How Vashon Wants to Revolutionize Aviation

[Music] everyone is Paul Berger le reporting from a very cold and wet ramp in Everett Washington they're playing behind me thirteen hundred and twenty pound gross that makes it an LS a looks like an LS a isn't Alice a but it's an Alice a with a difference it's the Vashon Ranger and I'm sure you've read a little bit about it what makes this airplane different is both how it's made and how the company intends it to be used it's kind of LSA v2o now we're going to take a flight in the airplane now but first take a visit to the factory and see how the thing is made why bash on the history of my successful business career has been using technology to bring the cost of something down so that the volume goes up we did it in early PCs and plotters and semiconductors but I've been interested in aviation I'm a technology guy semiconductors and software and wanted to use some of that experience to help make flying a little bit cheaper it is so expensive and constant dollars now that only old geezers like me can afford to fly and that a huge problem in aviation to my thinking that not enough youngsters are getting into it because I'm a floatplane guy we wanted a high wing airplane so we can make a float version of it our designer or chief designer Ken Kruger has never done a high wing airplane before he'd done a fair number of low wing airplanes so he was anxious to try that that different design challenge we wanted a cantilevered wing because it makes a better float plane the experience I've had with fiberglass is that it's hideously expensive labor-intensive therefore it should be aluminum and all of those things came together with the Ranger as it now sits we wanted what I call a real airplane engine I'm sure the Rotax is a fine motor but we wanted it to be a more traditional airplane engine for maybe this is a mistake the comfort of old geezers like me were familiar with it but all of those components the desire to have it as a really good training airplane made it had to be robust all of those things came together with where we are right now there is statistically going to be a lot of flight training done as there will be pilot shortage is developing over over the next decade so I think it needs to be a really good training airplane a very cost-effective training airplane we're marketing it as an adventure airplane that light sport is never going to be a get from here to Florida kind of airplane but to get out have a fun weekend a camping trip a group fly to some new airport an airplane that that gets you back in love with flying I am hoping that the volumes that we can achieve will be a challenge to achieve in in this building we have a total of 60,000 square feet here only 25,000 is is now dedicated to the Ranger but it's a challenge we'd love to meet and if the volume is more than we can build in this room we will be profitable and we can afford to move to a bigger facility on an airport my history has always been volume it's ironic that I ran a semiconductor company in this building years ago where one of the chips we developed was the touch sensor for watching your finger run around the cell phone and we've sold literally hundreds of millions of that chip we intend to ship a whole lot more airplanes than than anyone elses today volume is going to be keyed to price which is why we've come out with aggressive price as you can see looking around we've invested in a lot of expensive CNC equipment in order to build it at the lowest possible cost we are fairly vertically integrated with with some of the expensive components so our goal is to focus as has been at the other companies I've worked at on cost cost costs so that we can bring the price down to drive volume if you know about these airplanes you probably know the name ken Kruger - he spent some years at Vans aircraft designing them and now he's turned his talents to the Vashon Ranger so I came into this project with some design goals that Jon had laid down as far as wanting to really revolutionize the light aircraft industry so safety and affordability or key requirements and those are kind of self-explanatory why they're so important but we also wanted to focus on systems integration and also just having an airplane that is just a good good flying airplane and Jon you know so those those things could take form and really any configuration of airplane but John is a bit of a nut about floatplane flying so we flavored it or spun those requirements and form them into an airplane that would be very suitable for floatplane flying and also just you know and that extends and crosses over into a number of other addition missions for the airplane so that's a large part of why we ended up with a high wing cantilever configuration cabin size and just basically the size of the whole airplane was something that we wanted to to emphasize having a nice roomy cabin again it's having a roomy cabin is something that you enjoy every flight and it's something that is you know you can't fix it if it isn't there so we we kind of aired a little bit on the side of if anything make it a little bit too big but with an eye toward weight of course but you know let's face it people are getting bigger taller fatter especially as Americans and so a big cabin was a good thing to go for nice you know big doors and we could get in and out easily through again as everybody's getting a little bit older we want something that's easy to get in and out of so those also were parts of the overall configuration we have a goodly amount of systems integration just right out of the box where we have our flight instruments our engine instruments and our all of our navigation instruments all together and talking to one another so we've made the other parts of the airplane talk to one another