Well I got an interesting discussion going here!
A few thoughts:
- The second hand going rate for a CT2K, only slightly slower than a CTSW, seems to be about £30k at the moment; and comparing apples with apples - a 5 year old 130kn "spamcan" would cost a lot more than that.
- Travelling, you clearly need "group A" if you plan to take significant people and kit in a sensible time. I really was talking about flying for the joy of flying, which I'm glad to say I still do. I have a share in a Grumman Cheetah, which is excellent for that - 2 people 6 hours, or 3 people 3 hours (compared to 2 people 1 hour, or 1 person 6 hours in the CT + nav kit). On the hand for "joy of flying", whilst it doesn't frankly tick the boxes in quite the same way a CT would, my £350 Thruster share, that then costs me well under half what the Cheetah does per hour, comes close enough.
- As it happens, the day before I got to spend an hour flying an Easy Raider
similar to this one; £20k'ish, and solving most of the payload problems (solo with 2 hours fuel on board I was 120kg below MTOW), burning probably slightly less fuel, at admittedly a more pedestrian 70kn or so. I'd make most of the same arguments - lovely to handle, cheap to run, adequate performance, fantastic views - and in terms of quid per smile, much better than any of my group A flying.
G