Glass cockpit vs steam gauges for low time PPL (and getting into a fast aircraft early on)

I will be on Paros with the Rallye from Aug 28 through September 7 or so. If you can get there or nearby, we can do a Greek island bimble together and you can get a feel for whether you like overwater flying in SEPs and landing in 20 knot crosswinds! These things are acquired tastes! :)

Valentin wrote:

I would need to learn everything (including IR) in TBM. The learning curve could be too steep.

TBM class rating requires 500h TT. Can one fly towards these 500h without being class rated? I don’t think so. Many instructors here, you can correct me. (leaving the N route aside)

LeSving wrote:

They certainly don’t like to worry about if their their husband has had enough sleep, have eaten properly, and is generally fir for fight to bring her and her kids safe from A to B. Kids don’t care either way, if mom and dad are happy, they are happy.

Love this post. Essence of family flying. One can get many many private charters for the yearly budget of a TBM. Total peace of mind.

WhiskeyPapa wrote:

Realistically, the learning curve for getting to the point where you are safe conducting IFR flights from Cyprus in an advanced plane is several years away, unless you dedicate your life solely to that task.

And devoting your life to that task would make life unpleasant while skipping a thousand useful steps, which for me would defeat the whole point of flying. To me, flying as an activity is about flying many different types, learning about them all, having fun going places while flying those different types in different ways, and becoming a good pilot as a result of that long and diverse experience. Going directly to the last plane you’d want to fly is exactly in opposition to my purpose for flying.

I knew an airline pilot once who started that side of flying on DC3s & 4s and ended up on wide-bodies, meanwhile owning and flying about a 100 different types of light aircraft (literally). He was a very good pilot…

BTW, my wife suffers from motion sickness even in calm air and still she won’t give up flying with me… she’s too stubborn and doesn’t want to miss anything It’s really not easy to predict individual behavior and reactions, best to figure that out through experience. I have explained to her that an SF260 has a very high wing loading (money is the issue there!)

There will be a EuroGA fly-in to quite near Cyprus in September.

Any experience is valuable but if you want to reach a ski destination from cyprus and offer comfort to your family a single engine piston will disappoint you or get you killed (alps, imc, icing, no instrument approach).
The same goes for multi engine pistons (the powerful ones are nasty if an engine fails and the not so powerful ones offer little to no more utility than a single – maybe except for the overwater part).

The bottom line – and the truth – here is that everybody who could afford (I mean really afford, not scraping together kind of afford) would buy a TBM, Piper M600 or Pilatus tomorrow and invest the money and time straight into mastering to fly one of those safely and with confidence. The comfort and quality of travel in one of those beats any scheduled shorthaul air service easily.
Flying around in a Cessna in cyprus will be a lot of fun but after 10 hours you will be bored and realize it is not what you want. For your mission (overwater, family comfort, dispatch reliability and far away destinations) you need range, power and pressurization. And a buddy who will mentor you. You’d need him anyway, no matter how many hours you have in cessnas and cirri. There are 5000+hour pilots out there who hire safety pilots and fly as professionaly as it gets. I knew a very successful man who spent hundreds of thousands of euros on flying nice and expensive airplanes, only to kill himself and part of his family on one of his „routine“ dinner flights – this time there was no second pilot aboard. It was a little overcast and a routine radar vectored approach. The term „doctor killer“ isn’t floating around by chance.
I’m not saying to skip any steps or to skip experience – if that’s what you are up to buy 2 or 3 planes and experience all that comes with it (mostly spending money, time and earning frustration because you’re not getting where you desire). What I mean is that these steps do not necessarily lead up the stairs that will get you where you want to be.
Get your PPL and then try out different planes. If you like a Cirrus, DA40 or Cessna 182 – great. Buy one, fly one and wait until you feel like you want more.

Looking forward to seeing you!
One problem with Cyprus is that for even routine VFR flights to anyplace else, you are going to want to be comfortable on instruments. That’s because over water and out of sight of land, you can quickly lose a discernible horizon. Thrown in some mist or rain and you have de facto IMC. There are ways to make this work. I would consider learning to fly in two places (Cyprus and some place else easy to reach) and maybe base the plane there until I had an instrument rating.

I agree that flying between Paphos (wonderful place!) and Larnaca would get old quickly.

Snoopy wrote:

The bottom line – and the truth – here is that everybody who could afford (I mean really afford, not scraping together kind of afford) would buy a TBM, Piper M600 or Pilatus tomorrow and invest the money and time straight into mastering to fly one of those safely and with confidence.

I suspect the TBM I’d buy in that circumstance might differ considerably from your mental image!

Snoopy wrote:

I knew a very successful man who spent hundreds of thousands of euros on flying nice and expensive airplanes, only to kill himself and part of his family on one of his „routine“ dinner flights – this time there was no second pilot aboard

I’m sure all of us knew at least at least a couple of guys who had killed themselves and their passengers in bog standard 30 year old SEPs, the kind we all can afford to fly. Risk is probability of an event multiplied by the exposure time. There is nothing more to it. Adding a safety pilot will reduce that probability no matter what kind of aircraft is flown.

Snoopy wrote:

here is that everybody who could afford (I mean really afford, not scraping together kind of afford) would buy a TBM, Piper M600 or Pilatus tomorrow and invest the money and time straight into mastering to fly one of those safely and with confidence

Not everybody. I mean, if money was no object, I probably would get one of those and rent it out or something, but invest money and time mastering flying them solo – no way. A Spitfire or Mustang on the other hand or a Kodiak (or similar Caravan, Twin Otter, PAC 750 etc), Extra 3XX, Pitts, a couple of super expensive high tech gliders. Cubs in different incarnations, Grob 250 TP etc. 2-3 jet trainers, a couple of Yaks, a whole bunch of microlights, the list goes on For travelling I would do exactly the same thing as the rich guys do: Get a 737 size private jet and hire top professional pilots that could fly me everywhere on a minute notice, or take my L-39 for shorter trips.

Regarding risk, it’s that probability that will vary, and it varies a lot from person to person. IMO most people are able to learn to handle a simple SEP relatively safely, at least within the requirements of the authorities. Stretch it just a bit outside the confines of the PPL syllabus and/or the plane they are used to, and/or the environment they fly in, and the safety margins breaks down for surprisingly many, more than half I would say, maybe 70-80%. Others have no problems flying whatever you throw at them, at east without crashing and burning. But, it has to be enjoyable also. Using all your energy just to fly (not getting killed) is extremely exhausting, and not particularly safe all things considered, so training and currency obviously are key aspects here.

It’s just that nothng can make up for lack of good stick and rudder skill and proper airmanship, nothing. Good stick and rudder skills get fused into your back bone (muscle memory), they never go away, but it requires practice the more the better. Airmanship is more fluid but you usually get more of it, the more you fly and the more you hang around other pilots. The main thing is that those two aspects are directly transferable to whatever aircraft you strap yourself into.

If I were you, and it looks like money isn’t a huge problem for you, I would get a nice easy going SEP and just fly. Get one that offers the least amount of practical problems (regarding fuel, maintenance, operation in general). Then just fly. Explore Cyprus from the air, thoroughly. Just learn to fly on your own, learn to master every situation, be comfortable in the airplane as PIC. Fly in good weather, fly in bad weather, nail every cross wind landing etc. Find every little strip and try them all. Cyprus isn’t that small, is it? I have only been there once

Just my two cents.