Turbo for Little Hills

I found that to be true as well. In order to get de-ice, it was necessary to get a turbo'd airplane and the T was a better performer than a P so I bought one without giving much thought to high DA airport ops. Over time I came to realize the value for such stuff.
aterpster said:
To me, their biggest value is for those who do a lot of flying into and out of inter-mountain west airports.

Sucking on O2 any longer than necessary...well....it sucks. But, getting off safely in July at a place like GWS (or MMH) is a whole lot of safety.
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aterpster said:
To me, their biggest value is for those who do a lot of limping OEI into inter-mountain west airports.

Sucking on O2 any longer than necessary...well....it sucks. But, getting off safely in July at a place like GWS (or MMH) is a whole lot of safety.
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FTFY. :yikes:

Well, yeah. Landing out, in the intermountain west is not a warm and fuzzy thing......
 
aterpster said:
To me, their biggest value is for those who do a lot of flying into and out of inter-mountain west airports.

Sucking on O2 any longer than necessary...well....it sucks. But, getting off safely in July at a place like GWS (or MMH) is a whole lot of safety.
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I agree. I flew turbocharged airplanes because they were necessary for the work I was doing (mapping). But when I was enroute from place to place I almost always flew at altitudes where O2 was not required. I never found that flying high was all that appealing. Of course I really appreciated the turbocharging being based in Colorado.
 
wabower said:
I found that to be true as well. In order to get de-ice, it was necessary to get a turbo'd airplane and the T was a better performer than a P so I bought one without giving much thought to high DA airport ops. Over time I came to realize the value for such stuff.
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Thread creep - this is what I've found to be one of the paradoxes of pressurized piston singles. The turbocharged variants, being lighter weight and not stealing the bleed air for pressurization, are better performers both in climb and speed at the altitudes that benefit the most from pressurization. It would have made more sense to me for the pressurized variants of aircraft to have more powerful engines to make up for this.

The Silver Eagle P210s are good examples, as are the JetProp Malibus. But a 210 with a Malibu engine or a Malibu with a GTSIO-520 (either the 375 HP 421 variant or the 400+ HP Commander 685 variant) probably would've provided sufficient performance to make the turboprop variants less appealing.
 
The P-210 with the 550 STC is getting good reviews to date.

Ted DuPuis said:
Thread creep - this is what I've found to be one of the paradoxes of pressurized piston singles. The turbocharged variants, being lighter weight and not stealing the bleed air for pressurization, are better performers both in climb and speed at the altitudes that benefit the most from pressurization. It would have made more sense to me for the pressurized variants of aircraft to have more powerful engines to make up for this.

The Silver Eagle P210s are good examples, as are the JetProp Malibus. But a 210 with a Malibu engine or a Malibu with a GTSIO-520 (either the 375 HP 421 variant or the 400+ HP Commander 685 variant) probably would've provided sufficient performance to make the turboprop variants less appealing.
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wabower said:
The P-210 with the 550 STC is getting good reviews to date.
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I'd believe that. 300ish HP, as I recall. But you know how I am with more power, and my delusional attachment to piston engines.
 
wabower said:
The P-210 with the 550 STC is getting good reviews to date.
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Don't know anything about that STC. But, the conventional P-210 sure seemed to overheat easily on a summer climbout.

It seems for both performance and pressurization the practical solution is a turbine power plant in some form.

It worked for recips ala DC-6Bs and the like, because the powerplants were huge.
 
Don't forget pax.

I often climbed to 14-17k in the summer just to avoid the bumps. In an NA piston you have to peddle and peddle and peddle once you get above 6 or 7k. 1000FPM all the way up in the T182T, or better in the Matrix, meant less time listening to wife complaining about the ride.

Are turbos worth it? To me, yes. YMMV.

(And yes, all my turbos were intercooled :))
 
The 550 is said to address both issues but time will tell. The cost spread between a bolt-in replacement piston and a turbine is simply insurmountable for a high percentage of owners. A local company is now operating several turbine 210's for trips that were formerly flown in piston twins and turbines. The pilots really like the Eagles but the pax don't share their enthusiasm. Go figure.

aterpster said:
Don't know anything about that STC. But, the conventional P-210 sure seemed to overheat easily on a summer climbout.

It seems for both performance and pressurization the practical solution is a turbine power plant in some form.

It worked for recips ala DC-6Bs and the like, because the powerplants were huge.
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aterpster said:
Don't know anything about that STC. But, the conventional P-210 sure seemed to overheat easily on a summer climbout.

It seems for both performance and pressurization the practical solution is a turbine power plant in some form.

It worked for recips ala DC-6Bs and the like, because the powerplants were huge.
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Works fine in the piston twins, too. The piston singles just don't have enough to reliabily feed it.
 
flyersfan31 said:
Don't forget pax.

I often climbed to 14-17k in the summer just to avoid the bumps. In an NA piston you have to peddle and peddle and peddle once you get above 6 or 7k. 1000FPM all the way up in the T182T, or better in the Matrix, meant less time listening to wife complaining about the ride.

Are turbos worth it? To me, yes. YMMV.

(And yes, all my turbos were intercooled :))
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Valid points, if that's part of the criteria. I'm typically fine in the 7-9k range. But the twins handle bumps better.

