Okay, very useful information. For an airplane with a reputation for
not breaking down, this seems like a lot of money to keep it flying
1200 hours. Totals $761K or about $140K/year to fly.

I have a friend with a Solitare. What others have said about the training
is absolutely true. You will be dangerous in it without the training. One
acquaintence from long ago lasted about 20 hours in theirs. At the time,
the need for training wasn't fully understood. On the other hand, it's a
hell of an airplane... he routinely kept his at a 2200' strip in Canada.

This airplane has 1000 hp/side. Yet if you mismanage an engine out, you
can get in a situation where you can't climb. This is because the roll control
is by spoiler... the ailerons are actually the trim tabs. So if you
control adverse yaw with the stick the drag goes up and you are coming down.
The more affordable ones have less horsepower. They cruise in the low 20s
where the ice can be pretty bad.

You must act like a professional to fly it safely. (You may grin during the
time, however). Climbing thru 15,000 feet at Vy of 196 knots at 2000'/min
is addicting. It's a real hot rod. An introduction to cruising at red-line!

The engines have long tbo, etc. But you will get blindsided by all sorts
of stuff. Like new fuel pump $10+K. When it fails, you have no choice but
to replace it whereever whenever. You need to have ready access to the 10K.
My friend didn't wince at this. Windshield, many thousands. He had the
problem that the metallic paint stripes on his were generating static
discharge at cruise speed and frapping all the radios. That took a lot to
figure out. A big prop AD costed more than the price of a good piston single.
He spent thousands getting an intermittent out of the very excellent spz500
autopilot. The feds will demand a progressive maintenance plan of some
sort... one does not "annual" such an airplane. Of course, the shop rates
will be higher. That's to amortize stuff like the monstor cabin leak
testing setup that they have at International Jet in Tulsa. It's a
different world. You eat up traffic like nobody's business, so you
want TCAS, etc. $$$$. Be ready.

In fact, if the idea of standing there & flushing $100 bills down the can
one at a time causes any emotional response from you, you are not a candidate
for an airplane like this.

Bill Hale