There are also some C340 Turbines (2x Allison) for sale. Conversions are made by O&N Aircraft who have also created the C210 Silver Eagles. Cost about $2M, used around $1.7M. AFAIK they have stopped production.
Maybe a stupid question but if we are talking in that price range: What about a Cheyenne?
I noticed one in France for sale which appears pretty nice in terms of equipment and general appearance, but would not know about the engine time rules there.
http://www.planecheck.com?ent=da&id=23242
If the engines and pre-buy check out, maybe an interesting alternative to a piston twin.
Adam, I don’t know about the Commander series in Europe but I seem to have heard that they may have a noise problem.
Old Cheyennes are very cheap and very capable and safe but they are thirsty and very slow — pretty poor NM/fuel ratio.
The alternatives proposed here do not convince me…
A good German registered C340A with SIDs done and on German CAMO goes for around 200.000€, eg. those two here – I know the second one, D-ISPE, but have not flown it, it is currently operated under an AOC so complies with all EASA rules: http://www.aircraft24.de/multiprop/cessna/c340-a—xi120971.htm http://www.aircraft24.de/multiprop/cessna/c340-a—xi121039.htm
D-ISPE has almost 1500 hours left until TBO. If you fly 150 hours per year, it will last for ten years. After that, you can sell it for parts and get maybe 50.000 Euros. So basically you pay 100€/h depreciation, and AVGAS (100-120 litres per hour) plus your annuals and 100hr checks. Plus any unscheduled maintenance, but that is a gamble with every pre-owned aeroplane. If things don’t go too bad, you can fly it for 500-600€/h which is less than you have to pay for renting a Seminole and maybe half the cost of any twin turboprop (Cheyenne, Cessna Conquest, KA90).
Actually you got a point there, what_next. D-ISPE looks like a great buy to me. I am sure they spent that amount of money on the SIDs and overhaul.
What’s a realistic cruise speed and range/endurance? At 202 gallons it looks like 6h to me. How much useful load is left when you fill up the tanks? At which altitude would one typically operate? It’s a lot of aircraft for the money and due to the low cost and pressure vessel, you can let it sit outside.
What’s a realistic cruise speed and range/endurance?
When we flew it, we calculated with 170 kt (flights less than one hour) to 180 kt (flights over one hour) including climb (typically 130kt) and descent (200+kt).
How much useful load is left when you fill up the tanks?
Three adults and luggage I would say (around 600lb) respecting the limitations. I know it has been flown with 6 adults and full tanks but they wouldn’t have survived an engine failure – just like any other overloaded twin.
At 202 gallons it looks like 6h to me
I don’t have a manual for the C340 any more, but that sounds realistic. My longest flight was BGBW-CYYR at 4:11 and we had plenty of reserves because there are no close-by alternates to Goose Bay. I certainly calculated that flight with one more hour to the alternate + holding fuel + final reserve.
At which altitude would one typically operate?
For real long flights or weather avoidance one would go to FL250 – we did our Atlantic crossing at FL250 throughout. IIRC it can go higher (FL 300) but then the cabin altitude will be above 10.000ft and one needs to take oxygen. Not really why one flies a pressurised aeroplane. (BTW: We did Glasgow-Reykjavik-Narssarsuaq-Goose Bay in one single day with a total of 12 hours flying. All with an unmodified aeroplane with normal tanks and stone-age avionics – including one horrible bronze-age GPS receiver.)
On the typical European flights (up to two hours maybe) anything between FL150 and 200 is reasonable. It climbs well until those levels and the gain in TAS between FL200 and FL250 is not really worth another 10 minutes climbing at 130kt in most cases. Unless you are very light. Other than the wonderful C421 the C340 can get engine temperature problems in prolonged climbs which sometimes requires climbing with reduced power resulting in even lower climb rates.
NB: I think I still have the 20 year old Toshiba Laptop somewhere with the Flight Planning Software and the values we used for the C340 – including fuel and W&B. Tonight I will see if I can get it running again and calculate some typical flights.
