I flew Twin Commanders doing USFS air attack work and 135 charter, and was a check airman in the Turbo Commander.
The commander feels more like a big airplane; they're comfortable, stable, and have a more sit-up feel to them. The bigger column coming out of the floor with a yoke on it has a big airplane feel, and the turbo commanders in particular are little rocket ships.
The commanders are a little goofy to taxi at first; the nose wheel steering is portioned through the brake pedals. Press the brake pedal a little, get steering pressure in that direction. Press them a little more, get brakes. You can always tell a new Commander pilot because the airplane jerks left and right as people try to use the steering and keep hitting the brakes.
The Commander is a very easy airplane to fly on one engine, and it does okay. I actually had an engine fail in one during a descent and didn't notice right away because the power was back and there was virtually no yaw.
I once had someone tell me the airplane could handle any amount of ice and only lose 15 knots, which I thought at the time was one of the most ridiculous things I'd heard. Ironically only a few days later I had the same person in the right seat when we encountered unforecast icing in a mountainous area. We got an inch of ice in the first minute and lost 50 knots; the props began shedding ice that sounded like 12 gauges firing behind our heads. It put holes in both sides of the fuselage.
With gear and flaps down, the airplane has the glide ratio of a brick; one usually delays the final flaps until landing assured.
The turbo commanders have a habit of shedding the empennage in turbulence, but one should refrain from flying too fast in turbulent conditions, and then it's a non-issue.
The Twin Commander has a habit of having a leaky fuselage fuel tank; I've seen a lot of them do that.
There's a wing root inspection AD (spar caps, wing attach brackets and straps) which is labor-intensive and repetitive. It should have been done on all the airframes, as it's an old AD, but unless they got the work done to make it an easy inspection, it's a pain in the butt. I did five of them, and we cut the wings to make the inspections go faster. It really helped on subsequent inspections.
The Commander has a wide wingspan for a light twin; it's a bigger airplane than most other light twins, and it's heavier, too. They're not hard airplanes to fly, and they're comfortable airplanes. The piston twins aren't particularly fast, but do okay.
I flew one of the airplanes that Hoover used to use; it had counterweights in the flight control system which changed the control feel. Otherwise, his airplanes were mostly stock. I wouldn't recommend anyone go trying to do what he did, of course, but it's a capable airplane that flies very nicely and predictably.
Most of the ones I flew were shrikes. I wouldn't recommend any of the pressurized piston airplanes or the geared engines. The basic Twin Commander is just fine, though.
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