DayJet Goes Under

[Tom Goodrick]

You might recall DayJet, the company renting seats on Eclipse 500 Jets for flights in the southeast USA. The company ceased doing business in September because they ran out of funds. They also cited the lack of expected performance and delayed delivery schedule of the Eclipse.

This was noted in the December issue of FLYING.

Also in the issue was an article on the Piagio 180 Avanti II which has been certified for a major increase in takeoff weight - nearly 1000 lbs - with some additional power that gives it 400 knot performance at 31,000 ft in proper temperatures. The Avanti is popular acording to schedules actually flown on FlightAware and is used very much like a fanjet. I pulled out my copy of the Avanti and started updating it. It works pretty nicely though more fine tuning is needed. It will probably go back up on my web site. It is one of the most economical jets available. The pusher props behind the wing which is behind the cabin give it low sound levels.

[Bill Von Sennet]

That is bad new about Day Jet. They invested a lot of money on the technology to route the flights every day.

Two Avanti's flew over our house last month. The sound was quite different from other turboprops.

[flaminghotsauce]

I'll have to dig out my Avanti I suppose. I haven't flown it for a good while. I got the chance to see one up close, and even climb inside for a look. The cockpit by Lear looks like a Lear. They're really neat airplanes.

Sad about Dayjet. I still think that business model will come along and do well in the future.

[Allen Peterson]

Tom, I was thinking about downloading your Avanti after reading the article in Flying. I'll hold off until your update is ready.

[Tom Goodrick]

It will be just a day or two before I can post the update.

I downloaded a newer model from avsim, the file was piaggioavantip-180.zip but I had to delete it. It caused my FS to abort. It also did not give any views out the windows as I wanted. Perhaps the problem is that my system memory is full. I had that problem about a year ago and had to dump many files. There was one problem in that using the same aircraft.cfg made the aircraft float considerably above the ground. To fix that I had to cut the leg height in half. Now the leg height in the original was about right because Flaminghotsauce used to show a photo of himself and his kids in front of the aircraft. That gave a good scale for comparison. This model had the CG only 2 feet above the ground which is not possible.

The model I have had and still must use was made for FS2002. It has no interior and shows only uncluttered views out the windows. But otherwise it looks good with two professionally dressed pilots in the front seats. Unfortunately it has no props!.