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A sunny trip in an old Turbo Commander 681...

Hitched a ride with my friend Stan from Montgomery Field (KMYF) in San Diego to Stockton (KSCK) in his 1969 Turbo Commander 681. He was flying it up to have some maintenance performed by the Commander guru. It’s a great example of how useful and well performing even an second generation TP can be. It was a great trip to be along for, and a sunny smooth ride all the way. Here’s a pictorial.


Stan’s 1969 681 Commander basking in the sun at Montgomery Field, San Diego.


Here you can see the original Hamilton Standard props. Good news is they only need on condition overhauls. Bad news is they’re getting harder to find parts for when they do. Most people have switched to Hartzell. Stan found a good supply of parts and bought it all, so he’s set for his lifetime. The cheapest solution.


Nice old school panel in good shape. Mostly King stuff in there.


A King stack that’s soon needed to be updated to ADS-B, for the 2020 deadline. King being almost bankrupt and not innovating these days, he’s going to go with a L3 system for the ADS-B.


Older King GPS, but it works fine. Stan is a big fan of King, so he’s thinking of putting the new 770 in there.


Startup is automated. You wait for 15psi fuel pressure, and then just flick the switch and it does it all by itself. Temps go up to about 650 on start, but come down once it stabilized to about what you see here. A hot start starts at around 750 degrees (it depends on outside temp), so if it goes beyond 700 on startup, it’s probably time to cut the fuel off. Here we can see the turbine temps as we taxi out. As you can see, fuel flows are always pretty high even at idle on TP’s. Here we’re burning 70 pounds, which is around 11gal/hr per side. Not too bad, but it certainly pays to minimize the time you spend on the ground. Good thing, no need for any run ups – you’re pretty much ready to go once you’ve fired them up.


After a less than 2000ft ground run, we’re out over the Pacific and getting vectored up to our altitude. Then ATC gives us direct LAX VOR. Here we’re just south of LAX and about to cross right above it at 16000ft. I was literally looking at 747’s under us landing. The Class B airspace goes to 10000ft here, so you can cross VFR as well as long as you’re above that if you want. ATC points out an Alaskan Airlines 737 in opposite direction just 1000ft below us. It looks spectacular as he passes so close beneath us.


Enroute at 16000ft by the coast. Unfortunately, my camera was the iPhone, so no global shutter goodness, instead this prop mess.


Here we can see the cruise FF. Stan likes to fly it at 540 degrees and the rpm pulled back to the bottom of the green arc (96%). We can see that the horsepower is around 400hp per side. Pretty frugal fuel flow of about 180 pounds per side, or 360 in total. That’s about 54gal/hr in total. With Jet A1 prices quite close to half that of Avgas here, it’s easy to see that they don’t cost more to run in fuel than a piston twin. On top of that you get better speed, so mileage is actually better. Here we were doing about 235-240 KTAS.


Stan is an anesthesiologist at a big hospital in San Diego. His father owned commanders ever since he was a kid, so he learned to fly on them. He’s had this 681 for 12 years. Many consider the 681 to be the perfect TC for the private owner. By 1969 they had pretty much ironed out any of the problems with the first generation turbines. It’s a model with few AD’s and a pretty simple aircraft.


Gear down and locked. Prepared for the landing at SCK. As you can see, Stan’s plane has the aftermarket winglets. It’s a useless device, only designed to make it look a little cooler. Apparently the story goes that Gulfstream, who by now owned Commander, knew very well that a winglet that’s less than 20% of the chord does nothing. But the CEO said “just make it high enough to fit the logo” and that was it. Notice the little pop out landing lights that fold out. They have a max deploy speed of 156kts, just like the gear!


Tucked away and waiting to get serviced.

This trip was great for me, but also a bit sad in another way. Nice to be able to ride in a plane that’s very similar to the one I bought. Stan’s plane is in great shape and is a stable and wonderful performer. I wish mine was as nice as his. The sad part was that once we landed I saw how little progress has been done on my steed since last time I visited. It was very discouraging. And now Stan’s plane is going to take precedence over fixing mine as he booked this slot over a year ago, which will delay mine even further. I thought it was getting close, but no. I’ll have to start being a lot less amiable with the gurus soon, but didn’t want to cause a scene and bad blood when we arrived.

Last Edited by AdamFrisch at 20 Sep 17:01

Oh my. Sorry to hear that. Now that I have the MEP rating and am about to get the IR, I may be looking for new challenges… TP? Twin-TP? Decisions, decisions.

Last Edited by Aviathor at 20 Sep 17:07
LFPT, LFPN

thanks for this nice report. what a beautiful aircraft! i flew into KMYF this february in a C182 from San Carlos (KSQL). flying in the US is a dream! but that’s another story.

Last Edited by Solaris at 20 Sep 17:07
LFSB

Adam very nice write up, they are very fine aircraft.

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

Nice report Adam but you are too patient. How long has it been there now?

EGTK Oxford

Since Feb. I know. But I have no other option right now than to stick the course – she’s not ferriable. Also, if you take it to any of the jet shops they’ll take you to the cleaners, plus you have to pay for them learning on the job/type. At least here the knowledge is second to none. Just too damn slow. It’s very frustrating. I guess I’ll have to resort to being a lot unfriendlier from now on.

Nice report.

Enjoyed the photos and commentary.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

AdamFrisch wrote:

Since Feb. I know. But I have no other option right now than to stick the course – she’s not ferriable.

Having dealt with these situations my suggestion is create a deadline. Plan a trip, let them know and try to get them to finish to let you do it.

EGTK Oxford

Since Feb.

Dude, that really sucks. I’d hoped you’d be flying the TP by now. Personally I get seriously antsy around the 6-week mark. Like Jason says, you gotta get Walter White tough at some point.

Since Feb

I agree with Jason, create an artificial deadline. It is not even being mean, some people and organisations only work if there is some kind of deadline. In fact you might do them a favour as they can get the work done, write the invoice and have hangar space for the next project.

Besides that doing regular visits might help. Our paint shop got kind of slow half way so I was visiting them nearly every week talking what has been done last week, what the plan is for next week etc. and I think also without being aggressive that motivates them as telling you in the face there is no progress is a lot harder if you show up instead of being some name on a work card…

www.ing-golze.de
EDAZ
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