MauleSkinner
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2005
- Posts
- 638
avbug said:When your one alternator fails, what do you do? When your one vacum source fails, what do you do? When your one attitude indicator goes TI, what do you do? Go back to flying needle, ball, and airspeed in your Maule? That's the plan? What about in the Cirrus? When faced with ice, performance decreasing conditions, an engine failure, embedded weather, what do you do? Systems redundancy is a bigger issue with single engine piston powered light aircraft than most other aircraft. Particularly with respect to the one powerplant which will eventually fail (again, not if, but when).
Single engine IMC is done all the time, but then again, so is running the bulls at Pamplona. Doesn't make it smart.
It appears that you and I read something you wrote differently...I read
as "flying single-engine piston driven airplanes in instrument conditions is foolish." The parenthetical information, to me, doesn't modify the original statement, it just adds "an additional level of foolishness".Flying single engine piston driven airplanes ... or flying them in instrument conditions (especially with one instrument power source, one powerplant, one electrical source, no backup instruments, etc) is foolish to begin with...forget the ice.
I may be wrong, but my understanding of the Cirrus is that it has some kind of back up electrical source (which includes instrument power) and backup instruments. Granted, the lack of redundancy in powerplant is still an issue in the Cirrus, but that lack of redundancy exists whether VFR, IFR, day, night, whatever. I'm not reading wht you said as "single-engine airplanes are dangerous, period.", but limited to IMC or terrain issues.Single engine piston IMC without adequate redundancy is foolishness. Period.
Apparently your intent was something different.
David