Okay Boris, edumicate me on the MU-2. Capacity, speed, ceiling, SE performance. Not sold on any airframe type yet, looking for the best fit.
Well, I don't have numbers sitting in front of me, but from memory the cargo-door and escape-hatch dirty cargo Marquise will cruise about 275-280 true (with low time engines). I've heard that very clean private ones will do 300. We weren't too concerned about fuel consumption since the fed was picking up the bill, so we cruised 15k-19k most of the time, but the Marquise is good up to 27k (supposedly, anything above 23 seems like a waste of time to me). With the power maxed out in the high teens, it would burn 100 gallons/hour and holds a little over 400 gallons, so with reserves you're looking at somewhere around 3 1/2 hours. Probably more like 4 if you were more conservative with fuel burn. If speed is less of an issue, an L model will cost considerably less, cruise 250-260, burn a bit less fuel, and actually has a slightly better useful load due to smaller, lighter props.
Capacity is hard for me to gauge, not having much to compare it to. A Beech 99 is definitely bigger on the inside, and it's my understanding that a 99 is basically a 100 fuselage, so I'd imagine the 200 would also be bigger on the inside. Cross section is very circular. I loved the cockpit. It's a little bit snug (I'm 5'10, about 160 lbs...it's not lear snug, but it's not KA large either), but I found the ergonomics and comfort vastly superior to the 99. I've only flown cargo versions, but even with the soundproofing torn out, it's not all THAT loud in the cockpit...dunno about the cabin. The 99 is much louder.
Single engine performance is actually pretty good...provided you're cleaned up. SE performance dirty and slow is notoriously bad...basically you want to spend as little time below about 120 in this thing as you possibly can. To make a long and complex story short, the way they got the thing to go so fast on the available power was to give it a little tiny wing. The way they maintained good field performance (and the field performance is darned good, especially the landing peformance) was by giving it full span fowler flaps which increase the effective wing area by something like 25%. This is why the thing has spoilers instead of ailerons. The engine out drill is a little different from what most people are used to...it's imperative to use the roll trim (it has trim ailerons) so you can center the wheel and keep the spoilers down. You can lose a lot of lift by riding one of the spoilers up. I've had to shut one down in cruise (bad fire loop), and it was a total non-event, flies great on one spinny thing.
This article address the "safety" issues with the airplane pretty thoroughly and fairly.
http://sleetapawang.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!BD09644C5F6E196D!731.entry
I'm naturally biased as Intercontinental Jet is owned by the same gentleman who owned my last company, but Bob is a good guy and knows the Mu-2 like the back of his hand. I'd recommend giving him a call if you want to investigate the aircraft further.
http://www.ijetservice.com/
The intangibles: This is a fun plane to fly, imho. You can do 250 up to 10k to sequence with the heavy iron in the approach environment, but you can fly around at 120 in a GA traffic pattern and easily land in 1500 ft. It's built like a brick outhouse...in Japan they regularly go to 300knots due to less restrictive bird strike rules (or so I've heard). Definitely two thumbs up on the intangibles. I'd mention that I've heard from others that MX is especially important on them...you need to find someone who knows the plane and its quirks to avoid wallet-emptying irritations.
Let me know if I can be of any other assistance.
And uhm, if you need someone to fly it, I happen to know this very handsome super-genius with a current 8710...
Still a good little a/c but not quite the Sherpa.
