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Old 5th Mar 2007, 07:17
  #5 (permalink)  
IO540
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: EuroGA.org
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I would buy a turboprop tomorrow, if I could find one at a reasonable price. The avtur availability versus flying to the further reaches of Europe would alone make it worth having. Instead, all of them seem to be pressurised and thus far more expensive to buy and maintain.

Of course every aircrat owner will state his own preference, which is reasonable since most of them chose what they bought so they obviously chose it for various good reasons.

Personally, I would buy a TB20 or TB21, and would do so over anything else out there today, and this is true for both new and used. I've had one for 5 years. The only exception would be at the very bottom of the certified spamcan price scale, say £30k, where a TB would be a real old dog whereas one could probably get a PA28-181 in a reasonable-ish condition.

Everything flying is a compromise, and a TB20 pushes this further than most in terms of economy, cockpit size, comfort, load carrying, range. It really is a very very good design. But it won't hack it if you want to carry four large adults - you would probably have to run with half tanks, but the same is true for most 6-seaters. If you need to push the load/range envelope then you suddenly have to go a lot bigger.

If you want an IFR tourer for Europe, the choice is actually severely limited. You may also want to look at TKS, for the prop at least, and finally you would generally want the previous owner to have paid for the avionics
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