Spirit SE-1 - Released in 2025

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KokoTheTalkingApe@reddit

Beautiful. But THREE cubic feet of storage? Not enough for a set of golf clubs.

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DeerSimilar3688@reddit

And double the horsepower! That's what gets me. I know rotax is expensive. But a 912ULS would be perfect for this!

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Affectionate_Cronut@reddit

Very nice. I do wish the wheel pants were a bit more elegant in design, and it looks like that tailwheel was jury-rigged late in the prototyping process to help tame squirrely ground handling.

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IQueryVisiC@reddit

Yeah, they don’t seem to have an airfoil.

As a kid I found inverted gull wings ugly, but now I want smaller wheel pants. Or are they filled with suspension?

I was thinking about the torque from the propeller. Could I have slats close to the fuselage to catch it? And slats on a tricycle landing gear and the vertical tail. And flaps.

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They flew 4 planes from Grand Junction, CO to OSHKOSH and used 88 gallons of fuel (Mogas or 100LL). 2 gallons/hour. They make the engine which is an inverted twin-V. The wings fold so you can put it in your garage. I wish I could get one.

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LordLederhosen@reddit (OP)

I have a total crush on that little place, and a nerd crush on Spirit Engineering, the company behind it, lol.

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Mission-Driver1614@reddit

Agreed. At least four times a week I pull up a map and flight plan how to fly one of those back to Atlanta. What fun that would be…

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RockstarQuaff@reddit

Doesn't seem possible, the price I mean.

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0235@reddit

I am sure in an interview they said that price was for a bare-bones model, e.g. no landing / taxi / wing lights, no ADSB or transponder. I don't Think i have seen many images of the cockpit, and those i have seen are are very basic. They are also creating and supplying their own engine, which has a lot of cost saving features.

It is a shame they had a bad landing at OSHKOSH when displaying it :(

I think these all metal aircraft designs are going to start becoming more and more common. The Aeromarine Merlin is also a "cheap" LSA and Ultralight version which is all metal (and they are doing their own engine). You can build some very strong and cheap aircraft that are "easy" to manufacture, vs ones that are bolted / welded poles or wood with a fabric wrapping.

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XGC75@reddit

What happened on landing?

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Antipfhany@reddit

He was high and hot; ran out of runway but did not go around!!

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0235@reddit

They came in fast, tapped the brakes a bit hard and the tail went up and it either had, or nearly had, a propeller strike.

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Federal_Sock_N9TEA@reddit

Its the engine.

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Jacobs4525@reddit

Makes sense when you consider how barebones the plane is. Making their own engine probably saves a lot of money, the construction is very simple, and even fully optioned, it looks like the avionics are a basic transponder, airspeed+altimeter, and some kind of a basic AHRS that uses an iPad as a display.

Think about it this way: if Vashon can make a basic 2-seat aluminum plane with modern avionics and an off-the-shelf engine for $160k, it makes sense that a much smaller 1-seat plane with hardly any avionics to speak of and an in-house designed engine that they don’t have to pay any margin on could be about half that when optioned.

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reddituserperson1122@reddit

I would think making your own engine would drive the price way up.

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0235@reddit

You would think, but companies that make aircraft engines are already very small. There are "a lot" of off the shelf engines that Part 103 ultralights have benefited from, but anything with more horsepower than that, you have suppliers with much lower production runs. They also have development costs (as they are just selling engines).

And a lot of the time, the work can be done in converting existing engines to be aircraft capable. Aircraft engine design has stagnated for decades, and as new technology comes along, the current motto seems to be "bolt more stuff to the existing engine"

They seem to be making it work. $70,000 for this, a ready to go certified factory built aircraft is nuts, when an Aeromarine merlin (which you have to build yourself, with an assistance program) is anywhere from $34K to $54K.... I can't quite find an answer on their website. Aeromarine are also making their own engine.

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reddituserperson1122@reddit

Fascinating. Weird and fascinating.

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0235@reddit

yep, it really is weird. I have seen companies who produce aircraft engines from quite modern Honda engines. But Honda won't sell them these engines to modify, so they buy written off cars for super cheap, and take the engine out of them. Then spend a good $30K on just upgrading the engines to be airworthy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwVCrsljlL0

I think Toyota were going to start making aero engines in the 90's they got 95% of the way there. And then the board of executives said they just could get past that final hurdle. They would be liable if there were any accidents related to the engine, and while they were ready to go with this "new" engine, they didn't launch it. So Rotax, Lycoming, and Continental hold the lionshare of GA aviation engines, Rotax also dabble in smaller engines. While everyone else is stuck doing VW engine conversions.

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Jacobs4525@reddit

I think Toyota were going to start making aero engines in the 90's they got 95% of the way there. And then the board of executives said they just could get past that final hurdle. They would be liable if there were any accidents related to the engine, and while they were ready to go with this "new" engine, they didn't launch it.

As cool as a Toyota UZ V8 in a plane would be, it probably was the right business decision not to make it. Continental and Lycoming dominate the market, yet the number of new certified engines they each sell in a year is in the low four digits (maybe even high three digits some years). On top of this, there is the occasional multi-million dollar liability payout. Toyota did the math and saw that it was not worth entering a very low-volume, low-margin market that exposed them to enormous liability.

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0235@reddit

Exactly. I fully understand why Toyota did it, and really it helps explain why it half makes sense for aircraft manufacturers to go their own with their own engines. Rotax really have been pushing hard to get their toe in the pie, and doing well.

Jabiru make and export their own engines, And the ultralight markets are getting "flooded" with all sorts of new engines. Even "badlands" aircraft are making their own single cylinder ultralight engine, and people are starting to discover that a lot of the engines that drones use are suitable for part 103 aircraft.... even if a little expensive.

Still. To develop and build an entire engine alongside their aircraft is impressive. I don't want to diminish the high levels of skill you need to design and build an aircraft, but so much can be achieved with sheet aluminium, steel tubes and L sections, rivets, GRP formed over wooden moulds. So much can be off the shelf. An entire engine though. That is some serious work for those castings and finishing work.

My hat really goes off to them to produce all of that for $70K out the door, with folding wings.

Interesting to see what Spirit's engine rebuild and service schemes are like.

Aviation in the USA has it so good. Extra Jealous of that element of life in the USA.

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reddituserperson1122@reddit

It’s such an impressive feat to pull it off for so little money. I wonder why their insurers are more chill than Toyota’s.

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Jacobs4525@reddit

It could, or it could not. A few companies in the experimental space make engines with what are essentially off-the-shelf parts. Aerovee engines (owned by Sonex IIRC) are basically just a modified version of the old VW beetle flat 4, and Verner uses cylinder heads and valves from Honda generators, for example.

I don’t know exactly where they got their V-twin design, but I would be surprised if it doesn’t have some degree of interchangeability with some other engine. Of course, certifying it is still expensive, but that’s a fixed cost that can be spread over many engines if sufficient volume is achieved, and at a certain point the fixed cost of certifying the engine once becomes less than the margin paid on an engine from a different company per-plane.

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Traditional_Drama_91@reddit

Yeah I’m curious about that too, especially considering how much of a hassle it is to get an engine type certified, maybe the plan on sell the motors separately

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