so things that are on practically every airplane lighting fuel pumps flaps trim that are electrically controlled all of those things are coming together into a module we call it an ACM advanced control module and there are electronic circuit breakers in there so we have our circuit protection in there we have it's fully integrated with the system with the Efus so we know what's happening with each of those systems and so we've we've really brought all of those things together in into one integrated unit because light-sport airplanes have earned a bad rap for having flimsy landing gear company put a lot of effort into designing beefy durable gear including a heavy weldment for the nose gear in robust laminated fiberglass for the main gear legs those big tires are purposeful too they offer a lot more stroke to absorb hard landings and rough ground where Vashon intends the airplane to operate there's another thing going on here and it's a big deal the airplane has been carefully designed to be produced efficiently and the factory has a level of automation I haven't seen elsewhere including that the volume leader cirrus here's Scott Taylor Vashon its production chief one of the things that vast an aircraft that we really strive for is making manufacturing and production work together and we designed that through the engineering from the very beginning the engineers of the production shop worked together to try to engineer an aircraft that was easy to manufacture one of the things we've done that's probably unique or even cutting-edge for this light aircraft is we use painted skins that are pre painted prior to manufacturing all of the holes and dimples and countersinking are done in the tools so when the when the guys get the the parts onto the floor there's no drilling required they're actually match drilled full size and finished holes be it countersunk or finished for a nut plate or something else that really saves a lot of time in production I always like to equate it back to my early boyhood when you do snap together models versa balsa wood you do a balsa wood model you're cutting you're gluing individual parts versus us snap together mark you basically pop them out and put them together we have made this floor pop it out and put it together Paul one of the ways we accomplish some of these finished parts is we use a turret punch we spent almost a year and a half working with the manufacturer working with mills with our metal so that we actually have protective coatings on our metal so that we can run it through the turn punch and not scratch the finish we actually have custom design tools to be able to actually hold a tight tolerance on our whole tolerance and our dimpling tolerance using the term punch has saved hundreds of man-hours out on the floor you guys the machine well we can walk away and leave it operating overnight sometimes if necessary so taking labor out of the build process has been huge using some of this automated equipment to complete finished parts that go on the airplane for the time being Vashon builds its airplanes at the small factory in Woodinville we're dining on is located and finishes the assembly at Everett Washington right across the field from Boeing's giant wide-body Factory eventually Vashon plans a new facility at nearby Arlington Washington on a bus three rainy day not that unusual for the northwest I flew the Ranger with marketing director Amy belly shine what's immediately noticeable are the large doors and the white cabin 45 inches at the widest by my measure also if you want to sleep in the airplane the two seats tilt forward to open up the entire cabin floor from the aft bulkhead to the sticks it's 78 inches and that will accommodate six footers easy but you'll have to offload all your stuff to make room unusual for any airplane much less a light-sport our five-point harnesses with an easy quick release that's a plus no surprise that light sport airplanes that weigh about the same and have about the same horsepower in this case 100 horsepower perform about the same they cruise at about a hundred knots or so on for five gallons an hour and that's what the Vashon does although the poh says it will do up to 114 knots at higher fuel burns weight wise because of the Continental engine and the extra heft Vashon put into the structure the Ranger is heavy as essays go it's empty weight is 882 pounds just eight pounds less than the maximum allowable for an LSA useful load is four hundred and thirty-eight pounds so with two people are board there's capacity for 16 gallons of gas with full fuel that's 28 gallons you could haul to light people or one and all the baggage you could stuff into the thing or in let's be honest here girls you could just lie at fifty or a hundred pounds overgrowth which is what much of LSA dumb actually does I make no moral judgments but I am merely apprising you of reality and you're in the right arc so you could dump with laps at any time okay only a little bit of a pitch up moment with the flaps and let's see what what is flaps full is 40 yeah we got 20 and 40 so we're at 40 L then we're about 65 so you'll see the airplane is pretty responsive on the controls even really slow flight up down to 55 and it's got very good rolling okay so now we're going into stall go full flaps okay you hear the AOA and where's the airway indicating it's all the pitot tube and where is it displayed it's I don't think it is displayed you just hear the audible okay so we're hearing the audible malleable chirp does that go to a full when it's at the higher AOA I think it has to petting is kind of similar to a stall warning horn yeah it down picks up so you'll feel the airplane kind of buff it tiny bit if that's it it'll just hold this there you go now it won't do anything except it's got a parachute