GA Aircraft Flown

[Breckey]

14 hours ago, brickhistory said:

Is the mini going to be big/enough to display enough info at a size an old guy can read without constant sizing actions, especially as a student learning instruments? (Hopefully, that made sense).

The display on the mini is nearly the same size as the paper approach plates. The only time I've had to zoom is to look at some of the details on the Jepp plates.

[HuggyU2]

On 9/3/2020 at 9:25 AM, brickhistory said:

1.  Recommendations for headset? 

Bose A20 or the LIghtspeed.  

I've got an old pair of Bose X, and they are great.  When they die, I'm getting the A20 since it is TSO'd for airline use, noise cancelling, and extremely comfortable.  It is a step up from my Bose X (which is very good).  

If the Lightspeed price is significantly better, and you can live with a non-TSO headset, that might be a very good option.  I've borrowed them a couple of times and they work well.  

Edited September 6, 2020 by HuggyU2

[brickhistory]

Thanks to all for the gouge.  Just gonna have to buy and see what works, then adjust as necessary when it's actual use time.

 

I am grateful for the decades of experience that folks gave in their advice.

[08Dawg]

19 hours ago, brickhistory said:

Some follow-ups, if I may.  And not arguing, simply don't know...

Is the mini going to be big/enough to display enough info at a size an old guy can read without constant sizing actions, especially as a student learning instruments? (Hopefully, that made sense).

From my days 30 years ago, the fit then in a 152/172 was tight, esp I'm still as tall (6'5"), but 60 lbs heavier (230).  Room for any of these as a kneeboard kind of a thing (especially a bigger one like the Pro) or a suction cup on a window?

 

Roger on the Bose A20s.  They are proud of their prices, aren't they?

Unscientifically determined, but the mini displays approach plates the same size as a real, paper one. I use a RAM mount suctioned to the window. Works great in a 172 if you mount it on the little side window, where it does not block too much of your view. 
 
RE: the A20, yeah they’re pricey, but worth it. I can’t fly with anything else now. Periodically, Bose will run deals. I got mine on a $90/month for 10 months, no interest financing. 

[EvilEagle]

Late to the fight here, but I have used the mini and find it to be perfect for GA.   An air or pro would block too much crap IMO.  

 

If you can handle the feeling of earplugs, check out Clarity Aloft or Halo QT.  I've been using Halo's for GA (non-warbird) flying for the last 8 years or so.  They are great, no batteries to change and super light.  

[brickhistory]

So in the last three days, I have flown, with an instructor, a Cirrus SR20, a Diamond DA40, and a Cessna 172.  All had the G1000 panels.

In the San Antonio area in September - hot and humid.

First, nice to realize that some mechanical skills come back without too much effort - can turn while holding altitude, other very basic flying things.  It's been literally 30 years since I last did so.

Second, glass is great!  The intricacies of using the panel is still in the future, but I'll be going to ground and refresher school for that, so no worries.  But the ease of use/interpretation was much better than I imagined since I last used the round steam gauges for everything.  Not having to have a paper explosion when crossing sectional boundaries, or when I get my instrument rating, having approach plate pages flop to the wrong one, etc. will be nice.

Third, and this is how I tried to explain it too my non-flying wife - the Cirrus with its performance, interior, and AIR CONDITIONING was like being in a really nice Mercedes or BMW.  The side yoke also made it much more comfortable for a 6'4" guy for leg room.  My instructor used a 8x11 iPad and had plenty of room to use it on his lap as a kneeboard.  I want one of these.  @500K and up new, of course.

The Diamond with it's stick and lots of plexiglass was new to me.  Damned hot all day.  Got queasy while skull down trying to read/play with the G1000 for some of the gee whiz stuff while bouncing around at 2500 ft.  Not as roomy as the Cirrus or the Cessna especially for long legs.  My instructor used an iPad Mini on a suction cup on the side window.

The Cessna was old home week.  Like being in a 1968 VW Bug with the mother of all stereos for the G1000.  Also hot, but less so than the Diamond since it was less plexiglass to heat up.   The yoke coming back into the lap thing is making me reassess my plan of buying a full size iPad (cuz I'm old as are my eyes) and going with the Mini.  Just ain't as much room in the thing now as when I weighed a whopping 160 back then.

Sticking with the David Clark's for now until I've tried multiple other headsets and decide to drop $1K or more

Bottom line:  Air conditioning is great in a small plane.  It should be considered a basic human right.

 

I am really grateful for all the inputs received here for recommendations and gouge.

[frog]

22 minutes ago, brickhistory said:

 

First, nice to realize that some mechanical skills come back without too much effort - can turn while holding altitude, other very basic flying things.  It's been literally 30 years since I last so

Welcome back. General aviation is great. Come on in...the water is fine.

