Hmmmm, my experience is different. I guess it depends on where you fly. I do a lot of fairly heavy IMC flying.
At or near minimum approaches or very low viz departures a breeze with SVT. Would probably go to alternate or scrub mission altogether without it.

Depends on your mission I guess.

Just finished a return trip to Napa yesterday and today. Slow as molasses going up with a 50kts headwind at 16000ft. I was seeing 185-190kts GS. Going back today I was seeing 260-270kts GS at 17000ft, much better! I have no way of knowing the TAS as my instrumentation is lacking, but a rough E6B calculation puts it in the 235-240kts zone. Burned about 410-415pph, which is roughly 62gal/hr.

I'm still hoping that once the pressurization is fixed, she'll be able to do 250kts at FL250.

Funny how when I were flying piston planes, 190 groundspeed was not bad! How quickly we get used to more speed....

You realize pretty fast that a turbine powered aircraft is useless at 16000 to get any speed and range, get that pressurization fixed.






Just finished a return trip to Napa yesterday and today. Slow as molasses going up with a 50kts headwind at 16000ft. I was seeing 185-190kts GS. Going back today I was seeing 260-270kts GS at 17000ft, much better! I have no way of knowing the TAS as my instrumentation is lacking, but a rough E6B calculation puts it in the 235-240kts zone. Burned about 410-415pph, which is roughly 62gal/hr.

I'm still hoping that once the pressurization is fixed, she'll be able to do 250kts at FL250.

Just finished a return trip to Napa yesterday and today. Slow as molasses going up with a 50kts headwind at 16000ft. I was seeing 185-190kts GS. Going back today I was seeing 260-270kts GS at 17000ft, much better! I have no way of knowing the TAS as my instrumentation is lacking, but a rough E6B calculation puts it in the 235-240kts zone. Burned about 410-415pph, which is roughly 62gal/hr.

I'm still hoping that once the pressurization is fixed, she'll be able to do 250kts at FL250.

JG had a nice summary. I crunched the numbers five years ago, and ended in the Aerostar.

Hopefully Adam enjoys his plane.

Tim

Just finished a return trip to Napa yesterday and today. Slow as molasses going up with a 50kts headwind at 16000ft. I was seeing 185-190kts GS. Going back today I was seeing 260-270kts GS at 17000ft, much better! I have no way of knowing the TAS as my instrumentation is lacking, but a rough E6B calculation puts it in the 235-240kts zone. Burned about 410-415pph, which is roughly 62gal/hr.

I'm still hoping that once the pressurization is fixed, she'll be able to do 250kts at FL250.

Michael,

I don't currently have any pressurization issues. I did recently have a problem with the indicator lights on my bypass valves. As usual, the chase to find the issue cost a lot more than the fix. The light which shows the valve open/closed on the left engine would not illuminate. We thought we had either a valve issue or a microswitch issue. $560 later, we discovered a bad ground to the light. Such is the nature of airplanes.

But, your post about the smoke machine got my attention. It would seem a good way to periodically check the integrity of the pressurization capsule. But how do you do that at sea level. Inquiring minds want to know.

Jgreen

Patrick , have you had a look at the ADL system from Sebastian Golze?
best alternative here in Europe, not quite as good as the US options but all the users rave about it , including myself! very cost effective
https://www.ing-golze.de/

apologies for the thread drift... and thanks Adam for your fantastic adventures, I have become even more of a Commander fan thanks to your posts.

Patrick , have you had a look at the ADL system from Sebastian Golze?
best alternative here in Europe, not quite as good as the US options but all the users rave about it , including myself! very cost effective
https://www.ing-golze.de/

apologies for the thread drift... and thanks Adam for your fantastic adventures, I have become even more of a Commander fan thanks to your posts.

Adam

We have used Global star from their inception up until about ten years ago when their satellites started to fail, we thought we where having hardware problems which they recommended we replace our equipment and we did to the tune of about 3K and still no joy.

Turns out their sats were failing and in an effort to hide their issues they denied the problems and blamed it on customer equipment failures. Long story short and numerous class action suits later they finally admitted the problems and began to replace the sats the last few years.

Given their current declining financial position I would steer a wide path from Global star. We have used Iridium every since and have no problem getting texts on my handheld model 9575 now in flight and we have service worldwide and never had issues.

Congrats on getting the plane flying.

Gary

Adam

We have used Global star from their inception up until about ten years ago when their satellites started to fail, we thought we where having hardware problems which they recommended we replace our equipment and we did to the tune of about 3K and still no joy.

Turns out their sats were failing and in an effort to hide their issues they denied the problems and blamed it on customer equipment failures. Long story short and numerous class action suits later they finally admitted the problems and began to replace the sats the last few years.

Given their current declining financial position I would steer a wide path from Global star. We have used Iridium every since and have no problem getting texts on my handheld model 9575 now in flight and we have service worldwide and never had issues.

Congrats on getting the plane flying.

Gary

Adam

We have used Global star from their inception up until about ten years ago when their satellites started to fail, we thought we where having hardware problems which they recommended we replace our equipment and we did to the tune of about 3K and still no joy.

Turns out their sats were failing and in an effort to hide their issues they denied the problems and blamed it on customer equipment failures. Long story short and numerous class action suits later they finally admitted the problems and began to replace the sats the last few years.

Given their current declining financial position I would steer a wide path from Global star. We have used Iridium every since and have no problem getting texts on my handheld model 9575 now in flight and we have service worldwide and never had issues.

Congrats on getting the plane flying.

Gary

Adam

We have used Global star from their inception up until about ten years ago when their satellites started to fail, we thought we where having hardware problems which they recommended we replace our equipment and we did to the tune of about 3K and still no joy.

Turns out their sats were failing and in an effort to hide their issues they denied the problems and blamed it on customer equipment failures. Long story short and numerous class action suits later they finally admitted the problems and began to replace the sats the last few years.



Given their current declining financial position I would steer a wide path from Global star. We have used Iridium every since and have no problem getting texts on my handheld model 9575 now in flight and we have service worldwide and never had issues.

Congrats on getting the plane flying.

Gary

It worked great when we first started using 20 years ago but when it went bad it went bad in just a few months. We had no idea why it didn't work all I know in was a royal pain to deal with. We had a hard mount global star in our boat 400 miles out in the middle of nowhere so it wasn't as if we could take it to the dealer it have it fixed and you couldn't call tech support.

Iridium is a substainly larger company with a much larger user base. They may cost a little more but the service is outstanding and there when you need it.

Gary