Did you have an aftermarket intercooler on the T182T? The TIO-540-AK1A wasn't intercooled. The AE2A in your Matrix was, of course, twin-intercooled.
 
spiderweb said:
That is a good picture, and what I wish I could see more often in the Summer!
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Here's another one for you....
aterpster said:
Speaks for a turboprop.
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Couldn't agree with you more. The budget however.....remands me to carefully fuel and payload plan to keep my OEI service above 14,000, and my gradient decent :(
 

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I think the bigger issue than turbine vs piston is the fact that most piston-powered aircraft are significantly underpowered. While some turbines can feel lack-luster, Bruce's Seneca could have easily been fitted with 250-280 HP turbocharged variants that would significant improve performance, especially OEI. Yes, a weight increase with it, but not enough of one to really matter.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I think the bigger issue than turbine vs piston is the fact that most piston-powered aircraft are significantly underpowered. While some turbines can feel lack-luster, Bruce's Seneca could have easily been fitted with 250-280 HP turbocharged variants that would significant improve performance, especially OEI. Yes, a weight increase with it, but not enough of one to really matter.
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$$$$$$ pure and simple.
 
Anthony said:
$$$$$$ pure and simple.
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I buy that in some cases, but not others. Look at the Aztec: the difference between 250 HP and 260 HP is an RPM setting. No dollar difference.

A TSIO-360 vs a 520 or 540, yes, would have a cost and weight increase. Again, not a huge one given the total aircraft cost.
 
There would be a fuel burn increase too.

I think that when manufacturers design airplanes they are looking for a certain price niche. You could put a bigger engine on a 172 but then you would be competing with the 182.
 
I think they already did.

Everskyward said:
There would be a fuel burn increase too.

I think that when manufacturers design airplanes they are looking for a certain price niche. You could put a bigger engine on a 172 but then you would be competing with the 182.
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Everskyward said:
There would be a fuel burn increase too.

I think that when manufacturers design airplanes they are looking for a certain price niche. You could put a bigger engine on a 172 but then you would be competing with the 182.
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There would be a fuel burn increase, but negligible for the same power. Often, you can get better efficiency for the same power output for a more powerful engine since the more powerful engine would represent a lower % power, so one can run LOP instead of ROP.

You mention the 172, but Cessna put bigger engines in the 172 from the original 145 HP junker, and the result has been a plane that performs very nicely. The same is typically seen for any other piston plane that gets a power boost (see RAM, Colemill, etc.).

When you look at the cost of the bigger engine vs. Aircraft total cost, you're looking at a difference in the realm of 5% or less. Not really significant. Would you really care about the difference of $50k if your purchase price was $1 million and the result was significantly better performance?
 
Ted DuPuis said:
You mention the 172, but Cessna put bigger engines in the 172 from the original 145 HP junker, and the result has been a plane that performs very nicely. The same is typically seen for any other piston plane that gets a power boost (see RAM, Colemill, etc.).
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It would be interesting to see how many people buy the upgrade compared to the standard.

Ted DuPuis said:
When you look at the cost of the bigger engine vs. Aircraft total cost, you're looking at a difference in the realm of 5% or less. Not really significant. Would you really care about the difference of $50k if your purchase price was $1 million and the result was significantly better performance?
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I don't think I will be looking to buy any $1M airplanes with my own money but to scale it down, I would probably be willing to pay $2,500 extra on a $50,000 airplane. However I think the price difference would be more than that. It's more than that on a $25,000 car to buy one with an upgrade engine.
 
Everskyward said:
It would be interesting to see how many people buy the upgrade compared to the standard.

I don't think I will be looking to buy any $1M airplanes with my own money but to scale it down, I would probably be willing to pay $2,500 extra on a $50,000 airplane. However I think the price difference would be more than that. It's more than that on a $25,000 car to buy one with an upgrade engine.
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Judging from the popularity of the 180 HP conversions on 172s, it seems the answer is many. Same for the RAM STCs.

In a $50k plane, you're looking at the used market, where it's hard to draw a close comparison. The price for a manufacturer to do something is much lower than for an owner after the plane is out there. As far as resale, though, it seems that engine upgrades do little for resale value when compared to other factors.

The new car comparison is a good one, where you look at 10% or more typically. Of course, the upgraded engine on the new car typically has other bells and whistles rather than just the engine. On a truck where you can get just the engine it's usually still in that 5% range to go from the smaller gas engine to the bigger one.
 
flyersfan31 said:
Don't forget pax.

I often climbed to 14-17k in the summer just to avoid the bumps. In an NA piston you have to peddle and peddle and peddle once you get above 6 or 7k. 1000FPM all the way up in the T182T, or better in the Matrix, meant less time listening to wife complaining about the ride.
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. . . and at 17k, you'd get a lot fewer complaints if oxygen is unavailable!

JK! I'd love to have a Matrix!
 
Everskyward said:
There would be a fuel burn increase too.

I think that when manufacturers design airplanes they are looking for a certain price niche. You could put a bigger engine on a 172 but then you would be competing with the 182.
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Texas Skyways still says "Coming Soon" for the IO-550N on a 182... that'd be a monster.

Only eligible aircraft are the 182S and 182T, however. Which is also interesting.

http://www.txskyways.com/downloads/New-310-Horsepower-IO-550-Video-Transcript.pdf

Of course, they also do the IO-520 in the 182, which is a much more modest update, but the change in TBO is the kicker to 2500 hours for those who care about TBO.
 
Typically, STCs that change the engine manifacturer are colossal failures. The one exception I think is the O-300 172s to O-360s. The disposal of the old engine and outright purchase of the new one is difficult to execute cheaply. Meanwhile, sticking to the same manufacturer usually allows for a dissimilar core charge that works fine.

Doesn't Wipaire have an IO-580 STC on 182s? Or is that only for planes they do the float conversion on?
 
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