Mooney_Driver wrote:
Neither will most non turbo airplanes. In order to cross the alps in “any weather” you need to be able to go on top of the weather in most circumstances and that is FL200 upwards.
I wasn’t even talking about weather! :-) I’m saying that in severe CAVOK a TB10 cannot just blat straight across the Alps. It can cross the Alps, but by picking a route carefully. It probably won’t be able to follow an ATC-directed routing on a standard IFR flight plan.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The TB10 has a declared service ceiling of 13000 ft DA. In practice, this will mean anything between 10’000 and 16000 ft PA depending on conditions and load.
I will eat my hat if anyone has managed to get a TB10 to 16,000ft. As I said, I’ve managed the published ceiling of 13,000ft once – I was light, and the last 2,000ft took forever. I can’t say whether it would have got there at MTOW, but if it had one would have become bored trying. I consider the aircraft to have a useful ceiling of 10,000ft.
Graham wrote:
I will eat my hat if anyone has managed to get a TB10 to 16,000ft.
you might need one if you try :) In winter with ISA -20 or so it should be doable. Worked for me with an Archer. 17000 ft with 3 on board.
IIRC airway MEAs from the UK towards Malpensa or Linate are FL150 or FL200, and in practice ATC want you higher
The lower MEA is from memory routing towards Zurich and then towards ODINA
FL150 is not ideal except in VMC on top, any build ups requiring off airway will need a climb
TB10 should do 14k.
TB20 is 18k under FAA or 20k under UK CAA, iirc, and does 20k in ISA. I’ve done FL210 in good temp conditions.
To reach the ceiling you need to lean it right.
Peter wrote:
To reach the ceiling you need to lean it right.
I’m pretty sure I lean it right – for best power at least – smooth LOP requires more instrumentation and probably injection. Like I said it’ll get there (13k at least, 14k is above the published ceiling) but it’ll take forever. So long that one might not (I don’t) consider it a useful and, on a practical level, useable part of the aircraft’s capabilities – I’m not going to plan for flight at that altitude Of course the physics is such that this has to be the case for it to be decent at 8k-10k.
@Mooney_Driver sure, if you consider edge cases with extreme variations from ISA then lots of things are possible. But again, not a workable planning assumption.
Point was, if I flew a TB20 rather than a TB10 then European IFR would be a much more workable proposition – flying FL100 well within the capabilities of the aircraft rather than towards the edge of it. Thus, a CB-IR might be more attractive.
I assume there is nothing to stop you flying legally FL210? 21000ft PA is not FL210! :)
Yes; there are no flight manual limitations on non-turbo planes, AFAIK.
In winter with ISA -20 or so it should be doable
ISA-20 is extremely rare, below FL200. The coldest I ever saw was -39C at FL190.
I’m pretty sure I lean it right – for best power at least
Having taken the TB20 to its actual ceiling (which at say ISA plus 20C is considerably less than 18k 
) many times, and stalled it many times when doing this (as you may remember 
especially in downdraughts over the Alps) I find that being able to lean for an accurate EGT makes quite a difference. I find 1330F is about right.
A TB10 would be fine for Euro IFR but only on nice days.
I still don’t think these details are a huge factor in why so few do the IR. I think the main reasons are
) and give up when they find out that ex-FTO they know sweet-FA
Since the CBIR does little to address the above two factors, I never expected it to make any difference, and often said so. Sadly, I wasn’t wrong.
The coldest I ever saw was -39C at FL190.
Off topic obviously: do you take precautions with grease around control surfaces, and more specifically trim tab actuator ?
Yes, after this bit of EASA Part M company work
RobertL18C wrote:
he lower MEA is from memory routing towards Zurich and then towards ODINA
14000 ft.
With a plane like this you’d not want to be IMC over the alps anyhow, least of all in lowest levels, so one way I’ve seen practiced a lot was that a plane would fly e.g at FL120 or so, supsend IFR for the leg between GERSA and ODINA (or URNAS/CANNE) and rejoin there before the handover to Milan. We also used to do this with the Seneca I, when we did not have oxygen. FL120 is already high enough to be able to fly pretty much over most of the mountains in VMC with a little left/right corrections at times.
In IMC over the Alps I’d like to be a lot higher, FL180 or so to give some time in case something happens to react and follow the pre-briefed way out.
