When you look at that matrix – for £500k you can get 220 knot turbo that can do 25k feet, carry 1400 pounds useful load, 6 people in a club setting, etc. Its just so much better value. It even has a glide ratio of 13 to 1 or so, which is incredible considering! At 20k feet you can probably get into a proper runway if your engine quits (maybe not over the alps etc..)
How many hundreds (if not thousands) of Cirrus have been built for every Matrix….
The Matrix is a stupid design, period.
Another good point about the Twin Com is a very helpful owners organisation. There are many options introduced because of this fan club including go faster mods, STOL mods, mogas STC and many more to bring it.more into the 21st century.
But if you are happy to pay Eurocontrol charges when you fly IFR, I would add to Mooney’s list the Cessna T303 a really nice cabin class aircraft to fly.
And if it’s speed you are looking for you have the great Piper Aerostar.
The problem is Rami1988 ask 10 pilots about the best aircraft for you and you will get 100 opinions. If you have the time, go and see as many different types as you can.
For some people a single door makes the type a no go. Some people want cabin class comfort etc etc. Look as much at what you don’t like as much as what you do and whilst you might listen to advice it often is tinged with a degree of bias. There will be a lot of people in the clubhouse who will give you all sorts of negative comments or horror stories about aircraft they have never flown.
The problem is Rami1988 ask 10 pilots about the best aircraft for you and you will get 100 opinions
As we can see here 
The bit I especially don’t get is the suggestions of some really old stuff which be an absolute nightmare for a new owner. Let’s stick to TB20s please. US owners benefit from a really “ecosystem” which doesn’t really work well here in Europe; being N-reg helps a lot but you still have shipping costs / US firms unwilling to ship abroad.
How many hundreds (if not thousands) of Cirrus have been built for every Matrix….
The Matrix has been a near total marketing failure. The normal PA46 has sold very well and remains one of the most capable SEPs (FL250 makes no sense without pressurisation) but is also no comparison against a TB20, on most of the points I posted above.
The bit I especially don’t get is the suggestions of some really old stuff which be an absolute nightmare for a new owner. Let’s stick to TB20s please. US owners benefit from a really “ecosystem” which doesn’t really work well here in Europe; being N-reg helps a lot but you still have shipping costs / US firms unwilling to ship abroad.
This is a really interesting and somewhat perplexing perspective to me, even if it correct for some people. While it may indeed reflect the existence of a US “ecosystem” that maintains older planes in good condition, along with other factors like a locally
dry climate and the prevalence of individually owned planes meaning they typically have less time on the airframe, I see this exactly the opposite: many planes old or new share the same mechanical components and methods of construction, but older ones are easier to maintain because they are simpler and their certification standards, maintenance manuals etc were more open and permissive. New stuff featuring e.g. recent or LSA certification, FADEC managed diesel engines, proscriptive and limited repair procedures, parachutes requiring expensive periodic service etc would be my nightmare to maintain.
Part of the ecosystem for my own 1971 aircraft is in Germany by the way, there’s a bit of the same local ecosystem there although not so much with engines and avionics. Shipping parts across the world and paying by bank transfer only (credit cards not accepted) is part of my game too. The same might be true for France if you own a Socata and knowing people in critical low places helps no matter where you are or what you’re maintaining, new or old 
It also seems to me that prospective ‘new owners’ have wildly different levels of competence depending on the individual. They do not all have superficial attitudes, entitled expectations or minimal knowledge, and I think a fair fraction of people attracted to owning a plane can come up to speed pretty quickly because of experience with other machinery. A characterization of all of them as upper class twits or naive new money dilettantes would not seem accurate to me.
Peter wrote:
Let’s stick to TB20s please.
Happy to. I’ve said it a lot of times, I think it is the ideal plane for him.
My response was to his suggestion that he does not want to wait for the “right” TB20 to turn up and that eventually he’s looking for a twin anyway.
Peter wrote:
The bit I especially don’t get is the suggestions of some really old stuff which be an absolute nightmare for a new owner.
The difference between some prospective owners and others are that they can’t simply shell out xxx$$$ for a good as new plane, house, boat, car. So they learn to reckognize where their sour earned money will bring them the most buck. The OP also makes this point about Cirrus and to an extent, he is right about the fact that “hip” makes like Cirrus are way too expensive, but that goes for all planes today.
Clearly you could tell people like me to simply forget flying if I don’t belong to those with 500k to spend on it. But think about it. We’ve been trying hard to get away from the idea that GA is an elite past time. Done right, it doesn’t have to be. You don’t need to spend 500 k or even 200k to get a very capable airplane, if you get away from the idea that only the posh, polished and new is good enough. And while every owner here is an expert of sorts about airplanes he has owned, what kind of “nightmares” other planes are can and will be said by those who actually own it.