I was like most back wing to do yeah okay so I have this thick full-back going into a little oscillation but it's not falling off or breaking on either side and I'm not using any rudder to hold the wings level yeah the ball is centered we're not touching the rudder oh and we got an indicated descent rate of about 700 feet of okay we're covered I'm Ken Kruger told me he wanted a pleasant flying airplane and he built one unlike most FSA's I fly the control forces aren't scary light but about like you'd find in a post-war taildragger the airplane needs very little rudder if any and normal flight the Ranger is unusually trim stable for a light sport I set it up for 65 knots indicated on final and not that carefully either it nailed the speed like it was on Rails with that beefy landing gear I wonder if it would survive a no flare landing by a brain numb student miss Belle Cheyne was intrigued but we demurred and testing the theory talked a little bit about consideration here because this panel has a choo of the display and the option will be one or two correct yes so you can either get one HDS or one touch or you could get two HDX so we're at the top of the line model here what is having the additional display it's nice to have especially if you're doing weight training it's nice to have it if you want to put your movies app on one side and have it easier to see and then maybe put your flight instruments in here edge of pages on one it's just easier to see everything with two screens and so what's the price Delta between one and two ninety nine five it's the base model with one and then 145 there's some other things that you get obviously we have LED lights of other small things but mainly a/c avionics difference and on most of I've gone for two you said most of the buyers want to because the price is already so low and I mean it's really cool to fly with two screens yeah you have auto pilot and by the way auto pilot cuffs with a base bottle so everybody who purchases a Ranger will get auto pilot okay and this is a pretty sophisticated on applying it has a level but I notice so let's try that now but they all find it on all the time is it even though it's not a gauge I hit level now there we go and then you'll see your it's worth right here turning blue if you ever get yourself stuck in the clouds don't know which way is up at the level but it'll bring you straight level that it's it's on now for good if so you don't figure yourself out where you're at so adding options to the airplane are there any well we do have the exterior wrap option so that's one thing that's a pretty big thing you can buy the airplane totally white if you don't like our graphics there's different options you can put on there obviously the screen we had just for a second radio we decided to remove it because you don't really need two radios that won't be obvious we should talk a little bit about that all the exterior views of the airplane okay that's not paint explaining what it is so it's a it's a premium vinyl wrap and it's it's sort of company in Seattle that also does car wraps though you've seen up driving around and it's an Avery Dennison premium lightweight wrap design that they use and it's really easy to manage to clean it you basically use carwash cleaner and they could put a special polish on it to keep it looking good and that usually lasts for about ten years and then what happens when you replace it you just feel wrong yeah if you get a little piece that you want to remove and replace they could specially customize it if where you can only get that piece done or you can remove the whole thing it's basically how you do it is with a blow dryer and it's just you put heat on it basically and it will peel off it won't destroy the paint or the airplane itself we've seen by the factor reviews all those airplanes the spins are obviously already painted and the airplane built I wanted to please of this wife and those also get a conventional paint job it's a best-of I want that I don't think so I'm gonna say no because we already get the free painted aluminum right the weight comes white and it's really pretty white I mean it's a really nice quality paint so painting is heavy it adds a lot of weight and so I'd be technically I guess you could eat it so we're not going to operate Amy is that shot gonna develop a training program for this airplane with syllabus and all of that oh yeah we're working on that right now and that's my department because I'm an instructor and I absolutely love teaching people to fly especially this airplane because it's really fun so we are working I do have a flight training supplement that I'm happy to share with you and to give you an idea of how we're doing it a clean sheet opportunity so is it going to be computer oriented training I'll be instructed so technically insurance purposes major buyers will be required to do 10 hours of flight training it's included in the price of the airplane anything above and beyond the 10 hours they would just pay in the rubble instructors but basically it's gonna be a little bit of online training and you know fly with one of our instructors here too and we'll help with the written then we could do sport pilot at I'm a pilot okay well thanks for the demo Amy it was fun yeah it was awesome thanks for flying burger Ellie reporting for app web an aviation memmer you can find a full report on the bash on Ranger and then May 28th of aviation boomer thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: AVweb

Views: 176,927

Rating: 4.8598008 out of 5

Keywords: Vashon, Ranger, R7, John Torode, Scott Taylor, Ken Krueger, Amy Bellesheim, Paul Bertorelli, LSA, light sport aircrat, flight training

Id: ExL7bDb_zZA

Length: 20min 9sec (1209 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 29 2018