Performance per dollar or gph or lb MTOW, or frankly any measure you choose is simply no contest.
Except safety. All engineering is a trade off. Experimentals trade safety for ease of construction, low cost and performance. An excellent trade as long as everything goes according to plan.
Ever wonder why certification takes so long, costs so much and is generally so hard to achieve? Part of it is likely government bureaucracy and inefficiency, but much of it has to do with lots of flight testing and destructive testing to prove that the airplane will recover from any unusual attitude, not just in the hands of a skilled test pilot, but the hands of an average idiot pilot.
They are tested to show that they can be flown beyond their normal flight envelope and back without disaster. They must show they can survive an off field landing and give the occupants a real chance to walk away. Electrical, exhaust, hydraulics and fuel have to be proven as best as possible that they will not fail and cause a crisis.
With the certified plane, there is actually a standard and it's pretty high. Possibly too high, but that's another discussion.
Experimentals are not held to any standard and so, that's why they're experimentals and you are the test pilot. The company that sells you the kit, or plans will tell you it has been tested A-OK by their test pilots and fellow pilots will tell you that they have flown their plane for years with no problems, but that is not a standard.
Choose your experimental wisely. They are not all alike. This is partly why the Vans series of aircraft have been so incredibly popular. It is a type that has proven over time with thousands of real world test pilots that the type doesn't really have any bad habits, or nasty gotchas. Lancair, not so much.
The folks at Cirrus, Lancair/Columbia and Liberty found out the hard way how hard it is to meet the Federal safety standards for certified planes. In all those cases, the finished saleable product had little in common with their kit beginnings. A certified airplane, pretty much has to be designed from the ground up to be that.
I flew an Epic LT from WY to OR a few years ago consulting for a client, we had 5 adults, bags, full fuel, broke ground in a little over 1000 feet, and climbed straight to FL230 then hauled ass at almost 350 KTS. No comparison.
This is exactly the type of airplane that very well could really put a damper on the whole kit/home build industry. There was a time before E/AB and working with the EAA they created the category for the purpose of allowing ordinary people to educate themselves about aircraft construction, design and maintenance. It was never intended to be a means to skirt certification.
With more and more sophisticated designs with higher speeds and passenger capacity and the growing roster of professional builders there are raised eyebrows. As you said, this isn't the Stitts Playboy the feds had envisioned people building anymore. So speaking of the future, remember, the government giveth and the government can taketh away.
This post is by EAA member 683738 since 2001. I
like experimental airplanes. I also like critical analysis and independent thinking. The world is not a simple place with simple answers.
) The point is to try to save the wife, kids and people on the ground from the crappiest pilot in the world. It's about all the ways you can screw up and how well the screw ups can it be salvaged, or what's the best chance of survival.
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