Sunday, September 28, 2008

ECLIPSE AVIATION DISCLOSES DETAILS OF RUSSIAN PLANT


Albuquerque, New Mexico - September 28, 2008 – Last week Eclipse Aviation announced financing by the Russian State Bank to build a factory in Ulyanovsk, Russia to assemble the Eclipse 500 Jet. CEO Roel Pieper said, “Today we are pleased to provide details on our new and exciting Russian venture.”

The plant manager for this state-of-the-art facility is newly-hired Vladimir Kochoff, a retired Russian Navy Admiral. “There has been some little confusion about the relationship between Albuquerque and Ulyanovsk and I would like to mostly clarify this here, now today,” said Kochoff.

“Eclipse has described how the components of the jet will be packaged in a ‘kit’ and sent to Russia for final assembly. Our crack team of Russian specialists travelled to remote Northern New Mexico to somewhat finalize the details. They found that the reusable shipping container and shipping costs to transfer the kit halfway around the world were very expensive.” stated Kochoff.

“We eliminate those costs by spending a few more hours, completing the aircraft and we fly the ‘kit’ to Russia,” he continued. “The sky will finally be darkened by the Eclipse. If you step outside your house in Bangor, Maine at six o’clock every evening, you will see two or three contrails – those are Eklipse-Kits on their way to the homeland.”

“At the Ulyanovsk factory is where the real work begins,” said Admiral Kochoff. “Russians read news that aircraft had problem with fasteners so we took action. First the little plane does not look very Russian with too many flush rivets so we drill all those out and replace them with button head rivets. Now it look beautiful. Also no global airplane should have English fasteners so we replace with metric screws and bolts. We pick the closest size and you just have to turn the screwdriver or wrench harder.”

“We also read about many, many problems with Avio avionics. This does not surprise us if you would know the meaning of the word ‘avio’ in the Russian language. We replace all of this with tried and proven Russian electronics. This also improves the operation in known icing in cold Russian winter as the vacuum tubes provide useful heat.”

Kochoff continued, “We tinkered with the engine controls to expand the range for fuel usage for economical operation. Since trans-fats have been banned in many United States cities we see Eclipse operating costs coming way down, but it also is difficult to find good French fries in States. I set the FADEC myself and, if it is a liquid composed mostly of carbon and hydrogen we can go.”

“Finally, Russian government has asked us to add hard points under the wing so external stores can be carried. They are sending some Eclipse jets to Georgia but we do not know why.” concluded Kochoff.


As some of you will no doubt have realized, Black Tulip has been writing again. I really like the bit about 'vacuum tubes', as I've done quite a lot of work myself with 'valves' and can attest the heating benefits they bring to a cold workshop.

Can I also thank you all for your kind words over the past week. My next post will now benefit from a lighter touch, as my mood this week was a bit dark....

Shane

233 comments:

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Baron95 said...

Fred said ... in market economy the "floor price " is equal to Zero !!


Hardly so. floor prices can be negative. What is the floor price to buy a "superfund" contaminated site? Or the floor price to buy a decomissioned nuclear power plant or to buy a worn out AA MD-80 in need for a D-check that is AOG in MEX? For some of those you have to actually pay people to take it out of your hands.

On most cases, in a functioning market that is reasobly liquid there is a well established flloor prices for an item.

My guess is that the floor price for the DJ fleet is somewhere around $500K at this time.

My reasoning? That is what people pay for older barelly airworth eastern block "war" planes, so that they can fly a jet.

Turboprop_pilot said...

I just carefully read the OIG report excerpted by AIN (Thanks, Dave). The level of bad dealing, dishonesty and illegal behavior by FAA management is astounding. It reads like the bad behavior that led to the appointment of a special prosecutor for the Gonzales Attorney General office- Gad’s own US attorney figured prominently in that.


From AIN: "The OIG accused the FAA of being excessively lenient with Eclipse because the FAA had identified the EA-500 as a top priority for FAA management. “This finding raises the concern that the FAA may have been more intent on promoting aviation and new technology than it was with its safety oversight mandate.”

