I was told that the difference in the PT6-42A in the M500 and the M600 is that Pratt charged Piper more money because the temperature limits were higher but that they are exactly the same in the hot sections.

Here’s one for the piston crowd.

Just me and some gas on a cool morning.

The M600 has a stronger engine mount, and a slightly modified firewall, but same engine. Which resulted in an AD for some serial numbers when someone accidentally used the firewall rivets for the Meridian on a series of M600’s. Otherwise, if you over to work or a overtemp the Meridian and run it by Pratt, they will probably chuckle and say don’t do that again. It is extremely Derated.

In my ‘76 A36 with TAT TN 550 I regularly climb from sea level to 12,000’ in 12 minutes at 120 KIAS.

If I’m by myself she’ll easily do a 1,500 FPM climb in a max rate climb.

I don’t have any pictures since I’m hand flying it solo, but with one on board and a nice cool morning, it’s fun to hold the rv in ground effect and accelerate to 130ish and then pull back for 87 at the end of the runway. It will hit 4k fpm for a few seconds and then gradually settle in to something around 2k as you come back to your Vy speed.

https://youtu.be/zX5KK5RlOvQ

I used to do that in the acrobatic biplane I had and called it a "noise abatement departure" but quit doing it after a friend pointed out that aerobatics (e.g. a 45-60° pitch attitude) in the pattern at a towered field is a bit "inappropriate". It was fun though.

I used to do that in the acrobatic biplane I had and called it a "noise abatement departure" but quit doing it after a friend point out that aerobatics (e.g. a 45-60° pitch attitude) in the pattern at a towered field is a bit "inappropriate". It was fun though.

The field we keep the rv at is untowered but the suburbs have grown up around it so it doesn’t have much in the way of good options if the fan quits near departure. As long as you are spring loaded and ready to dump the nose hard in the climb, it’s probably the safest departure procedure (although not one I care for too much honestly - most of my flights are more sedate and made for business reasons or I have one of my kids with me).

On a single runway field in Alabama, we don’t have issues like that. The biggest traffic jam I’ve had in forever was today when there were two flight school planes up wanting to change the runway direction for prevailing winds. I just chopped the power and made an almost power off short approach and saved an extra 90 seconds of time versus flying the pattern.

Great thread.

Can you hear me whimpering in IO-470-K?

my prop plane climbs pretty well, too! :-)

Nate once bragged to me about taking a group to Muncie in his Cheyenne 400 for lunch. On the trip home, they left the Class D "out the top". Epic!