Silvaire wrote:
a new Concorde battery, $350 USD
The same on a Meridian costs close to 6,000 €. Concorde have a monopoly, also there is only one dealer in Europe through which these batteries can be ordered. Needs a new one every 5 years according to Piper, although under Part 91 you can use it longer on condition.
On conditon also possible under EASA NCO Part-ML <2730kg (Meridian = SET = non complex).
Hi together,
does anyone her owns/flies a Piper M350 and can confirm the take off performance? Takeoff distance ground roll 331m and landing roll 311m. These are values of Piper itself. The sales team wasn‘t amused about the question to demonstrate these values on a demo flight and some other things. So maybe someone owns a Piper M350 and can answer some question. Thanks for helping
The sales team wasn‘t amused about the question to demonstrate these values on a demo flight and some other things.
Interesting. They’re not amused to demonstrate and sell their airplanes? Did you go up the chain to Piper USA with that?
Not yet. Demo flight will be done in a couple of weeks. We had an appointment on 1pm and their demo aircraft was available until 1:30pm. :-( including for a demo flight. They don‘t have demonstrators so they ferried an owner M350 from PAD to KSL. Lot of questions but only few answers.
I have owned two of those, ealier Mirages but I am sure the engine, airframe and performance did not change.
Regarding take off and landing performance it will depend a lot on weight (and skill, and brutal braking). The plane will transform from a sports car to a heavy mini van going from super light to super heavy. We did quite some short field training back. With 2 pilots and minimum fuel I think close to 300m might be possible. But in real life you will not feel good flying to airfields any shorter than 600m. Anything less than maybe 900m you will have to consider the weight situation carefully.
Finally if you can afford a M350 DO NOT DO IT. Buy a Meridian. I would prefer the oldest beat up Meridian any day of the week compared to a brand new M350. That engine is a diva and will inevitably break sooner or later. I owned 2 Mirage, did 1 overhaul and 1 engine rebuild on the other and had plenty of engine trouble before and after. When you are new to the airplane you make yourself believe the others just did not treat the engine properly but you can do better. But somehow all say that until they have… engine trouble. The buyers of one of my Mirages later did have to do another engine rebuild and guess what they just ended up buying… a pre owned Meridian. That plane is just so much better .
Engine trouble is my greatest concern among the performance and one reason why we considered also the Cirrus SF50. But the SF50 has little advantage over M350, at least on the paper. Range and load is limited in the same way. The SF50 is faster but produces considerable more expenses. So we are back to the M350.
If you can consider a Cirrus Jet, then you MUST look at Turboprops – nearly as fast, cheap fuel, short runway, Jet A available everywhere. You will get in and out of many more runways with the right turboprop, especially a Jetprop.
I wonder if @Malibuflyer has any input on this?
I don’t have a M350 but an older Malibu. But the performance should not be that different.
On the ground roll data: They sound about right (with Beringer brakes and very light I even managed to go below 300m landing ground roll).
But there is a big but: For such a plane ground roll is not the significant limitation. As you can even see in the official performance data, the >50ft distances are almost double the ground rolls. Even as a good pilot, with such a fast and efficient plane it is quite easy to give away 100m of the runway by approaching a bit too fast or too high. As Sebastian wrote: Anything below 600m runway does not feel good.
I also support the other point of Sebastian: Rather than buying one of this Lyco divas, I’d look at good older Malibus with the Conti engine – much more robust! In my opinion, the Conti 550 conversion is the best power plant (despite the Jetprop) you can get in this airframe.
