@Adam: Are you actually flying the Turbo Commander now? If so, one of your highly entertaining and informative pilot reports would be very much appreciated :)
General comfort for your passengers is something no one has mentioned yet… Will they be as comfortable in a Meridian as they will be in a 340 ?
iortac wrote:
1) Single engine piston. 2) The PA46 piston just doesn’t seem very exciting or challenging.
Fair enough points although I would suggest the challenging aspect of a piston twin is also somewhat tied into its safety. Cost aside, if safety is your concern, I would take a single engine turboprop over a piston twin. The engines are just bulletproof so long as you keep feeding them with fuel. But we all have our favourite airframes and prejudices.
If you are looking for challenging aircraft Adam is the guy to advise you ;)
Turbosound wrote:
General comfort for your passengers is something no one has mentioned yet… Will they be as comfortable in a Meridian as they will be in a 340 ?
Probably not. Your average person will just see a Meridian as a “small plane with one propellor”. They’ll have no idea whether its a Lycoming, a turbine, or a Wasp radial behind the prop, and no idea about the relative safety. A larger looking pressurised twin piston would probably give the average passenger a higher level of comfort, whether justified or not. But you can’t chose an aircraft based on pleasing the passengers, unless you are a charter business of course.
JasonC wrote:
Fair enough points although I would suggest the challenging aspect of a piston twin is also somewhat tied into its safety. Cost aside, if safety is your concern, I would take a single engine turboprop over a piston twin.
I think we agree that a single turbine is overall safer than a multi piston, even if passengers won’t understand that. I would have no problem with a SET over water, terrain, bad weather, etc. But they are still (arguably) not like-for-like comparisons on cost.
And by a “challenging” I meant in terms of complexity, performance, capability etc, didn’t mean “something that is always trying to kill you”. I think that twins generally get bad press, either because some of them have poor (zero) OEI performance, or due to the “they are statistically more dangerous than my single piston” crowd, many of whom have never even flow a twin, or don’t fly in conditions where twins have a clear safety advantage.
@Adam: Are you actually flying the Turbo Commander now? If so, one of your highly entertaining and informative pilot reports would be very much appreciated :)
The endless saga continues. Windscreens back from polishing and repair and look great, to be fitted next week. Starter generators back next week. Still haven’t found any good used fuel manifold lines, so might have to bite the bullet on new ones. At $7800 each side. Ouch. Doubt I’ll see her before October. Patience is a virtue. Fast, good, cheap. You can have two, never three.
BTW Adam, the video in this post http://www.euroga.org/forums/flying/4679-flighttv-issue-6?page=1#78288 (3:05 and on) reports on the odyssey of the buyer of your Commander 520. Oh, and she is still as incontinent as ever… 
BTW Adam, the video in this post http://www.euroga.org/forums/flying/4679-flighttv-issue-6?page=1#78288 (3:05 and on) reports on the odyssey of the buyer of your Commander 520. Oh, and she is still as incontinent as ever…
Wow! Good find. Poor Sergei. But last I emailed with him he said she was flying.
Ortac,
On the PA46 piston: I am fairly well placed to know about the unreliability of the engine, yet I fly mine across the Channel all winter without a second thought. Why? Because this plane flies high and is a very good glider (I am fairly well placed to know that, too). I go direct Goodwood to Deauville and I’m hardly ever out of glide range for more than a minute or so. I’ll take that minute over an engine failure in a twin on take off or landing, especially since the Lyco, for all its faults, doesn’t usually fail entirely immediately (I have experience in that as well…).
As for the challenge/real plane: I love the look of twins, but the PA46 has great ramp presence. The challenge is a combination of engine management (see above) and weather decisions/handling: when you’re at FL250, you can’t afford to make that many mistakes about which cloud’s safe to transit through.
I have yet to meet someone who’s bought one of these and doesn’t feel proud about being able to fly them.
One Mirage made a ditching this morning at Cannes. All on board escaped with light injuries.
http://www.20minutes.fr/nice/1675791-20150831-cannes-avion-abime-mer-faire-victime
:) Urs, the article proves Ortac’s point above about a “small plane with one propellor” when it says “petit monomoteur”
You can claim bragging rights all day about ramp appeal and all but at the end of the day it’s a small single-engine
