What a great airplane!

369kts in level flight, 420kts in the descent.

Winter winds of course, but awfully impressive for a piston pounder.

Wow that's impressive!

Lots of 700s for sale lately!! More than I’ve ever seen, looks like a few are nicely equipped too!

Warning If you are interested in an Aerostar. do not go and fly one, it is so much fun to fly and is a BMW of the sky. you will want to buy one.

Warning If you are interested in an Aerostar. do not go and fly one, it is so much fun to fly and is a BMW of the sky. you will want to buy one.

With the amount I've spent to maintain my BMW, that is NOT a positive advert

Aerostars do look great but both my local runway and my wallet are too small to operate one.

[quote="Aerostars do look great but both my local runway and my wallet are too small to operate one./quote]

OK. Josef - how long is your local runway?

we must remember that all the aircraft in this category, pressurized piston twin with de ice etc would cost if built in some volume of 50 to 100 per year would cost 1.5 to 2.5 million and so the maintenance costs etc are proportional.

KJGG Williamsburg VA

2440' (KPAO).

Just not sane in an Aerostar. Is at my personal risk /skill limit in the B55.

Also my budget is creaking under the cost of flying a b55.

Aerostar is a great plane, but just doesn't make sense for me. If it did, Then I'd be thinking about a MU2, which wouldn't make sense.

Alton Bay, NH

https://www.nh.gov/dot/org/aerorailtran ... tonBay.pdf

Josef,

You are making the right decision to stay with your Baron.

2,400’ is pretty short for an Aerostar, and if your budget is tight, the costs involved with getting a new (to you) Aerostar up to speed is likely to take the fun out of airplane ownership.

My plane’s previous owner hangered it at San Rafael (2,700’) and a big reason he was selling was his concern about the possibility of losing an engine while taking off with his wife and new baby on that short runway.

Forrest

Josef,

It has been almost a decade since I sold my Aerostar. However, a mechanic I had, had previously flown charters out of S37 (Smoketown Airport PA) which is ~2.7K feet; which has/had no displaced threshold and had trees very close to the runway. I flew in/out of a 3K runway with tress to the fence line on a fairly regular basis.

As pilots we often I feel get a little lazy and do not correctly break down the actual distances. I know I am still guilty of this, and often include in the pavement distance the performance charts for landing/take off over a 50ft obstacle. If you cross the threshold at 50ft, you touch down 1,000 ft down the runway, if instead you are touching down at the threshold of the runway, you have a lot of pavement in front of you. Therefore, pull the actual POH and check the actual performance numbers.

Further, looking at KPAO airport; you actually have a displaced threshold which gives you additional emergency distance.

So in short, if you are comfortable in the Baron at 2400ft, you likely would be comfortable in the Aerostar. You would need to pull the manuals of both and compare side by side. However, I think you will be surprised by the result.

After you compare manuals, the largest consideration I believe the cost to "shake" out a new plane to you. There is always a cost here, and it seems to be growing every year.

Good luck,

Tim

Don Smith, the old Aerostar guru, used to fly into a 1900ft field regularly, as I recall. That would scare the living daylights out of me.

Been thinking a lot about my old Aerostar recently - miss that bird. They really are special little airplanes. That feeling of getting dumped by ATC high, cancelling and just pushing the yoke over, like a fighter jet, join the downwind at 200kts IAS and in a 60 degree bank is just so exhilarating. No other aircraft feels so solidly built and firm. That sense of total control.