GeeBee

No, you are taking me out of context. My claim was material and and I said, "In addition, the casting and forging have to be several higher orders of precision." Again, when you look at the forging of that disk on a CF6 vs forging a crankshaft, they are worlds apart in materials, material casting, forging methods and precision. The average crankshaft probably has 6 inclusions that caused that CF6 disk to come apart.

I spent 40 years in the industry. I retired off the A330 and I loved every minute of it. To make it worthwhile it must be something you want to do and not think of it as a job. I never worked a day in my life. 6 years after retirement I still have dreams in my sleep of flying transport airplanes. If you are not sure, it is going to be a job. If you are sure (and I was from 5 years old) it is a living dream. I survived 5 years of furlough, 1 near bankruptcy, 1 real bankruptcy, 3 mergers. I have two uniforms in my closet and I would not change a thing. Pay? Who cares when you love your job, but my retirement placed me in the top 3% of Americans. Can't beat that. Let me add, my first wife had pancreatic cancer and thanks to my airline who put out over 2 million for her she never wanted for a thing. No insurance arguments, no "if only's" they just wrote the checks. My first Christmas with my second wife I spent in Accra, Ghana. Not where I wanted to be, but you have to take the good with the bad, because the bad, ain't that bad.

I am missing your math. You say an IO-360 weighs 300 pounds (136kg) and a PT6A is 500 pounds (226kg). Then you say aluminum is $2.50/kg and Inconel 600 is $45/kg. So in your raw terms the material costs of an IO-360 is $340 (136x2.50) and a PT6A is $10,000 (226x45). So the material costs of a PT6A is 29 times an IO-360. So compared to a new IO-360 at 100K a new PT6 at 29X is 2.9 million. We know that it is about 1 million new so the PT6A is quite a value based upon your math.

Materials. Think how much an IO-360 would cost if the entire engine were constructed of exhaust valve material instead of simple cast aluminum and steel. In addition, the casting and forging have to be several higher orders of precision. You can cast a cylinder head fairly rough and machine it down substantially into a usable part. Not so with a compressor blade. If you remember the compressor disk off UAL 232 you get an idea of the level of purity, quality of material and manufacturing required.

You all can count the pennies to run it. The ROI over the years. Calculate your need. No mathematics will account for one intangible. Your wife. Do you really want to sleep in your own bed, or the couch? Did I tell you I am a very happily married man?

You won't need them until you fly in the clouds, get a nice big corona around your airplane and go NORDO.

Even P&W highly recommends engine trend monitoring and even offers the own including automatic data acquisition. Hard TBOs are yesterday's news for turbine operators who want the most out of their engines. https://www.prattwhitney.com/en/blogs/airtime/2018/12/11/why-engine-condition-trend-monitoring-is-a-must-for-pt6as

Most part 135 PT-6 engines are trend monitored very few Ops Specs are written for PT-6s with hard times vs trend monitoring. (Most the time because the airplane was added to the fleet used without trend monitoring) Trend monitoring dates all the way back to the 1980s (because of the PC) and I know this because I ran a fleet of 3 King Airs under Part 135 in the 1980s all on trend monitoring. On average you can get about 2400 hours before hot section and 4800 to overhaul on a trend monitored engine. Anything more is playing with fire, literally. If you acquire an engine that timed out on hard time spec under Part 135 you might get 600 hours out of it, but not much more and usually less as many have found out. They are great engines, but when hot section deterioration starts it happens fast and just gets more expensive putting it off. The problem with the acquisition of such an engine that was not trend monitored is you have no base line to know when things start going south....until they do.

I am not sure if it was the one over at KCVC. Visually not too bad.

The C-210 conversion uses an installed fuselage tank to make the turbine work. It makes it a 4 place airplane. Otherwise it is an airplane in search of a fuel stop.

Turbine conversions usually end up range/payload limited.

