FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1989
1989 - 0777.PDF
Mirage. The engine switch allegedly gives the aircraft a better performance than many piston-twins. Although it was a successful product for Piper, the standard Malibu suffered a number of in-flight engine fail ures. Piper asked owners to stop flying and supplied them and their passengers with first-class air tickets while the problem was resolved. The plan looked like costing $700,000 per month, and an airworthiness directive was later released on the engine. Millar denies that it was this that led Piper to replace the Malibu's Teledyne engine with a Lycoming. There have been other changes to the aircraft. The interior is new, and features leather upholstery and seats with stereo jacks, a drinks holder, and an ashtray. The redesigned flightdeck has a new control layout and lighting. As a result of the re-introductions and relaunches, Piper now has 14 models. Its piston-singles are the two-seat Super Cub and Cadet, the four-seat Warrior II, Archer II, Dakota, Arrow, and Turbo Arrow, and the six-seat Saratoga, Saratoga SP, and Malibu A turbine-powered Malibu is being tested but the industry veteran, a one-time Mooney president and latterly a Beech vice-president, defends his case. He asserts that small light aircraft are on a tech nological plateau because there is little in the way of genuinely new technology that can be economically used. The perfor mance gains are not worth the $20 million investment needed. In particular, he believes that composite materials are over rated, and that a lack of professionalism in parts of the industry has slowed advance. LoPresti chose the Swift for moderni sation because he views it as a good design that failed to endure in production through no fault of its own. Some 1,500 were built, and it has a cult following, examples changing hands for $50,000, he says. LoPresti has two of the 700 Swifts which still fly, and has fitted a Lycoming to one and a 420 s.h.p. Allison gas turbine to the other. Replacing the original Lycoming reciprocating engine, which delivered about one-quarter of the power, the Allison gives a speed of 345 m.p.h. and a 4,000ft/min climb at gross weight. "You feel like you are a military pilot," he says. Cutting drag Computational fluid dynamics by John Roncz, who worked on the round-the- world Voyager aircraft design, have cut drag by 37 per cent, defining a new rear fuselage shape and other refinements. Wing drag could be halved with the technique, but the expense of the change is not justifiable. It would give an extra 15 m.p.h. or a 10 per cent cut in fuel consumption with a. 180 s.h.p. Lycoming engine, he says. Other changes include a new bubble cock pit canopy, dual brakes, a retractable tail- wheel, air conditioning, extensive sound proofing, and dually-redundant elevator and aileron control circuits which have roller- bearing joints. The Swift, now renamed the Swiftfire, cannot be fitted with sidesticks because its cockpit is too narrow, but it will have a curved instrument panel. A military version with the Allison engine would have control sticks instead of the Swift's wheels. Corrugated wing skins "belong on garbage cans," so have been replaced by flush-riveted skins. The wing slots are covered over. Extra engine power comes from a "poor man's supercharger"—indexing of the propeller so that blades pass the Lycoming's intake as inlet valves open. This is worth one inch of manifold pressure, or five miles per hour of airspeed. Re-certification? It is unclear whether the Federal Aviation Administration will let LoPresti's modifications go as a supplement to the orig inal type certificate, or will call for recertification. Fatigue testing and modern gust requirements were not features of the 1946 rules, LoPresti says. He regards the Swiftfire as fully capable of competing in the light aircraft marketplace during the 1990s, and holds the belief that a modern but more expensive scratch design would offer benefits which a significant number of people would be prepared to pass up. He talks of a $90,000 price tag. The Swift Club owns the type certificate, and LoPresti is paying for use of the docu ment and supporting paperwork, plus the original tooling. A tricycle undercarriage model and a four-seater to take on the modern Mooneys are under consideration, LoPresti reveals. Piper stopped making Comanche piston- singles when tooling was damaged during a flood while production was being relo cated. LoPresti's new Comanche has a restyled fuselage with Lamborghini-style door and wraparound windshield without cornerposts. A test aircraft has an electronic checking unit and sidesticks. The elec tronic checker warns of incorrectly set controls by flashing messages in plain English on a small display. It could sell for $1,000. The sidesticks are not immovable force-sensors as on larger aircraft, but unconventionally-located control columns, made comfortable to use through careful control surface balancing. There are new tabs on the ailerons, and the original variable-incidence tailplane is replaced by a fixed tail and elevators which are not intrinsically heavy to move, LoPresti says. The sidesticks free the instrument panel from obstruction, and make it possible to fit a large pull-out map shelf along its bottom edge. Control runs are much simplified. Ideas for a completely new aircraft, a two-seat low-cost trainer, include mixed construction methods, with composite fuselage allied to metal (perhaps lithium alloy) wings and tail. The wings would be swept forward and might have flaps linked to the elevators for easier flightpath control. Visibility would be exceptional. LoPresti talks of a price tag of little more than half that of the Piper Warrior—a significant advance for the industry. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 25 March 1989 47
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