I still think that Peter’s statement above
Except that any plane which needs that much maintenance money is going to have a massive downtime which in turn means you aren’t actually going to fly anywhere because you will be going around p1ssed off about the last half a dozen things which have packed up, and instead of enjoying your flying, going to nice places and meeting up with nice people, you will be wasting your life haggling with maintenance companies who, every time they remove an inspection cover, will open a yet another can of worms.
is true. I know, I know
-you can have lots of trouble with a newish airplane as well
-you can be really lucky and have very little trouble even with a 50 year old aircraft
and I know it is hard to quantify the added “comfort” and enjoyment of flying a younger aircraft, but certainly most of us would allocate that quite some “value” to that.
In the ten years I’ve operated the SR22 (1000 hours), I have had to scrap maybe one flight for technical reasons.
@achimha – sounds like you are coming round to the idea.
Here are some rough 340A numbers, with Meridian numbers in brackets to give a comparison:
Empty Weight (kg): 1780 (1545)
Max Takeoff (kg): 2719 (2312)
Useful Load (kg): 939 (767)
Fuel capacity (usg): 203 (170)
Full fuel payload (kg): 317 (246)
75kg POB at full fuel: 4.2 (3.3)
Cruise fuel burn (gph): 33 (41)
Endurance at cruise fuel burn (hours, no reserve): 6.2 (4.1)
Speed (kts): 185 (250)
Range (NM with 1 hour cruise reserve): 953 (787)
The Meridian is much faster, but more limited on payload and range (and cabin/storage space too). But what_next (and Jason) might have better real world numbers.
As regards reliability, I see no reason for this to be worse than any other piston aircraft, provided you are willing to invest time and money up front to proactively prepare the aircraft to the right standard, as opposed to just buying one, flying it and fixing stuff when it goes wrong. But obviously it’s never going to be turbine reliable.
The comparison with a JetProp would be more favorable for the turbine, especially as you could remove the airway charges and fuel burn would be lower.
For me, the cruise speed would be too slow, 180kt is rather slow for > 100l/h. On top of the crappy engines you also have to maintain what I would consider to be the crappiest device in all of aviation: a Janitrol heater.
I got my old laptop running again (Toshiba T3400CT, one of the first to have a TFT display – 9inch … almost like a Garmin 540).
Some data that we used with “our” C340 (then D-ILEF) and that worked well. These were taken from the flight manual and adjusted over the years:
Empty Weight: 4573lb
Max TOW: 5990lb
Payload therefore: 1417lb
Climb performance (level / speed / climb rate / fuel flow):
0ft: 100KTAS 1200ft/min 290lb/hr
10000ft: 100KTAS 1000ft/min 290lb/hr
15000ft: 100KTAS 800ft/min 290lb/hr
20000ft: 100KTAS 600ft/min 290lb/hr
25000ft: 100KTAS 500ft/min 290lb/hr
30000ft: 100KTAS 100ft/min 290lb/hr
As can be seen, the climb rate between 25000 and 30000 drops to 100ft/min therefore it would take almost forever to reach 30.000ft
Cruise performance (level / speed / fuel flow):
0ft: 159KTAS 165lb/hr
10000ft: 172KTAS 165lb/hr
15000ft: 179KTAS 165lb/hr
20000ft: 186KTAS 165lb/hr
25000ft: 193KTAS 165lb/hr
30000ft: 190KTAS 175lb/hr
Fuel:
Main tanks: 600lb
Aux. tanks: 350lb
Locker tanks: 240lb
The locker tanks were optional. Each holds 120lb. Some aircraft have 2, others only one, some don’t have them at all.
So full standard tanks (main+aux) leave 467lb of useful payload for a 5:30 hour cruise flight (which must be reduced for climb and reserves of course, so maybe 4 hours).
Achims “longest flight” would give those figures with that C340 cruising at FL250 (calculated overhead-overhead + 30NM for each leg):
EDTH-LYBE: 3:05
LYBE-HECA (my old software doesn’t know the other airport): 6:09
HECA-HEGN: 1:33
The second leg would only be doable with the locker tanks full and two light persons onboard.
With two people, the flight could be done in two 5 hour legs with Athens or somwhere close as refuelling stop.
