I'm curious if anyone has any specific knowledge about the Comp Air turbine airplanes, such as quality of the kits, performance, final build cost, etc.?

I am as curious as you about them. The numbers are certainly to my liking, but you sure see a lot of them for sale for a lot less than what they cost to build. It makes you wonder why so many get built and then are for sale only 100 hours later.

I had a serious itch for the Comp Air 10. I read everything that I could find on them. In the end I couldn't justify it; too much of a time commitment and too much of an appetite.

IIRC everything that I read spoke favorably about their flying qualities.

There is one near here that may for sale..rarely flown, low time, loaded

If any one is interested, I can put you in touch with the owners.. They also have a cheyeyane, a cj3 and a citation, so this one is a spare<grin>

Pm me if you have interest

Rick,isn't that what Jose just crashed in Everglade city???

It is but I didn't want to post the question in that thread.

Ha. We were just talking about this plane. What better place to ask?

I once asked a guy who's in the know about these.. his short answer was "they fly like they look"... need I say that was not a compliment

This seems to be a pretty common theme among the homebuilt crowd. I see the same thing over and over in the RV market. Builders include the all the latest stuff in the build and then apparently decide they can't afford the plane.

I think a lot of people bury their head in the sand when it comes to writing the checks.

Robert

There are builders and there are pilots.

Very few are both!

Exactly. The local EAA chapter is amusing. For the vast majority of the guys here the worst that could happen is they actually finish their plane because then they wouldn't have anything to do.

Put me in the category of Pilot. I don't want to build one but I just might be interested in buying one that was already flying.

Rick, did you ever get a chance to fly one of these?

I've got some time in a comp-air 6 that had an IO-720. Even with that engine the take performance was not that great. Aileron authority (e.g. roll rate) was poor and the thing had to be 3-pointed on landing (I didn't fly it in a x-wind, so can't speak to that). It had really good rudder authority, and was very docile on the ground.

It was a great flying airplane, in terms of going from point "A" to point "B". I do think that it being a taildragger will limit its mission capabilities (e.g. any significant x-wind will limit where you land).

Jim

Rick, did you ever get a chance to fly one of these?