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A Rodeo Drive week

togaflyer

Well Known Member
So I spent a week at Sun and Fun. In that week was the engine I bought, the Garmin avionics Im ordering, the prop, well, we all know what Im talking about. Serious money out. I thought, am I crazy to spend this kind of money on an experimental airplane. During the show I stopped and looked at the Cirrus G3. 315 HP twin turbo, 3600 lbs max gross ramp weight. Very nice. It had a 1000 pound useful load, humm, the RV-10 has more useful. The salesman was telling me he was doing 172 kts at 16 thousand feet, only burning 17 gph, and at 83 percent. Hummm the -10 is in the 160s at 65 percent burning 11.5 or so. The Cirrus, according to the salesman, operating cost are around 185 dollars a hour. The -10, maybe half that. The Cirrus did have the ballistic parachute for that one in a million mayday moment, but that equipment requires service every ten years at 17 thousand dollars. Oh, and the price tag, 880 thousand dollars. And we are not talking Canadian dollars. The Cessna version was a little less at 780 thousand. So after years of blood, sweat, and agrivation, and maybe a total investment of around 150-180 thousand, you have a plane that closely meets the performance specs of those planes, which cost over four times that of a Vans RV10, and cost twice as much to operate. So I guess Im not crazy after all!
 
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Not crazy, smart.

I had this discussion a short time ago with my hangar mate, a serious aviator who now flies a beautiful Cirrus G3 Turbo for a client (He also built and flies an RV-8, so he knows):

Him: Hey, your RV-10 is a lot like this Cirrus.
Me: Uh, yeah I guess it is.

Silence. I just could NOT resist.

Me: Except mine is a lot lighter.
Him: Right.
Me: And mine carries more.
Him: True.
Me: And mine burns a lot less fuel.
Him: Yep.
Me: And mine lands shorter and takes off shorter.
Him: I'll give you that.
Me: And mine is a lot cheaper to maintain.
Him: You're telling me.
Me: Mine has a longer range.
Him: By a lot.
Me: Mine was a lot cheaper to aquire.
Him: That's for sure.
Me: But other than that, they are a lot alike (snicker, snicker).

Another silence. Me feeling bad...

Me: But they both cruise about the same speed and have about the same instrument capability and they DO look a lot alike. And I DID have to build mine. And yours does have that nifty parachute and anti-ice.

There, I felt a little better :)

Slight corrections to your numbers. A normally equipped RV-10 cruises at 165-170 TAS on 10.5 gph (or less!)
 
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