According to the OIG, FAA Rotorcraft Directorate manager David Downey was removed from his job “apparently because [he] refused to sign off on the PC because he believed Eclipse had not met the requirements. In a seven-page letter of reprimand sent to Mr. Downey, FAA officials stated that he failed to meet expectations associated with meeting its customer service initiatives such as ‘building relationships with our customers to achieve operational results.’ In fact, FAA Headquarters officials required that Mr. Downey undergo a peer appraisal, and directed that the [COO] of Eclipse would be one of the individuals appraising his performance in certifying the EA-500.” This appeared to be an “obvious conflict of interest position,” the OIG said, “for an FAA manager charged with evaluating the safety of a new aircraft type.” "

We are now a banana republic

Turboprop_pilot

eclipso said...

On Hickey:
.... further stated that we were here to ‘save a company’ and then, looking directly at the then Rotorcraft Directorate manager, said he ‘shouldn’t have to come to Albuquerque to do his job.’”


What an arrogant POS. Everyone on this blog should write to Mr Oberstar and DEMAND Hickey and Owsley be relieved immediately! It frightens me to be in the skies with these inept A$$holes in their positions.

Peg should take up tap dancing. Having spent time around her, she sure turned out to be a piece of work. I remember when she didn't look quite so haggard. Perhaps her cost in all this will be her "best years" down the tubes.

http://wwwc.house.gov/oberstar/zipauth.htm

WhyTech said...

"does Alabama count?"

You bet it counts! The South shall rise again!

Black Tulip said...

I second that motion.

The Earth is a Southern Planet.

julius said...

turboprop_pilot,


AIN 01 okt 2008 FAA has no authority to auction


acting admin Sturgell is going to become a real problem...
Washington's air is too hot for him, what about Camp Ohio in the real south?

Shane Price said...

The South shall rise again

And the best history of the 'war between the states' was written by Shelby Foote. He called it "The Civil War: A Narrative."

I call it the best history written on any 'civil' war.

But that's only my opinion. Why not read it, and decide for yourself. A slight advance warning, for those of you with limited patience.

It's usually in three volumes, and typically just short of 4,000 pages.

I re read it once a year, just to remind myself what really good English is.

Shane
PS. The South never really 'fell', she merely rested awhile.

Dave said...

PS. The South never really 'fell', she merely rested awhile.

Pinin' for the fjords?

Dave said...

I noticed that Eclipse's VP of Supply Chain Bill Bonder is no longer is apparently no longer there. Is this new?

Shane Price said...

Dave,

No. I was 'informed' of Bill's departure a few weeks ago, but with only one source did not put it up here at the time.

I've 'fired' people before and been wrong, hence my reluctance to repeat the mistake.

Can't say I blame the poor chap. Would you want to come into work every day and have suppliers demand money that you knew the company didn't have?

Shane

gadfly said...

You guys need a break, and since “some” have trouble with the “Queen’s English”, I’ll share with you the story of the “Bacon Tree”:

Back in the wild west (of the United States), a westbound wagon train was lost and very low on food. No other people had been seen for days.

Unexpectedly, they saw an old Jewish man sitting beneath a tree. The leader rushed up to him and said, "We're lost. Is there someplace ahead where we can get food?"

"Vell," the old Jewish man said, "I vould definitely NOT go over dat hill. Somevun told me you'll run into a big bacon tree."

"A bacon tree!!!!?" asked the wagon train leader.

"Yah, yah ah bacon tree. Trust me. For nutting vud I lie."

The leader goes back and tells his people what the Jewish man had told him.

"So why did he say not to go there?" some pioneers asked. "Oh, you know the Jewish folks - they don't eat bacon."

So the wagon train goes up the hill and down the other side.

About an hour later the leader of the wagon train returns to where the old Jewish man is sitting and enjoying his drink. He was disheveled and wounded.

The near-dead man starts shouting, "You fool! You sent us to our deaths! We followed your instructions, but there was no bacon tree . . . ‘just hundreds of Indians. They killed everyone but me."

The Jewish man holds up his hand and says, "Oy, vait a minute, vait a minute." He gets out an English-Yiddish dictionary and begins thumbing through it. "Oh mine Gott, I made myself ah big mistake. It vuz not a bacon tree. I mant to say it vuz a ham bush!"

gadfly

(‘Guilty of plagiarism, as charged!)

Turboprop_pilot said...

