That's cool
There's a lot more places to fly in small planes back east. Yes I took a nice day trip with my dad from Detroit to Mackinac Island. But more often than not flights were simply about "boring holes in the sky" as dad called it.
But my point is more along the lines that the C-172 is a design developed over 60 years ago and its still all we've got? I think that's criminal. Check the roles of the AOPA - the vast majority of its members are near retirement age. No young blood. Why?
The planes are too expensive and unexciting. The 172 burns too much gas and has too limited of a performance envelope. We can do better. The kit airplane people are doing great designs - but I don't have time to build my own plane. I want to buy one and I want one that takes into account the enormous hike in the price of gas. The 172 is emblematic of the inertia in GA today and its going to die out in another generation.
"I believe that many of the systems we build today in Java would be better built in Smalltalk and Gemstone."
-- Martin Fowler, JAOO 2003
That's cool
There's a lot more places to fly in small planes back east. Yes I took a nice day trip with my dad from Detroit to Mackinac Island. But more often than not flights were simply about "boring holes in the sky" as dad called it.
But my point is more along the lines that the C-172 is a design developed over 60 years ago and its still all we've got? I think that's criminal. Check the roles of the AOPA - the vast majority of its members are near retirement age. No young blood. Why?
The planes are too expensive and unexciting. The 172 burns too much gas and has too limited of a performance envelope. We can do better. The kit airplane people are doing great designs - but I don't have time to build my own plane. I want to buy one and I want one that takes into account the enormous hike in the price of gas. The 172 is emblematic of the inertia in GA today and its going to die out in another generation.
"I believe that many of the systems we build today in Java would be better built in Smalltalk and Gemstone."
-- Martin Fowler, JAOO 2003
