Small aircraft weight & COG system

Cessna is, in my experience is very conservative.

If you had been sued as many times as they have because of the stupidity of a dead pilot, you would be too.

While I am sure that the airplane can probably handle the load, I am also sure there were sound reasons for not increasing the weight, whatever they were.

I once had a Cessna engineer that I was working with make the comment "we could never do that" when talking about the stability margins on a particular airplane, even though it met FAA requirements. Their internal design requirements often exceed FAA regs, simply because they KNOW that stupid folks will (insert stupid thing to do like A. overload, B. exceed weight and balance envelope or C. use more fuel than is listed as "usable"). WHEN someone crashes they will get sued, even if it isn't their fault, and sometimes the lawyers for the idiot deceased will actually prevail.

Sorry, but that's the way it is.

 

Agree, Cessna has a history of being conservative.

In fact, there is a "paper only" STC to increase the 182's useful load 150 lbs for the planes made in the 1970's.
Home of the "Fresh Pick" STC - Trolltune Corporation

They got this STC from the FAA by re-doing the certification flight tests at the 3100 lb gross weight instead of the prior 2950 gross weight for those years of 182 production.
So those planes were always capable of safely carrying the extra 150 lbs, they were just never officially tested for it.
.

 

A big issue with non-OE (original Equipment) non-certified aircraft add-ons is liability, even with lots of disclaimers posted on the panel and in the POH.
It does sound like a simple enough system. It would have to hold up to operations in snow, slush, rain, etc.