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GRAMET (merged thread)

Sadly, other commitments stopped me from flying yesterday.

Tc and tks will give you the possibility to climb through a layer and come on top in the winter.

That's exactly why I want them. My summer IFR dispatch rate (on my UK IMC) in a TB10 without any fancy kit is around 90% - which is fine. My summer VFR rate is nearer 50% for trips over 250NM. I'm working on a full IR which will bring my summer dispatch rate up, but do almost nothing for my winter dispatch rate (somewhere around 20% for long trips - even using my IMC).

2012 was tough. It was not so bad if you had employment flexibility though. If OTOH you were a weekend flyer...

That is another aspect - with +- 2 days flexibility I reckon the summer VFR rate would be approaching 90%. Similarly, the winter IFR rate could be a lot higher.

EGEO

My next plane will be turbonormalised and have full TKS. Although I can't quite justify a turbine for my flying, the number of flights I cancelled last winter was simply depressing.

That wouldn't be enough in the weather yesterday. I flew back from Germany to UK. I turned back at around 10:30 UTC over Belgium in FL210. There was no way to get over the squall line with a turbonormalised plane. You should go for a turbine. Made it in a later attempt.

United Kingdom

If I want to certify IFR, I will need to get a 2nd GNS430

Why do you need a second panel mount GPS for IFR?

LSZK, Switzerland

The extent to which a turbo is worth having has often been debated.

Turbo owners love them and I can see why - you get +1000fpm all the way to 15000ft or more in some cases.

And it does reduce, but not anywhere near eliminate, time spent in icing conditions during the climb.

Against that you have a varying degree of lost engine life before major work needs to be done, and (if the compression ratio is lower) less MPG. And much more expensive engine overhauls; around 2x from what I have seen.

The extra ceiling (25k v. 18-20k) is of value on fairly rare occasions, and the oxygen use situation gets tricky with "non responsible" passengers (e.g. kids) above 18k or so. I would not fly at 18-20k (or more) with small kids at all.

Full TKS will prevent icing, which is great, but the ride in convective IMC is often going to be very rough, which again limits flying in such wx with most classes of passengers.

I think the bottom line is that with a 25k ceiling you can outclimb a lot of "trough type" convective wx where there are no CBs, or you can climb up strategically in VMC and then avoid them visually, but you won't outclimb much frontal wx.

I think there is a good reason why all the "proper planes" have radar and pressurisation. It's the only way to get a despatch rate closer to 99%.

If I had to choose between TKS and a turbo I would have the TKS.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Tom,

well, I've been looking at how to get my panel IFR and one problem there is space. So what does not work is to get a 3rd radio in. Neither can my current Navcom do 8.33. I could swap it for a King unit which can (and is pin compatible) but they are quite expensive still,even on the used market. A 2nd GNS430 will do the job nicely, and the original units like mine are coming down in price drastically.

Unless of course some regulators get the idea that two GNS 430's which are linked can not be used as 2 coms, because under certain conditions the failure of one may cause the other to go with it.... Would be bad news for a LOT of planes flying...

Peter,

re the turbos... there used to be a mod for non turbo planes called Rajay normalizers. Some Mooneys have them, even "C" models. They are fully manual, you can fly without them altogether or you can bring them online to whatever power you need. Most it will do is to boost to 29 inches MP, as in normalize at altitude. I used to fly a Seneca I which had them and some Twin Coms have them too.

The advantage is, you can choose if you need Turbo power today or not. If you don't bring them online, your engine is a normal non charged engine. If you bring them online however, you can get those extra 10'000 ft of service ceiling and/or quite fantastic speeds at altitude. One M20C owner which has one told me his plane will make 180 kts regularly at FL200. Mine makes 140-150 at FL150 and is at its limit at 170.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

@Jasonc

The mlx does not work yet in my case as it needs a "headunit". For this I envision the ifd540 which still needs to come and which will not support the mlx at first release. I think it will take another year or two. Longer than I had hoped but still it will be a super solution. The only reason I already had it installed was that I made a package deal for two ifd540, twx670, tas605 and the mlx together with the Aspen evolution 2000 (1000pro and 1000mfd)

... Avidyne...

Yes, they promise more (or at least faster then they should) but their products are spot on. I played around with an early demo model 2 years ago and straight away loved what I saw. Their interface simply is that much better than Garmins. It is also much better then the gtn750/650 .. Or at least I much prefer it. By the way ... Those who already have the gtn apparently are desperately waiting for a sw update?!?

Having said that .. At the time the gsr56 was not available yet and Garmin did not seem to care for Europe. Both offcourse changed.

The investment in the gtn would have been huge.. The early buy option of Avidyne was very attractive.

So yes the wait is about 1,5 years longer then told by Avidyne but I do believe I will be getting a fantastic product.

Got it. The MLX is a good product. I also looked at the IFDs and considered them as they seem like a nice unit. But the deal you could get on GTNs was actually similar at the time. MLX operating costs are fine given the expensive iridium network.

And it is only EASA GTNs needing the software. They are two versions behind the US regulated units now.

EGTK Oxford

MLX operating costs are fine given the expensive iridium network

Can you post details?

Reading the US sites I get the impression that Avidyne are getting a huge amount of goodwill because so many people hate Garmin's monopoly. That's fair enough of course but when things get to the stage where I email Avidyne with a tech question and the reply is (a) from somebody who did not read my email and (b) is asking me for a deposit on an IFD box, I have to ask why they have to ask so hard for cash donations...

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter, You can have a very negative view of the world..,, :-)

Avidyne charges roughly €35 per month for the subsciption. Garmin is more towards € 100,- but then you can also make a phonecall.. That is excluding your segments which are not that expensive for weather.

It maybe true that people tend towards Avidyne just because they are fedup with Garmin. however. .. There are also a great deal of people who simply prefer the interface of Avidyne. It is so much more intuitive and requires a lot less keys,

And .. Avidyne was doing vfr europe and vfr approach plates .. Long before Garmin even was thinking about doing something for europe (to the great embarrasment of the Garmin employees at Friedrichshafen every year.

Back to the GRAMET and model saga..

the fact that I am posting now today is that my flight to BG was, as expected, cancelled. That despite the fact that especcially GFS gave very good prognosis for the whole trip for the last 10 days.

Well, Monday the models all of a sudden started to see "light humidity" which has now grown in to a full scale front which made flying in BG unusable for several days. Plus all of a sudden, there is tons of convection (which all models denied in unisono) which means, BG airspace below FL250 will be closed to VFR due to anti hail rockets. Gramet, btw, gave some harmless convection and otherwise beautiful weather where there was massive problems. I think it, as well as all GFS based products, have massive problems still and therefore are not really useable.

So as in the 4 times in previous plans, airline tickets were purchased and the airplane is now available to my other pilots to fly.

Looking at this renewed planning debacle, longer trips will not be planned at all anymore before the airplane and pilot are again fully IFR licenced and equipped. Mind, that would hardly have helped the situation in BG as you need a Citation in order to fly FL250 or higher in any reasonable comfort. So even more likely, the aircraft will eventually appear on plane check and my licence end up in the dustbin. Life is easier that way certainly.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland
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