Was just noticing this question again.

Generally, forward CG issues come up if you fly with two in the cockpit. If you mostly fly single pilot, then you may be more likely have aft CG issues.

When they Garmin-ized my Avanti, they basically added enough lead to the nose avionics bay to make the W&B come out the same as before, I think it's around 110lb of lead. It is a bit tail heavy even so. Full fuel plus pilot puts it a ways out of aft CG. I've been carrying 200lbs of ballast bags under my front couch. A second pilot would do the same, but I rarely fly with another pilot.

If I have a full load of pax, I could do away with my 200 lbs or at least some of it. But no way could I do away with the lead in the nose. With more fuel the CG moves significantly aft.

I know a local Avanti II pilot who showed me his W&B app. Interestingly, both his empty weight and empty CG were IDENTICAL to mine (weirdly so, actually). So something about them must trend that way. I think the earlier models with the ACM have a little more forward CG, i.e. roughly s/n 1046 and prior.

Anyway - I don't think you'll have much problem with forward CG unless you load up full of pax and have two in the cockpit. Aft CG with a light load and full fuel is definitely an issue. I have been contemplating adding another hunk of lead to the nose so that I could get rid of more ballast under the couch, but portable vs permanent ballast is more flexible so I probably won't. I wish I could find 50lbs or so in the extreme tail to jettison.

TruBlu battery was approved in a press release for Evo but I have been unable to get any other info. I think it takes about 50lbs.

I was in contact with Trublu about getting an STC maybe 3 months ago. They were willing to develop an STC and use my plane as the test bed...said it would take about 6 mon for logging tests etc.

In the end, I just went concord due to the time commit but it would be a great replacement if someone was more willing.

The money doesn't work out.

TB44 battery with LFP cells from Tue Blue Power costs $18K has 8 year useful life (per their spec sheet), $2250 per year, weighs 52 lbs

RG-380E/44 AGM lead acid battery from Concorde is $3600 and lasts at least 3 years, $1200 per year, weighs 86 lbs.

My Concorde battery is kept on a batteryminder and is in its 5th year now, last cap test 3 months ago was 101%. If it lasts 5 years, that's $720 per year.

It is a lot of money to save 34 lbs.

LFP cells would make a decent airplane battery, would be great for starts, but the cost here doesn't work out for the benefits.

Mike C.

As Mike pointed out, it would save roughly 30-35 lbs but the battery isn’t far enough aft of the cg to make a ton of difference. And $18k is a lot for a battery. But maybe when my battery is due I’ll think about it.

Piaggio has a ballast kit that can be installed in the tail stinger up to 30 kg (66lb). I kinda wish I found that installed, but I didn’t.

They offered a significant discount if you collaborated on the STC. It was much less than 18K, which almost made sense.

Not having your plane for 6 months kinda offsets any discount there though…

Well my planes has been done for for 20 of the last 24 months so I'm used to it!

But yeah, it is a significant time commitment that was too much for me.

New sale attempts and receivership extended.
https://www.flightglobal.com/business-aviation/italian-government-sanctions-third-attempt-at-piaggio-sale/153206.article

This is a long shot, but…

Any of you industrious P180 owners happen to have a component manual for the AC Controller? This is an AC electrical switching gizmo that controls the failover from primary to secondary inverter.

I heard a rumor that Textron may be interested. Dunno it’s veracity. Also not sure if it would be a good or bad thing, but probably good overall if parts supply chain got improved.

I think the best owner would be someone who doesn't have competing products in the same category, which makes me think Textron would be a bad choice. Now, you talk Gulfstream or Daher, then I think we have a better scenario.

Daher seems like a fit. They have money, they are based in Europe, and it would be a good step up airplane from the TBM.

The problem is they'd need to make some investments into the plane to make it competitive as a new purchase and I'm not sure that will ever pencil out.

Perhaps. I suspect you are thinking along the lines of continuing/expanding production of new aircraft, while I'm thinking along the lines of better parts support. Wouldn't mind some more US centric parts availability and production (perhaps in the long term, substitution of highly expensive bits for more common bits shared amongst brands).

But Daher could be an interesting choice as they have demonstrated interest in expanding their product line (having purchased the Kodiak for example).

I don't have any inside knowledge of Piaggio's potential purchasers, but Textron doesn't make sense due to geography or competing product lines (King Air, Citation) and has a history of removing competing models within their product lines (Citation Mustang, CJ2, Hawker).

Gulfstream doesn't make much sense either as they ended up killing off their smaller jets (Astra/G100, G200) that they acquired from Galaxy. Now developing the G700 and G800, it seems like they want to go bigger rather than smaller.