Vince although this site allows people to use handles to cover thier identity it doesn't take long to work out who does what job, what hardware they drive and what their experence is.
Also quite a few meet up for beers. The controller who has given the "other side" of the story not only have I had acouple of beers with but also I have done a couple of hours in an aircraft before they renewed thier SEP and a fine pair of hands he had as well (apart from when he took my head off the ceiling)
You have three issues going on which I must admit most are lumping together.
The first one is your issues with ATC about controlled airspace. You will notice I haven't commented on this. But the posters on the subject from Scottish I can assure you have access to tapes and radar plots of what happened. And I believe you do have issues to deal with this.If I were you I would phone Scottish and ask to speak a manager and find out what they are saying.
The second one is your flight planning of the the route. I really don't see this as a henious crime, like PACE my exposure to the GA community has proved that you are not alone in getting into difficulties on this one.
The third is why the engine conked out when it did. Personally I think it was because of a technical issue linked with inexperence. Your thought proccesses of planting it where you did again comes down to inexperence. I hope they do a full investigation on the trip. If they do I for one will be using it for training other pilots.
Now you questions about turbines. First of all they are very hungry for fuel at low altitudes my own aircaft uses nearly double at 5000ft compared to FL230.
Second propellers are way more efficent than ducted fans which is why the turboprop market is becoming very strong, the whole economics compared to jets is remarkable when you start digging into it. Only down side is they are noisy and pax prefer jets. This is being worked on with active noise cancelation and other tricks.
The operation of a turbine is way more simple than a piston engine. Once you have got it started (some types take a bit more monitoring than others) it really is a very simple one lever operation (variable pitch prop issues outstanding)
So the idea is actually a good one but unfortunatly its not a viable option for VFR low level tourer. For a pilot to make it economic you need to fly high in controlled airspace and we know the dangers of that
