Page 14 - May22T

Piston to Turbine
When is it the Right Move? Part II by Joe Casey
PHOTOS COURTESY OF CLINT GOFF
Continued from the April 2022 issue...
Y What About the Performance?
ou get a lot more performance in a turbine. The Cessna 210 with a Silver Eagle Conversion is a rocket ship compared to the piston Cessna 210P. The JetPROP
makes that lackluster Mirage into a screaming machine. You can hardly find a Queen Air still flying, but the King Air 90 is found on nearly every airport with a runway over 5,000 feet. And the Royal Turbine Duke makes the piston Duke look like child’s play. Make no mistake, the turbine offers better performance. Any increase in horsepower sends those horses directly to performance if all the other factors remain the same.
And then there’s the experience of operating a turbine – is it really that much fun? Is it exhilarating to advance the power lever on an airplane that has a tremendous thrust-to-weight ratio? It is an experience every pilot should experience once in their lifetime.
12 • TWIN & TURBINE / May 2022
Bottom line, operating a turbine will put a smile on your face. But, the smile wears off after a while. The Van’s RV series of airplanes is a wonderfully designed experimental airplane, and they’ve coined the phrase the “RV grin” to describe the subtle smile they propose is found on the pilot operating an RV airplane. I would say there is also such thing as a “turbine grin.” Even after 10,000-plus hours in turbine airplanes, I still get a slight grin when I advance the power levers on an airplane with a solid power-to-weight ratio such as the King Air 300, JetPROP, Turbine Duke, or TBM 940.
To me, it is less exhilarating and more of an appreciation of what a turbine can do. I’ve loaded up 10 people, a ton of bags, and full fuel in a King Air 350 and the beast jumps off the runway in less than 3,000 feet, travels 1,200 nm, all flying at 300 KTAS...yes, I grin on that flight. I’ve climbed in a JetPROP, made a left turn, and looked down at the airport I just departed and admired the incredibly steep downward angle that my eyes are looking – and there’s