Best airplane for the money

Well, I'm going to shock everyone and say short body mu-2. Multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars cheaper than a c90, and will pass one like it's standing still.
 
Boris, I'm with you on the Mu-2... my understanding is that it just kind of has a bad reputation from a lack of training, not any necessarily dangerous aircraft characteristics. Then again, I've never flown one...
 
MU 2 got a bad rap because on an engine failure you actually have to retard the operating engine throttle to about 60% instead of increasing power on it. So, people without training hit the gas when an engine failed and the thing would flip over on its back and crash. There's a company that flies one into Bowman here in Louisville pretty regularly and these are the pilot's thoughts, I have no experience with the plane. Horsepower per side was crazy high.
 
I always thought the Pa12 was a great bang for buck ride.

Most of them are in the low teens, and can easily carry 2 guys and bags at a pretty good speed with those short little wings.
 
Goldmember said:
MU 2 got a bad rap because on an engine failure you actually have to retard the operating engine throttle to about 60% instead of increasing power on it.
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I think maybe you misunderstood the guy or he misunderstood the training. It has a vmc just like any other twin. Now, conceivably, if the NTS failed you would need to pull the other power lever all the way back to avoid flipping over and dying, but at that point you're going down (right side up or upside down) and the chances of the NTS failing between the mandatory NTS check and takeoff are pretty minimal, one imagines. The only "tricky" situation, as far as I can tell, is a low speed, low altitude engine failure, which is tricky in any airplane (perhaps slightly moreso in the mitsi, granted).

I imagine the guy was talking about the fact that since the plane uses spoilers for roll control, but has trim ailerons, using the trim is critical in an engine-failure-at-rotation scenario to avoid losing a great deal of lift by having the spoiler on the dead engine's wing up. It also uses very effective flaps to make up for the fact that it has a tiny wing and the long bodies in particular have a very draggy and long gear retraction sequence. All of this adds up to a plane you want to clean up and get moving as rapidly as possible. That said, as you point out, it has a lot of power, and if you're not both slow and draggy, it's really not that huge a deal. At least, I say that now, having never done it "for real".

The plane is a little quirky, but it doesn't have fangs or want to kill you and for the most part it works like other planes.
 
There are some great bits of wisdom to be found on the internets about the MU-2. Example:

http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/195057-mitsubishi-mu-2-a.html

The "Moo Too" has a poor reputation in some circles because it is demanding of good handling and strong instrument flying skills. The majority of those who bad-mouth the airplane have never flown it or been trained on it.

Almost all of the crashed airframes were flown by pilots who did not have proper training on the type and got behind the airframe. Like many other aircraft types, there is a number of accidents where people just do dumb things regardless of the name of the manufacturer on the data plate or are just in the wrong place at the wrong time....the "Fate is the Hunter" syndrome.

The acccident history has depressed the value of the airplane and as a result the type has ended up in the hands of some commercial operators and private pilots who fail to maintain it properly or fail to devote the time required to stay highly current on type.

One other thing to never ever take lightly is the Negative Torque Sensing (NTS) System. It puts the prop on the "Dead" engine into partial feather so the airplane will be controllable while you do the SE drill and do the cleanup drill. Don't EVER fly the airplane with the NTS system U/S and maintenance test flights on the system can be very "exciting" if it isn't rigged correctly. A faulty NTS can kill you and I don't care if you are the best stick handler in the world.

The "typical" MU2 accident is landing short of the runway in a very high sink rate with power retarded. I was lucky enough to fly the airplane for an operator who was very big on training and went to Flight Safety International on a regular basis for 8 years and learned a lot from the sim instructors. At the time, FSI was the only company authorized by Mits to provide type training.

In my inital airplane checkout after sim, during night approaches the training pilot had me pull the power back at the FAF and told me to look outside at the runway for about 30 seconds then look back inside at the VSI ... it was pinned at 4,000 FPM down and felt as solid as if the plane was sitting on the ramp with the chocks in place. That was an eye-opener.

The plane has some peculiarities worth noting. The high idling Garretts have next to zero perceptable sound change with power changes thoughout their power range, and due to the high wing loading the plane feels solid all the time. If you are coming off a light piston twin you'll find it to be a very different animal than you are used to.

All trims and control inputs interact with one another ... sort of like a helicopter. Changing anything causes it to change something else You'll be trimming, trimming, trimming and then trimming some more whenever you make the slightest power change. Noel Springer, Chief Pilot of the FSI MU2 program at the time said "If you even so much as change your mind, you'll have to retrim."

The MU2 will fly you around for the first 300 hours and you'll feel really behind what's happening .... then you'll start to fly the plane rather than the other way around.

One of the times I was in Houston at FSI, an MU2 had crashed near Dallas the night before. We were speculating as to the possible cause and one of the senior instructors said the pilot had died of "Hub Disease" ... I asked what the heck that was and he said "HUB stood for Head Up Butt."
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Other posters are dead-on with respect to mission -- you have to know what you're going to do with it before you decide on which aircraft fits the bill best.

It's all good and well to want to own something that's shiny, new, & high tech like a Cirrus. However, all that cool glass panel time still goes in the "Single Engine" column in your logbook. If that's all you cared about (and wanted to drag 3 other peeps around with you), you could do a used 172 or PA-28 for tons less. I frankly don't see anything (outside of new avionics) that a Cirrus offers at $200K that many other 4-place used aircraft can provide at literally half the cost. The money you save on that loan could be put into better maintenance, better avionics, or just plain old more fuel to convert into fun.

Remember that the purchase price (and the monthly payment if you didn't buy it outright) is actually the smallest portion of what you will spend on an airplane. Your monthly operations, maintenance, insurance, and other support costs will easily sum more than your monthly loan payment.
 
JayAre said:
Im still a fan of the Cessna 210 at least the M model or later. Good range, speed, and payload.
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:yeahthat:

Im tired of hearing Cirrus drivers brag about their airplanes; everything they say I can do, some of it much better than they can, for 1/3 the cost
 
tlewis95 said:
I always thought the Pa12 was a great bang for buck ride.

Most of them are in the low teens, and can easily carry 2 guys and bags at a pretty good speed with those short little wings.
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A PA20 will let you haul youself and 3 other guys around (assuming they're skinny fellas) for about the same money as a PA12. Great bang for the buck if a 105mph 4-place single is what fits your mission.

The Cirrus is nice. Comfy, relatively fast, has a chute and all that. But for the same money you could buy a twin that'll probably offer better load capability and go just about as fast.

Or if yur too scared by the thought of VMC to fly a light twin, you can get an older Bonanza that'll perform in the same class as the Cirrus, carry just as much if not more and cost about 1/4 as much to buy and probably less to operate.
 
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