Curious, any idea where this went or what happened to their plane? I always loved the look, saw the initial stuff, and then nothing further until this post much later.

Curious, any idea where this went or what happened to their plane? I always loved the look, saw the initial stuff, and then nothing further until this post much later.

That is the now Walter powered “341” pictured above. Same airframe after being rescued from a scrap yard. I compared some close up pics of it and the external doublers near the firewall match perfectly.

I knew it was previously operated without tip tanks. I saw it with the original wing tips when I sold them the tip tanks that are on it now.

I wonder if it had a fuselage tank for the test flights.[/quote]

It had tip tanks for all but the very last flight, whose purpose was to see how much faster it would be. Was a very short flight because all it had was the original 340 aux tanks.

Bill,
What was the power plant? I think you mentioned it in a previous thread but I can’t remember. I was previously told that it was a PT6 but that is obviously not the case.

WHY? Talk about pissing money away. What altitude is a 421 certified to? What is the cabin psi differential? Doesn’t seem to me that it could go above 25K and would not be terribly fuel efficient at that altitude.

This is gotta be one of the coolest thread to be running on Beechtalk in a while. The damn the torpedoes mentality of these guys dreaming up, designing, and creating these airplanes is super cool. I love it.

A runout pressurized twin carcass seems a perfect candidate for a SETP conversion.

Except for AG, an unpressurized turbine is kinda silly.

Wrong!

I guess then a Caravan, Twin Otter, Allison powered Bonanza, turbine Beaver and turbine helicopters are kinda silly too. Are Turbo-normalized Bonanzas kinda silly too? They too do well in the high teens without the high TBO and virtually maintenance free reliability factor. One also must consider the unavailability in many parts of the world and future price increases coming on the other fuel.

Pressurization adds a lot of cost, weight and complexity while decreasing the utility on many aircraft.

Not all turbine engines are designed with flat rated engines to operate at higher altitudes. Some are more like normally aspirated engines in that regard.

Yep.

Nuthin' dumber than a turbine Bo.

Yep.

Nuthin' dumber than a turbine Bo.

Yep.

Nuthin' dumber than a turbine Bo.

It was two small block Allison turboshafts with a custom made gearbox and custom made props.

Not to one up the "lookit muh twin itza tbm killer now" theme but lookit this real multi to SETP ...

I have ridden in this airplane after the conversion from the conversion

Now there's a safe testbed if I've ever seen one.

Yep.

Nuthin' dumber than a turbine Bo.