[SocialD]

5 hours ago, brickhistory said:

Bottom line:  Air conditioning is great in a small plane.  It should be considered a basic human right.

 

Welcome back to the GA world, I started back up last year and have been having a blast, while making lots of new friends.  Was driving home from the rents today and stopped by an airport because I saw a Stearman inside an open hangar.  Wandered up to the hangar to say hey and walked away with a bunch of ideas for my Stearman (plus their offer to help), and a planned 3-ship Stearman outing next weekend.  As I was leaving I ran into a retired UAL Captain I know, so we took his Cub up and bounced around the local grass fields.  Great people that just love aviation.

 

Did you say air conditioning?

 

Little bit too much AC this day...hoodie wasn't quite enough!

Edited September 20, 2020 by SocialD

[RegularJoe]

If you like the Cirrus wait until you discover Lancair, 200kts cruise, glass in front, side stick and only $235k

[Igloowhite]

Have a few million to spare? popular mechanics.com/military/aviation/a33916883/twin-mustang-fighter-for-sale/

[ryleypav]

GA really is a top notch community. Mostly. Gonna have your grumps, but people are just good in general I've found. 

[Mike Honcho]

Just started back while on the staff and forgot how how much fun this is. I dug out the old ASA headset they have us at NIFT at Pensacola and freshened it up with a few things from Oregon Aero. No regearts but I’ll try out the uflymike [https://uflymike.com] before throwing down on the $869 and up ANR sets. 

[Springer]

On 9/14/2020 at 8:00 AM, EvilEagle said:

If you can handle the feeling of earplugs, check out Clarity Aloft or Halo QT.  I've been using Halo's for GA (non-warbird) flying for the last 8 years or so.  They are great, no batteries to change and super light.  

+1 for the Halo.  Would not fly with anything else.  No interference wearing a hat or sunglasses.  Light and comfortable.

[Tonka]

Bought the Ipad Mini, and was ready to just go for Foreflight, until I realized my backup plan of putting Foreflight on my phone is a no go with an android... was considering ifly gps or maybe get foreflight on the ipad and a free/cheap alternative on the android phone. 

I would get garmin pilot (will go on ios and android), so maybe I could eventually link it up with the garmin 650 in the plane, but adding it up (garming pilot, plus flight stream ssd card, plus garmin ads-b/wx) blew my mind... thinking about a stratux too (which won't work with the garmin pilot).  Anyone use ifly recently? or anything else besides foreflight and garmin pilot?

[jazzdude]

There's always NGA's Aero app that's free. Just need an NGA account for FLIP.

ETA:
I also used Naviator in the past as my backup in the T-6 (didn't have iOS devices). Not sure if it added ADS-B capability, as it's been a while since I've flown with it. But for general moving map with gps position off the phone and approach plates, it was a decent backup. There's a subscription fee for charts though.

[jazzdude]

Oh, forgot about WingX. Same company also makes the aero app for NGA. They used to give subscriptions to military and CFIs for free, not sure if they still do so.

[brabus]

FltPlan Go is great (and free). I use that combined with a stratux. I have 2x Foreflight IPADs at work, and I still don’t give a shit about bringing them home to fly GA, that’s how good FltPlan Go is. Foreflight is certainly the gold standard, but not worth paying for when I can have the other one free.

[ClearedHot]

On 9/19/2020 at 1:27 PM, brickhistory said:

So in the last three days, I have flown, with an instructor, a Cirrus SR20, a Diamond DA40, and a Cessna 172.  All had the G1000 panels.

In the San Antonio area in September - hot and humid.

First, nice to realize that some mechanical skills come back without too much effort - can turn while holding altitude, other very basic flying things.  It's been literally 30 years since I last did so.

Second, glass is great!  The intricacies of using the panel is still in the future, but I'll be going to ground and refresher school for that, so no worries.  But the ease of use/interpretation was much better than I imagined since I last used the round steam gauges for everything.  Not having to have a paper explosion when crossing sectional boundaries, or when I get my instrument rating, having approach plate pages flop to the wrong one, etc. will be nice.

Third, and this is how I tried to explain it too my non-flying wife - the Cirrus with its performance, interior, and AIR CONDITIONING was like being in a really nice Mercedes or BMW.  The side yoke also made it much more comfortable for a 6'4" guy for leg room.  My instructor used a 8x11 iPad and had plenty of room to use it on his lap as a kneeboard.  I want one of these.  @500K and up new, of course.

The Diamond with it's stick and lots of plexiglass was new to me.  Damned hot all day.  Got queasy while skull down trying to read/play with the G1000 for some of the gee whiz stuff while bouncing around at 2500 ft.  Not as roomy as the Cirrus or the Cessna especially for long legs.  My instructor used an iPad Mini on a suction cup on the side window.

