Best Single Pilot IFR Plane

There must be people on the newsgroup that fly single pilot
IFR on a regular basis. These people have a schedule to make
and would rather not miss that schedule unless necessary. These people
don't have the need to carry many passengers, but just themselves.
My question is for these people ...

What sort of planes are you flying?

Mitsubishi MU-2 Marquise.

11,500lb
1552hp
Preasurized
Radar
Known Ice
300kts
31,000'


Mike
MU-2


"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message
...
There must be people on the newsgroup that fly single pilot
IFR on a regular basis. These people have a schedule to make
and would rather not miss that schedule unless necessary. These people
don't have the need to carry many passengers, but just themselves.
My question is for these people ...

What sort of planes are you flying?

Planes with autopilots...
Stuart


"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message
...
There must be people on the newsgroup that fly single pilot
IFR on a regular basis. These people have a schedule to make
and would rather not miss that schedule unless necessary. These people
don't have the need to carry many passengers, but just themselves.
My question is for these people ...

What sort of planes are you flying?

Amen, Stuart! A Navion.



Stuart King wrote:
Planes with autopilots...
Stuart


"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message
...

There must be people on the newsgroup that fly single pilot
IFR on a regular basis. These people have a schedule to make
and would rather not miss that schedule unless necessary. These people
don't have the need to carry many passengers, but just themselves.
My question is for these people ...

What sort of planes are you flying?

"rip" wrote in message om...
Amen, Stuart! A Navion.

Sounds good to me...and an autopilot is being added to mine.

Nice plane!! If envy is indeed one the 7 deadly sins, then damn me!!

OBTW, what's the fuel burn at cruise, and range of your MU2??

"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message
hlink.net...
Mitsubishi MU-2 Marquise.

11,500lb
1552hp
Preasurized
Radar
Known Ice
300kts
31,000'


Mike
MU-2


"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message
...
There must be people on the newsgroup that fly single pilot
IFR on a regular basis. These people have a schedule to make
and would rather not miss that schedule unless necessary. These people
don't have the need to carry many passengers, but just themselves.
My question is for these people ...

What sort of planes are you flying?

Thanks. Range, speed and fuel burn vary a lot with altitude and
temperature, but typical fuel burn at cruise in the mid 20s is 85GPH. No
wind range with IFR reserves is listed as 1395nm but this is unachievable in
practice. A more realistic range number is 1200nm. Coast to coast requires
one fuel stop going east and two (rarely three) going westbound.

The original poster said that he wanted to be able to get places on a
schedule. What that requires depends on where you are and where you are
going, but to me it requires radar, known ice, high altitude capability and
range.

Mike
MU-2


"Windecks" wrote in message
om...
Nice plane!! If envy is indeed one the 7 deadly sins, then damn me!!

OBTW, what's the fuel burn at cruise, and range of your MU2??

"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message
hlink.net...
Mitsubishi MU-2 Marquise.

11,500lb
1552hp
Preasurized
Radar
Known Ice
300kts
31,000'


Mike
MU-2


"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message
...
There must be people on the newsgroup that fly single pilot
IFR on a regular basis. These people have a schedule to make
and would rather not miss that schedule unless necessary. These
people
don't have the need to carry many passengers, but just themselves.
My question is for these people ...

What sort of planes are you flying?

Overall probably the various Cessna Citation SP models.

Best as IFR airplane for me personally means safest.

As far as single engine goes, the Cessna Caravan comes to mind. For
pistons:

TURBO SKYLANE
- very stable
- enough power (turbo) to get out of/over all kind of weather
- very forgiving over-weight and wing contamination (ice)
- slow, which in some ways is safer
- to my knowledge there has never been an in-flight break-up
- landing and take-off possible at pretty much every airport in
existence

Gerd
T182 C-FDOW

PS: Just to pre-empty some of the comments to come; yes, I know it's
a truck but that's the way I like it.

The original poster said that he wanted to be able to get places on a
schedule. What that requires depends on where you are and where you are
going, but to me it requires radar, known ice, high altitude capability
and
range.

I think there are two issues he suitability for single-pilot use and
capability to tackle weather. The two sorta work against one another -
probably the easiest to fly plane IFR is something like an 182, but you're
not going to be tackling much weather. Conversely, a plane like Mike's MU-2
is very capable, but you've got to ante up to very high proficiency
standards. (Mike, are your insurers Ok with you flying alone in clouds?
I've heard they're starting to get very sticky about turbines twins being
flown single-pilot.)

In reality, we don't choose planes that are good for single-pilot IFR - we
choose planes that suit our mission (and constraints, particularly costs)
and then ante up what it takes to fly them safely IFR. For me, a
non-professional IFR pilot who gets maybe 5 hours a year actual in my
non-iced heavy single, this means scrubbing a lot of flights.

I think that is the big fallacy with new instrument pilots - that they can
truly fly in any weather and can meet hard schedule committments. It takes
a lot of airplane and a lot of training/experience to be able to
consistently tackle IFR weather with reasonable risk. I'd guess that on any
given mission, I can make it VFR 80% of the time. IFR cuts my scrubs in
half so I can go 890% of the time, but I still have a 10% scrub rate even
with the the ticket. Ice is the big issue for me.

In reality, I use IFR more for flying security and convenience rather that
tackling weather. It's just a lot easier to file IFR and follow ATC's
instructions rather than keeping track of everything yourself, especially
with all the airspace restrictions these days.

- Mark

"markjen" wrote:
I think that is the big fallacy with new instrument pilots - that they can
truly fly in any weather and can meet hard schedule committments. It takes
a lot of airplane and a lot of training/experience to be able to
consistently tackle IFR weather with reasonable risk. I'd guess that on any
given mission, I can make it VFR 80% of the time. IFR cuts my scrubs in
half so I can go 890% [I assume you meant 90%?] of the time

There's a lot of truth in that.

I've completed a lot of trips VFR that I wouldn't have dared taken if I
didn't have the IFR option in my pocket. That means both getting a
pop-up if conditions change in flight, and the ability to file IFR the
next day or a few days later for a return flight.