When looking at Julius link to AIN, the following 3 articles were listed on the same page:

Boca Raton, Fla.-based DayJet–the per-seat, on-demand charter operator of the Eclipse 500– ceased operations and let go most of its approximately 150 employees on September 19,

Phenom 100s

JetBird is due to take delivery of the first Phenom 100 in April- a VLJ charter fleet in Europe

British air-taxi operator start-up FlairJet last month announced plans to start operations next May with a pair of Embraer Phenom 100s. It will lease the very light jets from an undisclosed Embraer customer in Europe that has 10 Phenom 100s on order.

So, the biggest Eclipse operator declares bankruptcy and slams Eclipse and two more companies start VLJ charter operations with Phenom 100s (and in Europe too). Good luck to Eclipse...


Turboprop_pilot

Niner Zulu said...

I wouldn't pay $500,000 for one of Dayjet's aircraft. I wouldn't even pay $100,000, because I agree with Baron95: EAC is a contaminated "superfund" site, and jumping into bed with EAC means having to deal with a whole lot of issues that I have neither the time nor inclination to deal with.

Add the uncertainty of whether EAC will survive as a company and if your E500 will become a boat anchor, and the fun meter starts heading towards zero.

Nope. Don't need it. At any price.

A whole lot of downside, and relatively little upside. Before I'd buy an Eclipse I'd go for an older fuel-hog Citation I SP - at least it's a known quantity.

And to think, just 2 years ago at this time I was almost ready to plonk down a deposit. Thank God for unanswered prayers!

Delbert Grady said...

Dave Said...."I noticed that Eclipse's VP of Supply Chain Bill Bonder is no longer is apparently no longer there. Is this new?"

Come on Dave, you're slipping. Bill Bonder's last day at Eclipse was June 12th. What took you so long? ;)

Baron95 said...

Niner Zulu said...
EAC is a contaminated "superfund" site,


At least one of the "contaminants" - Füher Vern Raburn - has been removed ;)

As to cealing up Generalissimo Pieper - well, that is another story ;)

fred said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
fred said...

baron :

# Hardly so. floor prices can be negative. #

yes , but then who would be .... (insert yourself word like stupid ,nuts , lunatic enough ,etc..) to buy ?

never heard the sentence " no deal is better than bad deal "

you can have a good example with the bizz-bank "Bears" :
it got bankrupt with much too many bad liabilities ...
Got bought by JPMorgan , BECAUSE the feds were handing the $ to buy it ...
(otherwise ? the - would have been paid by tax-payers , which is exactly what did happen ,the feds just gave it a respectable upfront !)

it is a good example of this here problem :
even if JPM bought for next to nothing , with so much bad assets and unknown ,at the time, implications , without the feds-funds the deal was a no-go !

the same with EA500 :

the Commercial value is 0
(because at the time being no one can say if it will end-up as a flying jet or a boat-anchor ...)

the residual value can be negative !
if no one want to buy the parked EA500 , DJ is dissolved as a firm , debts and unpaid bills are supposed to be paid by what is left-over , in that case (if no one buys) the "assets" become themselves a negative value ( as you've written well :" someone would be paid to do "chop-chop in desert")

the two are very compatible :

the COMMERCIAL value can be 0 and the residual value can be negative at the same time ...!

what is the difference :

Commercial Value is paid by buyers

residual value is often paid by tax-payers ...

FreedomsJamtarts said...

Eclipse's EA500 got AD'd again on Monday.

2008-19-01

FreedomsJamtarts said...

So S/N 1 thru 189 are all limited to day VFR until the probes are tested. How practical.

I wonder how the operators of N registered EA500's in Europe are getting to an Eclipse service center to do this maintenance test, to avoid losing their warranty?

fred said...

freedom :

don't worry ...
they don't !

but as far as i know , it is not really a concern in Europe as for the numbers around ...

fred said...

freedom :

do you have any data on how many are own in Europe ( by something else than the empty shell called Etirc) ?

thanks in advance ...

FreedomsJamtarts said...

Tough question.

Someone here posted the Flight Aware track summary of the the registration which had headed of across the ditch.

Airliners.net has records of 8 eclipse in Europe, of which two (N505EA and N514 EA) are Demonstrators aren't they?

The others are:
N545MA
N36FD
N100VA
N502TS
N27052
N500UK

Considering how active the european Plane spotting community is, either the European based Eclipses are not flying much, or they are very good at avoiding the plane spotters.

Given that the CIA was busted by the plane spotters, I would put my bet on the former.

fred said...

