Piper piston PA46 Malibu / Mirage and other pressurised SEPs (and some piston versus PT6 discussion)

Yes it’s the Lyco with 3 blades prop.

No question the Contis are much more economical planes. I chose the Lyco because the reinforced spar offers a better upgrade path to a PT6 and my wife likes the interior of the Mirage a lot more.

What airframe year is this reinforced spar?

Peter wrote:

What airframe year is this reinforced spar?

Since 1999

OK; I recall @eal did a lot of research on which mods were done in which years, with particular relevance to the Jetprop conversion. Some of these were later than 1999, IIRC.

1999/2000 was significant for the Mirage. Firstly that model year range shared the same main wing spar as the stringer Meridian, and it got the KFC 225 autopilot, a vast improvement over the KFC150 and the Stec 55.
The 1999/2000 models make great Jetprop conversion donors.

E

Today made it with the PA46 from Berlin to Athens while friends with the Beech 33 are stuck in Berlin due to weather. To me this shows what the PA46 is all about. We flew through massive rain, above the Alps, around thunderstorms, had over 100kt crosswind in cruise, crosswind on landing and it did handle all that just fine.

Sebastian, agree. What type pa46 do you fly?

Nice Sebastian..
Counting down the days to be reunited with my bird…
E

Sebastian_G wrote:

Today made it with the PA46 from Berlin to Athens while friends with the Beech 33 are stuck in Berlin due to weather.

Thats about 1,000NM. Did you do that non stop?

Here is one for you Malibu pilots to look out for, this little grey knob which you have to pull out to release the door, fell off today, luckily we found it on the floor, well it had to in there somewhere and fortunately it screwed back on, otherwise it would have been the emergency exit