Of course, it is always easier to buy the latest and shiniest, even tough it is not necessarily the easiest to maintain or the cheapest. Take G1000 planes, which are almost impossible and if so viciously expensive to upgrade. Of course an owner who can simply pull the cheque book and shell out 100k per afternoon, that is not an issue. For someone who is trying to keep his 50k airplane doing what he needs to do, learning that something as simple as upgrading a plane to WAAS is a 30-50k exercise while any normal plane can do the same for 5-10k DOES make a difference.
All I tried to do is what I always do when someone asks me about buying planes: Show possibilities and the capabilities associated with it. So the OP wants a TB20 and I and most others here agree it’s one of few solutions that fits. But if asked for alternatives in the single and twin market it is not adequate to simply shrug it off and say, naa, wait for the right TB20, but rather to tell them what is around and the implications of it.
And one question was about twins and there, if you want the capabilities of a TB20 translated to a twin, there are exactly two on the <2000kg class which actually can do it: The DA42NG and the Twin Comanche. One costs 600k, the other 100k. So what is better? To say, if you can’t or don’t want to spend the money for a DA42NG, then just forget it?
I hear such stuff all the time. If you can’t afford a Cirrus, bu**er off and come back once you are a CEO and can afford it. Thankfully, most people who got insulted this way shrugged it off and now fly happily with some “old trash” and simply ignore the Cirrus and Tesla crowd sneering.
gallois wrote:
The problem is Rami1988 ask 10 pilots about the best aircraft for you and you will get 100 opinions. If you have the time, go and see as many different types as you can.
Absolutely. Rami asked for OPTIONS, not sale recommendations. None of the planes shown are without faults or negatives and the fact that he already rejected some planes as “projects” show that he will not fall for some heap of trash from somewhere. But I can only repeat what you rightly say: Absolutely look around and see for yourself. And THEN make your choice.
Silvaire wrote:
I see this exactly the opposite: many planes old or new share the same mechanical components and methods of construction, but older ones are easier to maintain because they are simpler and their certification standards, maintenance manuals etc were more open and permissive.
Exactly.
If you want an airplane which is very easy to maintain and can be maintained and repaired by just about anyone with the license to touch airplanes, the logical choice would be a PA28 or C172 or any others which have been done in high numbers. Engine wise, the O320/360 family is one which is “bulletproof” not only because it’s a good if old design, but because there are tens of thousands of them around and EVERY mechanic in that industry know them. The opposite would be one of those geared Tiara engines or similar, which exactly nobody knows.
Silvaire wrote:
They do not all have superficial attitudes and expectations or minimal knowledge, and I think a fair fraction of people attracted to owning a plane can come up to speed pretty quickly because of experience with other machinery. A characterization of all of them as upper class twits or naive new money dilettantes would not seem accurate to me.
I would think that this characterisation is more common with people who already are inside the scene and simply wish to take their new found “religion” onto everyone who tries to join. I’ve seen this a lot in the initial clientele of Cirrus and, to an even worse extent, car maker Tesla. Some of those guys can give the Jehova’s withnesses a run for their money trying to force their pet make onto others. Me, I am totally put off by such behaviour and I actually think it damages the reputation of the manufacturers, unless of course they are the ones behind the hype.
For me the fact alone that people come here to ask those who are in the scene about their opinion is enough for me to know that they are after knowledge, not self-confirmation.
On the other sort of the spectrum are twits like one I heard of recently, who suggested to the proprietor of a hangar to kick out “those old ugly heaps” so he could park his shiny G6 in there. Thankfully they told him what to do with his money and kicked him off the field. IMHO it is more the simple and less costly planes which keep GA alive than one million $ SEP’s.
Just a quick update – I’ve just completed the purchase of N219RT https://www.planecheck.com?ent=da&id=57669
planecheck_N219RT_57669_pdf
I had it inspected by my engineer who is very picky and to my surprise he had little to criticise. Airframe in top shape, avionics in top shape, and the engine is in top shape too. I even had an oil analysis done and the result was excellent.
Im currently in the process of ferrying it back to Shoreham and very excited!
Thanks to everyone on the forum for the advice. It’s been incredibly useful and has really helped me in landing the right aircraft.
Rami1988 wrote:
Just a quick update – I’ve just completed the purchase of N219RT https://www.planecheck.com?ent=da&id=57669
Thanks for the update and congratulations on that purchase. She looks like a beauty and something that could bring a lot of pleasure. Good luck with the training!