THANKS a lot !!

6 ? that seems to be quite a lot for me (giving the fact that Cert. flight conditions)

me too (if they are really owned by individuals ) i really wonder what they are supposed to do ...

i am tempted to think that officials in E.U. are avoiding them like a plague ...
(not to cause a precedent !)

anyway , if it is individuals owners (and not some "clever" ones trying to avoid anything ...) they must have "Cojones" real big !!

no maintenance facility in the whole of E.U. would push me off like a toothless baboushka trying to kiss me ...

julius said...

Freedom...

Eclipse's EA500 got AD'd again on
Monday.


that is just the old one becomming effective - a gift of Mr. Hickey to the FPJ harddies.

Mr. Hickey (FAA) just "supported" his customer EAC, in certifying this pitot system...(look at the paper of the hearing and the ADs!).

That's just another reason not to buy the DayJet junk.

BTW: Who pays Dayjets parking fees (if there are any fees)?

Julius
P.S: Up to now there is no experience with the pitot system in know ice condtions. Perhaps it's better to advance retrofit of the FIKI-addons to March/April 2009...

FreedomsJamtarts said...

As with any N registered private A/C in Europe (and there are probably thousands of them), you just need an A&P to sign off the maintenance and and IA to sign of the annual.

What is legal is not necessarily good maintenance. Having your A&P troubleshoot the multiple related failures which an AVIO system seems capable of producing sounds like a recipe for a frustratingly long AOG.

I would imagine that Eclipse is just as flexible with its requirement to have maintenance performed only by service centers, as they were about requiring real deposits.

As for European authorities avoiding the Eclipse, I would guess it is not actually that easy for them to ever encounter one. The plane spotters stand for hours at the end of runways trying to photograph unusual A/C, and have only produced a handful of pictures.

But you are probably correct. The state of registry is the USA. So the european NAA's are probably happy to see these as SEP (someone elses problem).

The FAA has to fufill their ICAO oversight obligations. If one of these things causes an accident or significant incident in Europe, I could imagine the EU commission getting stuck into the lack of oversight. This is an issue which has been rumbling under the surface for years, as A/C owners have been registering their A/C to US trusts, to avoid european regulatory requirements.

fred said...

#as A/C owners have been registering their A/C to US trusts, to avoid european regulatory requirements.#

i have heard that officials in this side wants to get ride of this "particularity" ...

a bit the same than with cars , a certain period were one can be allowed (tolerate NOT legal) and at the end of period get out , change and comply or face the regulations ...

Julius , guten tag !

what do you mean by "no experience" i thought the Fpj was Fiki Cert. (at least in USA) ???

FreedomsJamtarts said...

Have Eclipse actually completed (TM eclipse) a Partial Eclipse with GARVIONfG or FIKI yet?

fred said...

ooouuupppss !

i take this
#Have Eclipse actually completed (TM eclipse) a Partial Eclipse with GARVIONfG or FIKI yet?#

as an answer to the question about Fiki (i made a typo here , i put kiki before correcting , may be that the cert. they achieved ?? ...;-)) )


silly me , but i get a bit lost in all the versions , the ones which existed and has been sold , but not Fiki , the supposed to be Fiki but not sold or produced and the ones made and sold but supposed to have Fiki in a later month /year/century ...

Black Tulip said...

Caution: Tasteless Joke Ahead, Turn Back Now!

Sadly it appears that Steve Fossett has not been searching for additional funding for Eclipse Aviation for the last year. The search for the record-setting adventurer and aviator in now centered in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.

Baron95 said...

This AD is just making sure the existing Eclipse SBs are complied with - I'd imagine that the vast majority of the planes have had this done already.

But there is no question that the pitot/AOA system on this plane was not properly designed.

FreedomsJamtarts said...

Good point Baron95. Normally this would be the case. Since the most active portion of this fleet is now parked, getting a maintenance slot in the service centers should be easier.

fred said...

by the way , baron , i managed to be invited to the Paris car show on the day open for pros (much better since there isn't the limitations for public , you can really touch ,smell , and seat any car ...)

the California is real killer !

bit expensive (200.000€ +) but definitely a nice one ...

sorry for digressing !

Shane Price said...

New post up.

And Gadfly, thanks for that joke. I'm still laughing...

Shane

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