toto

Hmm, “on deck” seems intentional .. some kind of airline product?

Maybe it’s orange? Chrome cylinders?

Following Mike Patey’s turbine Lancair conversion on YouTube, I learned that people can/will buy a timed-out engine from a charter aircraft (his came from a King Air) and just maintain it on condition. I think he paid a small fraction of what it would have cost for a PT-6 that wasn’t timed out for Part 135 purposes. The engine ended up exploding on him and he had to buy a new one, so you know - not a great deal in the end, but gave me a picture of how this kind of thing is possible without spending a fortune to source an engine.

The key is having no obstructions. Landing on a hard surface is fine - you just want to lengthen your time to a complete stop. It looks like the pilot here found a spot with at least a couple hundred feet to go from 60 to 0, which is an abrupt landing we can walk away from.

The Silver Centurion or whatever it’s called always made a bit more sense to me than the Bonanza. You take a P210 and put a turbine on it - at least you can get to the flight levels where there’s some advantage to the TP. The JetProp Malibu conversion that evolved into the Meridian/M* series is obviously good evidence that this can be successful with a pressurized single engine piston.

Interesting, okay so it did happen …. but wasn’t a great business.

Wasn’t there a period of time when Superior was going to make brand-new Lycoming engines under license?

I've heard very good things about GATTS, if you're interested in traveling to the midwestern US for this https://www.gatts.org/pilot-training-courses/7-day-ifr-instrument-training.html

I get very nervous trusting a gazillion dollars' worth of avionics to a cheap power adapter - I just carry an external battery pack.

I suspect you would need a GAD29, but I’m far from an expert. https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/136954/pn/010-01172-21

I talked with Dynon and several dealers back when they announced the SkyView HDX, but the AP was a big unknown and it sounded like it would be an unknown for a while. I ended up doing G3X+G5+GFC500 and am happy, but agree that it’s good to have another entrant in the space.

Since this one has replies, I assume we'll converge here Very nice to see this after many years of anticipation. I wonder how many of us went all-Garmin in the meantime? The trim thing is weird...

The problem today is that it's far from clear whether a replacement spring would be less likely to fail than the original spring. I'm way over my 1000 hours on the original spring, and I still haven't seen a clear answer from the many threads on MS. It seems there was a bad batch of original springs that drove the service bulletin, and also bad replacement springs that caused at least one recentish off-field landing. And in any event, these things don't fail very often.

Well that's fair enough I'll get my flashlight and start looking around..

Agree with this - when I'm circling the airport for a post-mx flight, it's 2500-3000' AGL, ideally at the very top of the Delta if one exists. Definitely not in the pattern.

If a piston or cylinder is replaced, I'm circling the airport for a minimum of an hour on the post-mx test flight.

At my last annual, the $125 alternator belt was replaced and the belt was *very* tight when it was returned to service. The belt has gotten looser since then, and maybe gives a half inch, but still feels “normal” to my fingers on preflight. Is there a rule of thumb for belt tightness? I.e., without putting a tensioner or a torque wrench on it?

They did put it on their FAQ page. It might be as simple as the FAQ being maintained by someone at Swift, and the main site being updated by an outside agency. Dunno

The Swift FAQ page says

He’s on MS @Christian Haven’t seen new videos in a while but they’re quite good

Definitely don’t want. I would rather spend the money on a new navcom than integrate an old King radio with a TXi. I’m very happy with a standalone KX-155 and a standalone indicator for my backup radio, and when it finally dies I’ll buy something new from Garmin

Hopefully one of the resident avionics experts will chime in, but my #2 navcom is a KX-155 and I had to keep the legacy indicator for it.

Kind of interesting. FAA has granted one STC for 100R on one Skyhawk engine, but Swift says they’re also pursuing ASTM certification. This was already mentioned by @hammdo in the recent G100UL thread but might be worth a separate discussion. I’m excited to see unleaded options on the horizon to eliminate the cloud hanging over piston GA for the past 50 years, but buying UL anything still seems a long way off. Maybe ASTM certification would suddenly make FBOs want to carry this stuff? https://aviationweek.com/business-aviation/safety-ops-regulation/faa-approves-100r-avgas-cessna-172s

That’s about to change. T-Mobile is about to support calling via Starlink from an iPhone aiui.

The interesting thing about charging for this is that Apple has always given mobile carriers some freedom to determine their own fee schedule. But unless the individual carriers are going to work out their own agreements with Globalstar and charge for satellite messaging as part of a mobile service plan, this is going to be a service provided by Apple, with fees paid to Apple - and I could see carriers getting very nervous about that.