Ah...I put about 1100 hrs on s/n 98 back in the day when it was almost new. I always thought it would make a good personal airplane. I learned A LOT back then. Lots of stuff I didn't know that I didn't know.

Good luck with it.

He wants to get an F-5 fighter. Read his history into this sort of thing having owned a T-33 and an F-86 Really nice guy he loves airplanes.

So what happens to the IV-P?

Wow nice! Is the 501 type rating the same as the 550?

I believe it is - the 500/550 series is one type rating. Congratulations! Where are you going for training Michael?

Way cool is all I can say. Want to hear more about your experience going forward!

Did you do a pre buy or just starting the post mortem?

I believe it is - the 500/550 series is one type rating. Congratulations! Where are you going for training Michael?

Not a bad airplane at all. Congrats
I've got over 2,000 hrs in 500s, easy to fly, dependable. Like a big C-182. Never really had a serious issue in all the time I flew them. The vertical tape instruments were the only issues that seemed to crop up and then not very often. We followed Cesscom on the maint schedule. Ours was heavy in that we had dual independent FD-109s. I know, I know, dinosaur panels.

You'll learn to fly it by the numbers and not seat of the pants stuff. I should preface that with I don't know your background with jets but it shouldn't be a problem.
500s are just cool basic all weather jet transportation, if jet transportation can be called "basic" :-) If I needed and could afford a personal one, I'd get one too. The time is now as you say. It all depends on finding the right airframe. You'll love the buckets on the back, your brakes will never wear out. Again, don't know your background but an old grizzled 727 capt that I flew with (who was younger than I am now! long time ago) taught me that he never worried about the length of the runway because he ALWAYS touched down at the same spot on every runway (the 1200' mark and he did it every time). I followed his suggestion all through my career. It works.

One item you might want to consider is keeping the temps low on T/O. IIRC (its been 3 decades) we flew out of an 800' msl airport with long runways with normally not full gross loads. If we set normal T/O max RPM we had to pull back just after lift off to keep temps and speeds within specs. We learned by setting 90% at the start that it self accelerated to just about normal T/O RPM just at lift off. Never had to worry about over temp or RPM at most low altitude airports. When we went for Hot Section the manf. part numbers were still visible on the turbine wheels. They never got hot. Never pushed this procedure anywhere we thought we were even near runway limit. It worked for our operation.

Don't sweat the type ride. Easy airplane to learn.

I was trained in the airplane by an experienced friend in the 500 series. I have a copy of the Flight Safety manual and a few others and have read them 5 times (self study ground school). I found an insurance approved CFI (16,000 hour Citation guy) and am taking his course and then taking the checkride on Sunday with a DPE. I like training in the airplane versus a sim.

As far as a prebuy, I boroscoped the motors (1 is 0 since HOT due to FOD), reviewed the SierraCom and did a thorough preflight. I found 90% of the items on my squawk list doing this. Seller agreed to hold some money in escrow to get these items fixed and anything else serious that might have popped up on the flight home. The price wasn't going any lower and my friend has 4 parts airframes so I wasn't terribly worried about anything other than the motors.

IV-P is staying. I love it and have too much effort into making it nice. If it wasn't for my wife's opinion and my lack of a letter from god guaranteeing the motor; it's all I would have. It's not that much slower than the 501 yet burns 7% the fuel!

What is the range on a 501sp?

It's better than an Eclipse; that's for sure. We flew 3.5 hour legs and still had 1000+ lbs of fuel left. I would say it's 1100-1200 miles. I looked carefully at some Williams powered versions but I absolutely refuse to be married to their program. The range on these with the Branson fuel tank mod is 1,900 miles; that's pretty insane. I think the 551 is 1400-1500; is that about right?

With the Williams its about 1200 miles. Id figure 20% less stock

With the Williams its about 1200 miles. Id figure 20% less stock

You are an experienced jet guy. So you know the trade off. Most insurance require SIM time. Hard to do the emergencies (tr deployment, fire bottle deployment , etc) in real life. I could see a TYpe rating in plane followed by recurrent in SIM. But wthdik?