Axalta Imron 200C Pantone Red 866845 - Added Glass
Axalta Imron 424C Gray 886347 - Added Glass
Axalta Imron N0001 Black – Added Glass

Beautiful paint scheme, Matt. It reminds me of a 900 I used to operate:

Dear Lord Matt - that's GORGEOUS. Makes me want to move down to Cbus just so I can see you pulling that bird out all the time. Are you basing it at CMH?

Yep Don - based at CMH/Lane.

Was hauling the mail yesterday attempting to make last commercial flight of the day back home. Unsuccessful. But it was fun!

What a machine Matt! Lane Aviation is a great place to keep her and I always love flying in/out of CMH. The controllers are fantastic and they're never really crazy busy.

If you were to rank pro/cons of the Avanti over your experience with the MU2, what would that look like for you or is too soon to ask?

Posted a few pages back in the thread by two folks. $75-$125k

I am sure Matt will respond, but my thoughts on the question below, having owned both too:

"If you were to rank pro/cons of the Avanti over your experience with the MU2, what would that look like for you or is too soon to ask?"

MU2 - easier to get parts (in theory, I have not really experienced in practice yet), better ground handling, better beta/reverse, easier to get short field runway performance, rides ever so slightly better in certain types of turbulence (from pilot seat, pax opposite)

Piaggio - faster, better inspection invervals, quieter, better hand flying, faster climb, heated wings, single point fuel, cabin significantly larger, real bathroom, easier systems flow for single pilot ops, flies higher, flies further, burns less fuel per mile, more comfy cockpit once seated, better luggage situation, can cross gen start, amazing steep approach performance, pax thinks you have won the Powerball and it ruins Citation cabins to them forever, slightly easier to manage on one engine, easier to trim.

Both are awesome and if either was my last airplane, I never complain. That said, Piaggio is a completely different class from pilot perspective. I still cannot believe how well it does so many things.

Everything Anthony said. A few more tidbits

MU-2 Capital cost advantage

MU-2 has an extensive owner operator community. Great group of people with similar goals for the airframe.

I think to a great extent the Avanti owner-operator group is here on this thread. Quite a bit smaller. But maybe this is just the beginning?

Now that my plane is sitting at home in LNS, I'm thinking through maintenance items.

Are you guys stocking any regular items like tires etc? Haven't even looked at how common some of these typical wear items are yet. If anyone has a list of what they keep on hand please share!

I don't know what it is, but these planes garner attention. Examples:

I picked the plane up from paint last Tuesday. On Wednesday these pictures show up. https://flightaware.com/photos/aircraft/N2MK

And today a friend sends me this... https://twitter.com/jen_niffer/status/1 ... 52199?s=11

By comparison, our MU-2 had a picture of a Mooney on Flightaware from the day we bought it until the day we sold it.

Looking good Matt!

Regarding the planes performance - yesterday I did 1320nm into the wind, 30kt gradient and landed with 550lbs. Thought I would land with 600lbs but a non-direct climb, waiting too long for the step climb to FL400 and some strange end routing burned a little more than planned. Weather was perfect at the destination and I had a string of airports over the last few minutes, however, I would have preferred to land with 600lbs. I think with same flight plan in the future I would stop.

Due to flying VFR at the end over the class Bravo, I was at about 12500ft roughly abeam the numbers (field elevation 5600) and was able to easily be on speed and glide slope for final. The steep performance with everything hanging out is fantastic.

I bought a phone sound meter app that seems to be pretty accurate. It says Piaggio cabin is 72.5db in cruise, pilot seat 73.25db.

On our flight from KOGD to KSTS yesterday we had some fun. First there was back channeling with Brad who was also headed to KSTS.

Then there was this:

Grip it and rip it. 398 is fast!!!!

Few degrees cooler and magic 400 is in play. What altitude was that?

FL320. We bumped 400 a few times but never got a pic. We ran 375-388 at FL320 most of the time from OKC. Faster as we burned off fuel.

Brad, I remember how you plane sounded on landing...zzzzzzzzzz.

We were at FL340 coming from Sheridan, Wy into Santa Rosa Saturday.
Pretty cool to call up Tony on 123.45 and find he is 40 miles ahead of me.
Near gross on take off.
Speed as high at 386 into headwinds as high as 128 on the nose.

Always great to have tailwinds but still getting 270 knots into 100+ knots of headwind is very rewarding.

Light to maybe moderate ice while hanging out fer a bit at 12,000 feet just before landing.
Yes, with two wings icing is not as simple as some other airplanes but still pretty stress free compared to my previous planes.

Was clear ice and it took me slow brain a bit to realize there was more than I thought.
Ice vanes first
Once I turned on main wing heat it took a whole 15-20 seconds for ice to start shedding.

Wife was a bit wide eyed and I was grinning.