to produce the baby bush-plane has been in place for some time.
The rigours each company has faced have varied with its roots, its history and product background. As much as McDonnell Douglas differed from Maule, Cirrus, Lancair and Rans differ from their established general aviation counterparts - and from each other.
Rans, for example, started life more than 20 years ago as a maker of custom recumbent bicycles, then wind racers. The company started catering to the low and slow ultralight flyer population in the early 1980s with its Coyote, originally designed as an ultralight using aluminum tubing and cloth covering.
Since then, Rans' product line has grown into a wide array of ultralights and light experimental aircraft with construction that more closely resembles the steel-tube-and-cloth technology of the 1930s. Rans usually leads its sector of the industry in annual unit sales of between 400 and 500 kits, about half of which go overseas.
FAST AND HIGH
Lancair's focus is at the opposite end of the kitplane price and performance spectrum, with products that cater to the go-high, go-fast set, customers who helped make the company a leader in the high performance kitplane arena for nearly 25 years.
Since winning awards for the 1984 Lancair 200, the company has brought to market several all-composite, retractable gear kitplanes, including the two-place Lancair 320 and 360, the four-place Lancair IV and its pressurised version, the IV-P.
Cirrus is the descendant of a kitplane company that marketed one design briefly in the late 1980s, the cabin-class VK30. Today's company never produced a kit-built aircraft, however, and, instead, steered straight toward producing a certificated product, one that fits into the middle of the light aircraft performance and price ranges.
Despite their differences, all three companies are jumping into building factory-produced aircraft with all three wheels - and all with products true to their respective roots.
With its fixed tricycle gear, four seats, conventional Teledyne Continental engine and constant-speed prop, Cirrus' SR20 sounds like scores of other piston singles. The aircraft, however, departs from tradition more than any light aircraft programme in recent memory, because of the long view taken by the Klapmeier brothers, Alan and Dale, who started the company.
First, there is the aircraft's carbonfibre composite construction, a trait shared by the Columbia 300. The 160kt (300km/h) SR20 sports a full-colour graphic cockpit display able to show engine, air data and navigation information. Cirrus is the first company to head in this direction, but Lancair's design also boasts the potential for high-technology displays. Then there are the dual side-mounted control sticks, instead of the usual centre sticks or yokes, which free panel and floor space in the SR20, as they do in the Columbia.
Another Cirrus first is its decision to equip the SR20 as standard with a US Federal Aviation Administration-approved integral emergency recovery parachute system, now in final tests. The SR20 has been successfully "saved" at least once during tests of its 27kg (60lb) emergency parachute, a product of Ballistic Recovery Systems (BRS), based in St Paul, Minnesota.
BRS is best known among its thousands of satisfied ultralight-flying and hang-gliding customers as a pioneer in emergency parachute systems for those classes of aircraft. The company is not new to the FAA certification process. BRS was the first - and so far, the only - to certificate an all-aircraft recovery parachute system when, in 1992, the FAA awarded a supplemental type certificate approving the company's General Aviation Recovery Device for use in Cessna's 150 and 152 trainers. The 150/152 systems have not been stellar sellers for BRS - only a handful have been sold and installed, beyond the testbed aircraft.
MONEY WELL SPENT
The $1 million BRS invested in certification was not wasted, however. It laid the foundation for the work BRS has performed in partnership with Cirrus, which announced its parachute plans at the outset of the development programme more than four years ago.
Delays in the Cirrus' development have been relatively benign. The SR20 programme suffered its worst setback last year when the company revised the wing design to improve handling after test flights revealed some shortcomings with the original wing. Problems that surfaced in the integration of the BRS parachute system also contributed to delays.
Construction of the new factory in Duluth has gone well, as has tooling up for production, Cirrus says. In early June, the company flew the second production-conforming prototype for the first time. This is the test aircraft for the final instrument panel configuration and consumer-grade interior. The aircraft will serve as the function, reliability and performance verification article when the FAA takes over certification flight testing in the coming weeks.
Cirrus has orders and commitments well into three figures and, at about $155,000 for an aircraft equipped for instrument flight rules (IFR), getting new SR20s into owners' hands should only help stimulate future sales.
The SR20 sets new performance standards for its class. For example, cruising at 160kt on about 42 litre/h (11USgal/h), the SR20 boasts a speed on par with the Raytheon's much more expensive Beech Bonanza at a price only slightly higher than that of Cessna's 120kt 172R - and below the price of a 182S. The SR20 will have about the same useful load as a 182S, about 545kg, with about the same cabin space.
Cirrus says flight testing is back on track after delays, and new SR20s should be coming off the line by the fourth quarter of 1998.
Lancair founder Lance Neibauer has always coveted a niche position and the Columbia 300, now expected to be certificated this summer, preserves that philosophy. The aircraft evolved out of an earlier design created to test the certificated-aeroplane market, the Lancair Super ES.
The ES had much in common with the Lancair designs that came before. In fact, the Super ES - a kitplane once considered for certification - combined the Lancair IV's fuselage, and a modified IV wing, with a (155kW) 210hp Teledyne Continental IO-360-ES engine - the same powerplant used on the SR20. The fixed-gear ES cruised at about 170kt.