On average you will run about 30% power if you run 24/7. Buy your propane tank and own it. Then you are free to buy from whatever supplier you want. This creates a higher level of security from a supply standpoint.

Oh yes. I have an all electric house with a 400 amp service. I have a 500 gallon propane tank. Typically it burns on average about 3.2 gallons propane per hour (average 30% power) which gives me a little over 5 days. If I decide to ration it, by not running at night for instance I could easily make 10-12 days. If I really rationed it, I am sure I could make a month. I calculate my rationing by the availability of propane. Last year for instance I could have a propane truck in my driveway in hours, so no need to ration. I have a monthly keep full on the tank. The engine is a 4 cylinder Mitsubishi turbo charged. https://www.generac.com/globalassets/products/residential/standby-generators/spec-sheets/xg03245-xg04045_hsb_specsheet.pdf

Weather is always shifting. As to generators, I have a 40KW whole house. Last year had a huge line of T-storms with a massive down burst right over my house. Living out on a peninsula we are always the last to get re-wired. Ran 5 days 24/7 with 6 grandkids in the house. Ops completely normal other than all the downed trees. Get a whole house, you'll never regret it.

According to NOAA archives going back to 1888 sustained winds in excess of 90 so yep, they were hurricanes. As for 1950-2017 actually a period of diminished activity. We all think history begins with our birth.

When I flew international, the ICAO Notams for a typical trans Atlantic flight were were about 20 pages of 10 point type. It would take 30 minutes to de-cipher them all in particular if they applied to your ETA. Usually gave that job to the relief pilot since he was low on the seniority pole. The company tried numerous schemes to auto-interpret them and narrow them down all to little avail. It will be interesting to see how Garmin and ForeFlight try to do it. I suspect deciphering will be good but given that I still get a NOTAM about not flying to North Korea on a 100nm flight from ATL, the parsing I will think will be continued to be suspect. If ever there was a job for AI, this is it.

Believe it or not, the British created it to trip magnetic sea mines the Germans planted. It had its own gasoline powered generator in the bomb bay. It worked really good. So good, the Germans gave up on magnetic sea mines in the Channel.

I used to get really irritated at tower when they would say, "Plan no delay traffic close in behind you". When I was checking out new guys I would say, "You're up to bat, don't let them push you out of the batter's box". I would see so often guys land hard, slam on brakes and reverse throwing passengers all over the place just to appease the tower and the guy behind them (who probably was late slowing down). One it is your runway. Two it is your airplane. Three, your passengers. Four, yours or the company's brakes and tires. Tell me it is a Lifeguard or emergency aircraft, I'll even pull out of the pattern otherwise, leave me alone.

When you are in the batter's box, you swing the bat and unless you accepted a land and hold short clearance, you exit the runway when you feel it is safe to do so. The controller's irritation is because HIS plan did not work. You are not a slave to his plan unless you accepted a clearance to exit at a certain point. There is nothing here to show the airplane was at a safe speed to exit, only people irritated he did not exit when they wanted him to exit (their plan). In any event the airplane that had to go around was a T&G not an air ambulance.

just install a degaussing ring around your airplane.

Most the magnetized truss structures I have seen come from welding on them. In the PA-18 community you see it when someone welds float fittings on or repairs a weld.

Before you get too wrapped around the axle, make sure your baffling and baffle seals are tip-top. Ever since I installed Gee-Bee Aeroproducts (no relationship to me) my temps have been very manageable even in the GA heat. I run about 24.7 fuel flow on take off and rarely see temps over 380 on climb out. After you tighten your baffling, get your fuel flow in order and your problems should cease. I should also add that multi-viscosity oil tends to run cooler. I've heard a number of explanations but let's just say it just does.

This time of year, when I go out to my dock or walk in the neighborhood I usually carry my 357 AirLite 340PD with 38 shot loads in the first two chambers to kill copperheads. I've nailed about a half dozen and you are correct, they love piles of leaves.

Uber, or a 100 bucks for the line boy's car. Both work.