The Cessna was old home week.  Like being in a 1968 VW Bug with the mother of all stereos for the G1000.  Also hot, but less so than the Diamond since it was less plexiglass to heat up.   The yoke coming back into the lap thing is making me reassess my plan of buying a full size iPad (cuz I'm old as are my eyes) and going with the Mini.  Just ain't as much room in the thing now as when I weighed a whopping 160 back then.

Sticking with the David Clark's for now until I've tried multiple other headsets and decide to drop $1K or more

Bottom line:  Air conditioning is great in a small plane.  It should be considered a basic human right.

 

I am really grateful for all the inputs received here for recommendations and gouge.

Welcome to the party Brother. 

Last year my wife said, you are grumpy since you retired, just go buy your damn airplane.  Yes Ma'am!

I almost bought a Lancair 4P, had a deal in place, but during pre-inspection found out the airplane spent a few years of "unexplained" and unlogged time in Mexico, the maintenance log books were shit.  I am 69% certain that plane was flying drugs into the U.S. and had no idea what shape the wing spars were in.  Additionally, the insurance on some of the Lanceairs is outrageous because of their accident rate.  I was very enamored with the performance of the Lancairs, especially the 4P, they tend to be sleek machines, fast and economical but most models have a high wing loading requiring some extra attention in the pattern.  The insurance on the 4P was triple some of the other airplanes I was looking at and ultimately a big deciding factor.

I ended up buying a Piper Saratoga TC II.  I wanted to fly but also wanted a travel machine for the family.  The guy that owned it before me dumped about $120K worth of glass into the airplane (see below).  I flew steam gauges most of my career and was shocked by the SA the Garmin offers especially when it is integrated with the autopilot.  I put about 180 hours on it in the last year.  Four trips to DC (In-Laws live there), A few to Miami (my parents live there), and a lot of shorter trips in between.  Once at altitude I typically I can lean for 13-16 GPH and see around 145-155 TAS.

I started off using my IPad Pro, but found it too big for the cockpit.  There was no place to put it so I kept it between the seats and pulled it out to review.  I ended up buying an IPad Air with cell service which is still big but I can mount it with a suction cup.  The cockpit of the Saratoga is a bit odd around the windshield/Dash and ideally the IPad Air would be more friendly for space, but we have decided to upgrade to a new airplane and it will accommodate the IPad Air.  On trips I can do all mission planning on the IPad and I use it in the airplane with Foreflight running as a back up. 

As folks have stated above the Bose A2s are great, pricey but they fit is great and the ANR is superb.  I tried a few in-ear options, forget the brand name, but didn't like them.

My wife's college sorority was having a big get together in the Fall so I flew her to Tallahassee.  She is a nervous flyer and at one point said, "it would be a lot better if you had a plane with two engines"...Again Yes Ma'am so I started an upgrade search.  I looked at a bunch of options and I am signing a contract for a new SR-22 this week.  Yes I know single engine but with the CAPS system I think it hits her "safety button" STS.

I'll share my thoughts on the upgrade search and what lead me to the SR-22.  We want to travel and we have another couple that usually goes with us.  Useful load and range were driving factors.

I was going to buy a Baron G-58.  Great airplane, fast, and a fully integrated G1000 system.   It also has better takeoff performance than the Cessna's.  My home base airfield is only 3700' and while I could safely operate a 310 or some of the other Cessna options, the margin would be much smaller.  I knew the cost factor would be higher for maintenance and fuel, but again it was insurance that was double that of the SR-22.  It has a great useful load until you start accounting for all the extra gas you have to take.  It was also the fastest option, although at double the fuel burn.

I really wanted the Diamond DA-62, in fact, it wins hands down on all the performance, fuel burn, and operating cost factors.  Single engine climb is well over 600 FPM, Cruise speed is superb, great useful load, tons of room inside and it sips 11.8 GPH of Jet-A at altitude.  It has one major drawback that for me was a show-stopper, it has a HUGE fucking footprint.  With a 49'3" wingspan there is only one hangar on my field that it will fit in and that hangar has been rented by a company for 12 years.  They are building a bunch of new hangars on my field, but they are all too narrow...I will not leave an airplane that expensive outside.  Finding a suitable hangar was going to create an hour plus drive at about triple the hangar rate I pay now.

Previous to this I was not a big Cirrus fan to start with.  A great friend and UPT classmate was their chief test pilot and was killed in one.  They have come a long way and as I started to look the SR-22 met all of my performance wants.  It is FAST for a fixed gear airplane...170 TAS at between 16-17GPH.  Faster by far then my Saratoga with a minimal increase in fuel burn. Reasonable insurance (as long as you do the training).  Also, depending on configuration, it has the best useful load of any of the other options I looked at.  I am getting a new normally aspirated SR-22 G6.  Flying in the south I don't need the turbo or icing system (which is very high maintenance by the way).  I will still have oxygen if I want to jump up to 16K and grab a tail wind.  Dropping the turbo and FIKI icing system bumps my useful load to 1269 pounds.  I will be able to easily take my wife and our friends, all their bags and almost a full bag of gas which lets us range Charleston, Key West, Charlotte, DC, Nashville, Dallas non-stop.