Neibauer has steadfastly been reluctant to set times and dates for completion of the Columbia 300 certification programme - at one time he hesitated to even acknowledge the company's commitment to the production-aircraft market - partly because of the complexity of winning both aircraft and production type certificates, and partly because he did not want to commit until satisfied that Lancair had it right.
First shown in 1993 as a kitplane, the ES was also flown to gather data and assess market reaction as Lancair studied whether - and how - to enter the factory-aircraft market. Among the findings was the fact that, at the projected costs of producing the ES as a certificated aircraft, Lancair could beef it up and add power and payload, without pushing prices out of sight - while making the Columbia 300 fit a niche now filled mostly by Mooneys and Bonanzas.
The result is a 225kW aircraft capable of taking off with seats and tanks full and of cruising above 190kt over distances of nearly 1,800km (1,000nm). Lancair picked the Continental IO-555-N1B engine and a 2m-diameter Hartzell three-blade propeller to power the Columbia. At $189,000, equipped for visual flight rules (VFR), and about $230,000 for full IFR, Lancair's new entrant has attracted $5,000 non-refundable deposits from more than 200 buyers.
FULL COLOUR
The full-IFR treatment includes an AvroTec 265mm, full-colour display that will use software from Avidyne to display VFR and IFR charts, plus lightning strike data from BFGoodrich's WX-500 Stormscope.
In April, Lancair moved into its new factory in Bend, Oregon, while flight testing continues to expand the flight envelope of the prototype beyond that demonstrated to win a conditional FAA type certificate in August 1997.
In May, the company confirmed that the latest delay was caused by its decision to certify the Columbia as spin proof, which has necessitated additional flight tests. The company now expects to deliver the first two or three aircraft by year end, about 55 in 1999, and up to 150 a year thereafter.
Lancair is confident of its projected numbers. The Columbia 300 seems well poised to take its share of the market thanks to prices that are about half those of a comparable performing, similarly equipped Mooney or Bonanza.
While Cirrus and Lancair have pursued the composite construction route that produced kitplanes offering more performance for the price of traditional metal airframe designs, the appeal of the simple tube and fabric aircraft never really disappeared. Neither has the market for relatively slow, simple utility aircraft.
It is a market segment Rans already served to a degree, supplying kits for several two-seat designs that span the spectrum from the traditional tandem-seat bushplane, to a more radical high-performance machine with a forward-mounted cockpit and a powerful pusher engine driving a small parasol wing to speeds of 100kt.
Company president Randy Schlitter found his S-7 Courier kitplane had the widest appeal and best potential for breaking into the ready-built aircraft market.
Remarkably modern in some ways, the Courier is a basic baby bushplane, with tandem seating, sturdy tricyle landing gear with steerable tailwheel, and a steel-tube fuselage with an aluminum-frame wing, covered in doped, painted aircraft fabric.
Modern features include the use of synthetic cloth - as opposed to cotton - with an expected life span of about 20 years, thanks in part to the modern synthetic finishes - fabric sealer, paint, and new ultraviolet-blocking clear finishes.
In place of the small, four-cylinder Continental, Franklin or Textron Lycoming engines used for years on Piper Cubs, Aeroncas and Taylorcraft, the S-7C uses a Bombardier Rotax 912, a four-cylinder, four-stroke powerplant that produces 60kW at about 6,000RPM. The 912 sports liquid-cooled cylinder heads, air-cooled cylinders, dual electronic ignition and an integral-flywheel alternator controlled by a solid-state regulator. With a gross weight of 545kg, the S-7C can carry nearly its empty weight in useful load and still cover respectable ground at 100kt thanks to the 912's 13-14 litre/h fuel consumption, yields a range of 550km-plus reserves on a 57 litre tank. Fuel does not take up much of the Courier's useful load.
While the slowest of the three aircraft en route to certification, the Courier also demands the least in the way of pilot sophistication and budget. Rans' target price has been in the vicinity of $50,000-$55,000 since the company acknowledged its plans nearly four years ago.
PRICE TARGET
Rans hopes to achieve that target with a basic VFR package of instruments and a self-contained global positioning system/communications radio in the panel.
More of a challenge than adapting to the demands of production certification have been those of making the Courier's handling and flight characteristics compliant with USFAR Part 23 light aircraft certification rules, something new to all three players. Require-ments for stall recovery, stick-pressure gradients, or flight stability do not apply in the world of experimental aviation.
Rans has removed some of the tricky traits from the kitplane version to meet the rules with the S-7C - hence the C (for certificated) suffix. Much of the improvements to the S-7C have been adapted to the kitplane version.
The S-7C Courier has been in its final configuration for some time, accumulating flight experience while other projects compete for time and attention from Schlitter. Rans has been deeply involved in the parallel development of its highest performing kitplane yet, the two-place, 160kt S-16 Shekari, while also working to establish a certificated production line separate from the kitplane fabrication areas.
Source: Flight International
