A Piper PA46 partnership is being formed in the San Antonio area. Two to three partners are being sought to purchase either a Piper PA46-310P Malibu or a ’90s model Piper PA46-350P Mirage.
The Piper PA46 Malibu is the original Piper PA46 airframe. It is equipped with a Continental TSIO 520, 310HP engine (though many have been upgraded to the Continental TSIO 550C engine, which is a great upgrade), is complex, and pressurized (the best feature about the airplane!). The six seat airframe travels around 185-190 KTAS at FL200 on 16-17 GPH, giving an incredible range with 120 gallons of fuel.
The Piper Mirage is what Piper designated the PA46 when it switch to the Lycoming TIO 540 350HP engine in 1989. The airframe remained the same, but the engine eeks out a few more KTAS at 22-25 GPH depending on how high the cruise altitude is.
Both the Piper Malibu and the ’90s model Mirage are equipped with the KFC 150 autopilot. A lot of the Piper PA46 airframes still have a Garmin 530W/430W or dual 430Ws, but a large number have been upgraded to the Garmin GTN 750/650, while a few have opted for the Avidyne IFD 540/440 GPS units. There are a fair number still with steam gauges, while some have upgraded to Aspen units or the Garmin G500 or G500TXi.
If you are located in the San Antonio area and interested in a 3-4 way partnership on a Piper PA46, please Contact Us. The purchase price will be between $300,000-$450,000, so only interested parties that can afford a budget of $100,000-$150,000 please.
The plane will be based at Stinson Field (KSSF) or New Braunfels (KBAZ).
Texas Top Aviation was at the AOPA Regional Fly-In at the San Marcos Regional Airport (KHYI). If you weren’t there, you certainly missed out spending time with 2,500 other airplane and flying enthusiasts!
The day began somewhat gloomy and windy with the threat of rain. Organizers feared that weather would keep a lot of people from coming. Boy, were they wrong!
There were many classic airplanes, many modern and pretty nicely equipped airplanes, and everything in between. There were aviation celebrities, Rod Machado and the Kings of King Schools fame, to name a few. Not to mention the fabulous BBQ!
Texas Top Aviation had several drawings for free training and 3 lucky winners. We also had a Lancair Super ES for sale, N132BB (which made the San Marcos Record newspaper!). It definitely stood out with it’s unique paint job. The flames on the tail drew many oohs and aahs.
Departing the San Marcos Airport after the fly in was like battling traffic in Austin at rush hour (though, Austin doesn’t have any air traffic controllers). The San Marcos controllers probably hadn’t seen that much traffic since the airport was an Army Air Base back during WWII. It was quite a sight to see all the exhibitor’s airplanes lined up ready to head skyward.
Thanks to all of you who stopped by the Texas Top Aviation booth! It was a pleasure meeting all of you and we look forward to working with you in the future!
Hank Gibson and Russell Moore of Texas Top Aviation
I love Lightspeed headsets. They are very comfortable, durable, and reasonably priced. Plus, when you call Customer Service, you are actually talking to someone who works for the company and knows what they are talking about.
One thing to watch out for with Lightspeed headsets is the Mono vs. Stereo option. On the Zulu 3, there is a very small control panel underneath the battery compartment to change from Mono to Stereo. If you have any kind of modern audio panel, you will definitely want to do this. Here’s why.
I was flying in a Cirrus SR22 G5 last fall with a Garmin 350 Audio Panel. Everything worked fine talking to the ground and tower controllers. Once I took off and was switched to approach, everything went quiet. I could hear the approach controller, but couldn’t transmit. I thought my headset had bit the dust. There was another set in the plane that I switched to, but I thought the transmit function of mine was out.
I sent the headset back to Lightspeed for repair. The headset was still under their 5 year warranty, which is really nice! I got it back a few days later, plugged it in to another Cirrus, and still had nothing. I was getting frustrated, but then a light went on. One of my colleagues had mentioned something about mono and stereo in the Lightspeed. I popped the batteries out, flipped the switch over to stereo, and wa-la! Everything was fully operational.
If you get Lightspeed headsets, you’ll want to make sure it is set on Stereo, as they all come from the factory on Mono. If you get a PFX, there is an easy access button on the side of the battery unit to switch from Mono to Stereo.
In January, Cirrus announced the Generation 2 SF50 Vision Jet. After getting the Generation 1 Vision Jet certified in late 2016, Cirrus didn’t waste any time in starting in on improvements.
