Air-to-Air M600

Lowflynjack

Lowflynjack

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Oct 28, 2014
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Jack Fleetwood
This was a fun photoshoot with a really nice guy. I couldn't afford this plane if I lived three times, but I captured it in my own way!

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Maybe Piper should give you one, seeing as they’re a lot easier to sell after someone sees your pictures.
 
Nicely done @Lowflynjack

It's a great looking bird but there's no useful load left with full tanks. That's one plane you can't fill if you want to take people somewhere.
 
Nice!! Where are you located again? I’m in TX for a week, but I have no desire to wash the underside, lol.
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
Nicely done @Lowflynjack

It's a great looking bird but there's no useful load left with full tanks. That's one plane you can't fill if you want to take people somewhere.
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Yeah, it follows the aviation rule... it'll fly with half of the seat full. He said a lot of people take the rear facing seats out.
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
Nicely done @Lowflynjack

It's a great looking bird but there's no useful load left with full tanks. That's one plane you can't fill if you want to take people somewhere.
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I don't think that is accurate. Full fuel (260 gal) leaves about 550-600 payload and at 260kts will cover more miles than a bladder can handle. Drop the fuel to 200 gal and have near 3hrs (with IFR reserves) at 260kts and the payload gets to near 1000lbs. I see plenty of utility with those numbers. @Rockymountain can provide more factual information.
 
robin ardoin said:
I don't think that is accurate. Full fuel (260 gal) leaves about 550-600 payload and at 260kts will cover more miles than a bladder can handle. Drop the fuel to 200 gal and have near 3hrs (with IFR reserves) at 260kts and the payload gets to near 1000lbs. I see plenty of utility with those numbers. @Rockymountain can provide more factual information.
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I think you made his point! With full tanks, you're saying 550-600 payload. That means you could fill all six seats as long as everyone weighed 100 lbs! Even at your higher number, 1000 lbs, each person would have to average 160 lbs. Not likely in today's society!
 
Jack, He did not specify full seats but full fuel. Yes, limited payload on full fuel but certainly this aircraft has great utility when flying with different combinations of fuel/passengers/baggage. We all know that in typical pilot flown GA aircraft one must choose a combination of fuel and passengers/baggage.
 
One arrived at a local flyin Saturday with all seats filled. Granted they were mostly teenage boys except for the pilot and I don't know what their fuel range was but the fact is not much could do the same job at the same speed in the same level of comfort.
 
robin ardoin said:
Jack, He did not specify full seats but full fuel. Yes, limited payload on full fuel but certainly this aircraft has great utility when flying with different combinations of fuel/passengers/baggage. We all know that in typical pilot flown GA aircraft one must choose a combination of fuel and passengers/baggage.
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Jack got my point. At full fuel you basically have 2 passengers. Like I said, it's thr type of bird you probably don't keep full of fuel. My Lance with full fuel can handle over 850 lbs of people and stuff. I mostly fly it full of fuel because it rarely limits me to what I want to do.

It was just an observation based on my norms.
 
OMG beautiful!!! Who has this airplane? And can we go flying together. That is just beautiful!!
 
Beautiful!

I’ve always wondered when photographing faster planes, them being at the lower end of the airspeed range, whether their higher deck angle makes it more difficult to take the pictures?
 
kaiser said:
Beautiful!

I’ve always wondered when photographing faster planes, them being at the lower end of the airspeed range, whether their higher deck angle makes it more difficult to take the pictures?
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It can. In this case we kept the 182 maxed out and he was able to keep his plane clean.
 
Pretty simple flight for this one, not too many turns!
 

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The range payload combination on the M600 is exceptional. Full fuel you can carry about 550 in the cabin, but full fuel is over 7 hours of fuel, and if you pull the power back a little around 1650 nm of range. But you very rarely need full fuel. As mentioned above 1000 lb in the cabin leaves about 1000 nm of range. At GW you are still climbing 2000 fpm on a cool day, so the limitation is not performance, but stall speed. This is the longest non-stop that I have done in an M600 is Anchorage AK to Ogden UT just outside Salt Lake City UT landing with 1.5 hours fuel 1865 nm. The first half of the trip was headwinds as well. I routinely make Ogden Utah to Florida destinations non-stop, although always have to make one stop coming back with headwinds. I have had all 6 seats filled many many times, but usually try to plan 3-4 hour legs, because with that many onboard, someone will usually want a tech stop.

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For any engineering geeks, the M600 is a very strong airframe. In order to get the 250 KIAS 0.55 Mach Vmo/Mmo, they had to modify the airframe quite a bit from its Meridian heritage. The wing is quite obvious, with 3 machined spars from solid billets of aluminum, but you don't see these lines (red arrow) on Meridians either. In talking with the CEO, he said it was not their most refined work, as most of the strength was hidden inside, but they had to place reinforcing longerons on the fuselage to handle the extreme forces on the fuselage at Mmo. Most will never see or notice those, but that is where they came from.

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Lowflynjack said:
Nope, not yet!!
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getting some stick time would be cool but....prob no matter though.....awesome machine, but I recon it would be about like riding in an airliner, up high like that.....
just trying to make you feel better ;)
 
Brad W said:
getting some stick time would be cool but....prob no matter though.....awesome machine, but I recon it would be about like riding in an airliner, up high like that.....
just trying to make you feel better ;)
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I've got a lot of planes in my logbook and it would be fun to add this one, especially on someone else's dime! We flew down low for the photoshoot and he said because of that, he burned 50 gallons!
 
Lowflynjack said:
I've got a lot of planes in my logbook and it would be fun to add this one, especially on someone else's dime! We flew down low for the photoshoot and he said because of that, he burned 50 gallons!
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:p:p Sometimes people ask me how much "gas" does it take to go from A to B. I give them an honest answer, and they usually say not bad, in line with airline travel. I don't usually tell them that the cheapest thing about a new turbine is the fuel burn. ;-) The M600 does come with 5 years free maintenance that covers all SB's AD's annuals, service and parts, minus a few expendables, as well as first year training. so is pretty nice from a turbine perspective. But the real costs are cost of capital, insurance, and except for the last few unusual years, depreciation.
 
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