One other thought in my long rambling post, airplane prices are high right now because of USERRA.  If you purchased an airplane by the end of 2020 you could use it as part of a business and go back five years of offset profit on your taxes.  Baron Prices are very high, same with the SR-22.  I was looking at a 2018 SR-22 G6 and when compared to a new one I can get a new SR-22 for about $60K more, but it will be in my color scheme, have zero time and Cirrus is throwing in a five year tip to tip warranty.

Good luck brother and hope to see you out there.

 

 

 

[SocialD]

2 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Welcome to the party Brother. 

Last year my wife said, you are grumpy since you retired, just go buy your damn airplane.  Yes Ma'am!

I almost bought a Lancair 4P

I ended up buying a Piper Saratoga TC II. 

 

Awesome writeup Clearedhot!  Quick question, did the Columbia (300/350/400) come up in your search?  If so, do you glean any insight for/against it?  Thanks!

[ClearedHot]

46 minutes ago, SocialD said:

Awesome writeup Clearedhot!  Quick question, did the Columbia (300/350/400) come up in your search?  If so, do you glean any insight for/against it?  Thanks!

Yes I looked at the Columbia/Cessna 400.   They are a bit faster than the SR-22 but they have a few drawback in my opinion.

1.  Again high wing loading so keep the traffic pattern in mind and they like much longer runways. 

2.  Not many of them out there and the ones that are available had a lot of hours or were close to an engine overhaul.

3.  Without an extra engine or system like CAPs, I was not hitting the safety aspect my wife wanted.

4.  The useful load is a very close to my Saratoga.  I believe the ones with AC and ice protection have a useful load of 1050-1100.  With full gas you only have 460LBS for crew and bags.

5.  Higher insurance cost. 

Overall a good plane and perhaps a better fit if there are only two people traveling.

 

[Royal]

Boys, I'm looking to get into GA sometime in the future. I've had my eye on high wing tail wheels. An S-21 would be awesome, but they seem to be rare on the used market. Any pitfalls or things you wish you would've known before getting into something like a 180, Cub, or Maule?

[brabus]

As always, what’s the 90% of the time mission? 2 or 4 people, lots of hauling weight (or not)? Go places requiring IFR a lot, or looking for primarily VFR fun flying?

Edited February 27, 2021 by brabus

[Royal]

44 minutes ago, brabus said:

As always, what’s the 90% of the time mission? 2 or 4 people, lots of hauling weight (or not)? Go places requiring IFR a lot, or looking for primarily VFR fun flying?

Meant to address that: Almost exclusively VFR fun flying with occasionally a passenger. Hauling very little weight, but might want the option to take some camping gear if I get into the back country thing. I've seen some excellent -180s for sale, but the S21 looks hard to beat.

[brabus]

180 sounds severely overkill for what you’re looking to do (and I love 180s). S21 looks cool, but do you have 690 hrs of time to build one?

How about a Super Decathlon? Aerobatic TW with overall great performance. 10 gph doing aerobatics, 8-9 gph cruising only a few knots slower than a 180 (which is burning about 13-14 gph). If you don’t care about aerobatics and just want to cruise around, how about a cub? I think either of those would far better fit your mission, and at a significant cost savings (purchase, operating, Mx). Also less headaches in a simpler plane (as a general statement).

Edit: Forgot about RV-7/8...I don’t have personal experience, but they seem like a fantastic airplane that meets everything you’re looking for with the added benefit of full IFR capability and experimental. 

Edited February 28, 2021 by brabus

[Royal]

2 hours ago, brabus said:

180 sounds severely overkill for what you’re looking to do (and I love 180s). S21 looks cool, but do you have 690 hrs of time to build one?

How about a Super Decathlon? Aerobatic TW with overall great performance. 10 gph doing aerobatics, 8-9 gph cruising only a few knots slower than a 180 (which is burning about 13-14 gph). If you don’t care about aerobatics and just want to cruise around, how about a cub? I think either of those would far better fit your mission, and at a significant cost savings (purchase, operating, Mx). Also less headaches in a simpler plane (as a general statement).

Edit: Forgot about RV-7/8...I don’t have personal experience, but they seem like a fantastic airplane that meets everything you’re looking for with the added benefit of full IFR capability and experimental. 

Appreciate the insight, dude; the Decathlon would probably be a good choice...I've had my eye on RV-8s too.