The improvements are pretty sweet, making the G2 Vision Jet even easier to fly and step into for Cirrus’ target market, SR22 owners.
Here are the improvements on the G2 Vision Jet.
RVSM Approval
The G2 Vision Jet has received RVSM approval, allowing the airplane to fly at 31,000 feet. RVSM stands for Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums (read more about RVSM here). RVSM airspace starts at 28,000 feet, the G1 Vision Jet’s ceiling. Now that the G2 Vision Jet is RVSM certified, it can fly at 31,000 feet.
For piston pilots, you are left scratching your head as to the advantage of this. In a jet, the higher you go, the thinner the air, so the faster you go, and the less fuel you burn since the thin air needs less fuel to mix with. This caps out at a certain altitude and the speed begins dropping and you start losing efficiency (even though the fuel burn is quite low).
According to Cirrus, at 31,000 feet, the G2 Vision Jet cruises over 300 KTAS and gets a range boost to almost 1,200 nm.
Garmin Perspective Touch+
Cirrus & Garmin have taken the new NXi interface and paired it with the Garmin Perspective Touch to create the Touch+. You can read about the improvements on the NXi here, all of which are included in the Touch+ in the G2 Vision Jet.
The big improvement that is included in the Touch+ is Autothrottle capability. An Autothrottle is integrated with the autopilot. It automatically adjusts power settings and speeds based on the phase of flight without the pilot having to touch the throttle. Pretty cool.
New Cabin
The G2 Vision Jet has a redesigned cabin as well, making it an extremely passenger friendly airplane. The second row has been redesigned and equipped with a center console. There is also a drop down TV screen that allows passengers to connect their mobile devices to it to watch movies or videos while traveling (no internet on board, yet. That’ll probably be the G3 Vision Jet!).
Cirrus also put in more noise reduction in the cabin, creating a quieter ride for passengers. Cirrus also allows for multiple different seating configurations, depending on the needs of the owner.
As always, Cirrus is on the leading edge of airplane technology, creating airplanes that are easy as well as fun to fly. I’m excited to see how they continue to improve the design to both the SR22 and the Vision Jet.
You are hand-flying an in-the-weather descent, power back, heading for the FAF. You start a 30 degree banked turn at your lead point to cross the FAF, when your passenger behind you gasps. Looking over your shoulder, you see he has spilled his drink into his lap…too bad for him! However, when you turn your head back to your panel, your inner ear tumbles and you see 45 degrees of bank, 15 degrees nose low, airspeed increasing.
Congratulations! You have managed to get distracted and sucked into an unusual attitude recovery. By the book, you should roll wings level, pull to the horizon, and adjust power as necessary to keep the airspeed within limits. In this scenario, if you had not experienced vertigo, you might have been able to roll to less than 30 degrees of bank, recover your turn, pull the nose up to less than the original descent attitude, pulled a bit of power to slow back to your desired penetration speed and then resumed your desired ground track. However, this would only be appropriate if you had full situational awareness as to the deviations caused by the look over your shoulder, plus full confidence that the moderate corrective actions would put you back on your desired flight path.
As a military aviator, I learned unusual attitude recoveries based upon hard maneuvering at extreme pitch and bank angles. In the hard-maneuvering environment, an unusual attitude could be 90 degrees straight up, airspeed decreasing below 120 kts…or 80 degrees nose low, 135 degrees of bank, airspeed increasing through 500 kts… etc. In these cases, understanding angle of attack, or AOA, is critical to maintaining controlled flight and returning to a normal attitude.
In an extreme nose-high attitude, a military aviator is trained to roll the aircraft to 90 degrees of bank, ease off the back-stick pressure to reduce AOA, add power as required, and allow the nose to slice back towards level, rolling to wings level as the nose approaches the horizon. If nose low, the recovery procedure is to roll rapidly, within asymmetric g limits, until wings level, then to pull at optimum g loading to recover to level flight. For the nose-low recovery, power was normally reduced until airspeed could be assessed and brought under control. However, when doing the nose-low pullout at 7-9 gs, pulling the power for too long would leave you much to slow to resume combat.
The AOA gauge on a fighter’s glare shield is a primary reference during hard maneuvering and for landing. The AOA for optimum maneuvering is 13 degrees, displayed as the green circle or “green donut” on the gauge. The red chevron on top represents a slow condition of 15 degrees or more and the yellow lower chevron represents 11 degrees or less.
For normal landing in the F-16C, the pilot slows to 220 kts and configures abeam the touchdown point while mentally computing the final approach airspeed of 136 kts plus 4 additional knots for each 1000 lbs of fuel. When rolling off the perch and flying the final turn, the pilot would usually only glance once at the airspeed once to ensure final turn airspeed of 180 kts while using the AOA sight gauge as the primary indicator of a best performance turn. As long as the AOA was green donut (13 degrees) or less, you would not stall. If on speed and 13 degrees wasn’t going to get you around the turn to line up with the runway, you knew you were going to overshoot. You never wanted to see the red chevron of 15 degrees or more as that meant you were too slow, pulling too hard, and in danger of building an un-recoverable sink rate!
Few GA aircraft are currently equipped with AOA indicators, though there are several after market devices available for retrofit. However, knowing the impact of AOA and how to manage it is vital to safe aviating, even without an AOA gauge. The bottom line is, as long as you don’t ask the wing to produce more angle of attack than it can handle, you won’t stall.
Practicing final turn stalls, to know what the wing feels like as you get too slow or pull too much on the controls, increasing AOA past the critical point, will keep you safe when you encounter that unexpected overshooting wind or you find yourself inadvertently on too tight of a downwind leg. Better to overshoot or take it around to try again, than to pull too hard and exceed critical AOA.
Mike Hostage is a retired USAF pilot with 37 years of experience, flying a wide variety of aircraft. An instructor pilot for more than half of his 4800 flight hours, Mike is currently qualified in a Cirrus SR-22T and regularly flies his two homebuilt sailplanes.
The Cirrus Pilot Proficiency Program is once again returning to Houston, TX the first weekend in November. Henrickson Jet Center at the Houston Executive Airport (KTME) will be the host FBO this year. If you are a Cirrus owner in the South Central US, the Houston CPPP weekend is definitely worth your while.
What is it? The Houston CPPP is a combination ground and flight training weekend. With ground classes ranging from engine management, to loss of control prevention, to avionics best practices, an attendee will not lack a better Cirrus education by the time he or she leaves.
The flight training side of the weekend gives an attendee several options. A Houston CPPP attendee can do 1 or 2 flights with a highly qualified Cirrus Standardized Instructor Pilot (CSIP), one on Saturday and one on Sunday (if the 2 flight option is selected). The Cirrus Owner’s and Pilot’s Association (COPA) brings in exceptional instructors for each of the CPPP events, so the training is top notch. Folks who want to take in more ground school, but still want to fly a little bit have the option of just doing 1 flight, either Saturday or Sunday, in order to increase their Cirrus knowledge.
The Houston CPPP event will be November 2nd, 2018-November 4th, 2018, a Friday through a Sunday. The weekend kicks off with a welcome dinner Friday night, then ground sessions and flying on Saturday and Sunday, plus a dinner on Saturday night.
For those who want to challenge themselves, there are simulator sessions available with a challenging instrument approach that doesn’t quite meet up with the normal, ho-hum type of approach.
The Houston CPPP also provides a Partner in Command course for those right seaters out there wanting to learn more about what to do in an emergency situation.
Hank Gibson of Texas Top Aviation will be at the Houston CPPP as a flight instructor. For more information and to sign up, please click here.
The first task I give my new instrument students before we start training is to find a view limiting device that they like. There’s the hood that everyone hates (which has been used since the beginning of instrument training,though it isn’t that uncomfortable) or foggles, which usually end up becoming very uncomfortable very quickly. The headset ends up pressing the sides of the foggles into the side of your head, leaving lumps and scars that hurt for days.
Well, there is finally another solution that combines the hood and foggles. Meet the ViBAN.
ViBAN brags that it is the most comfortable IFR view limiting device out there. I have a customer who has one and he loves it. It’s easy to put reading glasses on underneath while still blocking the view of the exterior of the plane. It doesn’t leave bruises against the side of your head, either.
If you’re looking for something different for your IFR training, give ViBAN a try.
One Comment
How’s the partnership on the Malibu going? Are the parties still in the market for one? I may be interested. I’m located at KBAZ.
How’s the partnership on the Malibu going? Are the parties still in the market for one? I may be interested. I’m located at KBAZ.