Weil es vielleicht den einen oder anderen interessieren könnte, möchte ich hier einen Beitrag teilen, den ich im Twin Cessna Flyers Forum geposted habe. In Englisch, aber wer sich ernsthaft für das thema interessiert, wird sowieso Englisch können, denke ich.
Gerne beantworte ich hier auch Fragen zu meinen Erfahrungen mit Umbau, Trust, der Suche nach einem geeigneten Fluggerät, Abwicklung Kauf / Escrow, Überführung, Zoll und zur Cessna 421C.
Viel Spaß beim Lesen!
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Hello friends,
Although not totally new here anymore and owning the plane since December 2015, this is kind of an introductory post sharing my story.
My name is Andi and I have the pleasure to live in the town where the best cars are made (Porsche and Mercedes-Benz :) ), but not the pleasure to live in the country where the best piston twins ever had been produced and AVGAS is almost for free. At my base in Stuttgart, EDDS, prices recently went down (!) to 9 USD/GAL including VAT :roll: .
October last year, my father (80 years, still holding a ME/IR) and me (46 years, flying for 30 years) decided to upgrade from a Seneca III to a pressurized aircraft. We use the aircraft about 60 % for business and the rest for personal transport. That was when I became a member of TTCF and I appreciate the expertise that can be found here.
20 years ago, I flew a C421C for a small company and my father and me occasionally rented a C340A and a C421B. I also flew a C303 for a small executive charter company for a couple of years in the 90s. We considered P Barons, Dukes, Aerostars, C340 and C414, but finally opted for a C421C. That is what happens when you ask your wife (“It has a potty! Great!! … The Aerostar is so tiny inside… You mean we can talk without headsets? Really? …. We can be above most of the weather crossing the Alps and Kevin is still getting enough oxygen? I love it!”). Well, the Golden Eagle has always been my dream to own.
We preferred a non trailing-link gear (because of useful load). Compared to a Seneca, all Cessna twins I know do have auto-land. We couldn't find a plane meeting our search profile in Europe and I love the States, passed my US ME/IR in 1993 at Daytona Beach and was open for an adventure, and controller.com showed so many nice planes in the US.
We online checked a couple of C421C and finally put N100L on top of our list: a 4000 hours TT airplane with low time engines and in a very nice shape in and out. We flew to Maryland, checked plane and all logs, cancelled our 3 back-up occasions scattered across the US and bought N100L.
Since this is a positive forum, I want to skip some negative experiences related to the part after signing.
Before Christmas, I flew the aircraft to Southeast Aerospace at KMLB near Orlando, FL. I had previous experiences with them and they have an excellent reputation in Europe (as well as Avionik Straubing if you are in Europe). Extensive avionic upgrades and some overhauls and repairs had been scheduled:
Main items for repair, maintenance + overhaul:
All new engine controls (except for one throttle cable), new heated windshield (was promised to work but obviouisly didn't), overhauled magnetos on one engine, one new turbocharger, rigging of ailerons, removal of all unnecessary antennas, LED lights (except for Nav / Strobes - still looking for a solution for this), prop synchrophaser, L fuel selector (not shutting off), L X-feed shut-off (light fuel leak, scary!, + not shutting off), sealing the cabin and doing extensive checks together with an annual inspection. We also put wheel covers on the bird.
Avionics:
The aircraft basically had one GTN 750, an S-Tec 60-2 autopilot, radar altimeter and a GDL69 for receiving XM weather (not working outside of North America, unfortunately) and a lot of old stuff we wanted to replace (Radar, Com, VOR,).
We decided to get:
Aspen PFD1000 with altitude preselect for the S-Tec 60-2 (using an Avionik Straubing APS4A interface), a second GTN 750 including Jeppesen Charts, Garmin GWX 70 weather radar with 12 inch antenna + ground clutter suppression, Garmin TAS 825, Stormscope WX500, JPI EDM-960, Flight Stream 210, a DME and Led lighting for the remaining instruments and interior.
Further: new leather for the glare shield, refurbishing of all placards and EL panels, …
The removal of all the old cables, inverters, a FliteFone III, belly beacon and other things, followed by putting in all the new stuff resulted in an increase of useful load of 60 pounds: BEM is 5158 lbs, CG 151.6 in. Given a MRM (ramp) of 7500 lbs, that’s a lot you can do with this aircraft.
Originally, we wanted to fly the aircraft to Germany in March, but because of the findings of insufficient previous maintenance (at least compared to our requirements), we decided to really go into details. Some people previously working on the aircraft really knew how to use scissors: they cut the stabilization of the radar, they cut the wiring to the (inop) prop synchrophaser and they cut the water dumping of the former galley, not sealing it. That's a .35 inch hole in a pressurized cabin!
Another problem turned out when PPG postponed our heated acrylic windshield twice and finally had to admit that they had to stop production for some quality issues. We decided to put in the glass shield we’d ever wanted, but converting AC to DC so far had seemed to be too expensive. Now we have it (the windshield, not the money anymore).
My elder son Oliver, 26 years, and me went to Southeast Aerospace to pick up our Golden Eagle mid of June, but during check-out the shop and the both of us discovered a couple of issues, including an inop Aspen box (EA100, for stabilization of the weather radar) and an inop backlight of the new GTN 750. Together with a couple of squawks, we spent some days in Florida, doing 3 check-out rides with a long check-list on the iPad. The people at Southeast Aerospace really did the best possible to sort out everything and finally, we had a perfect airplane to cross the pond.
We bought a new Winslow 6 (overload: 9) person life raft with canopy, foul weather window, insulated floor and water maker, vacuum sealed. We had two different PLBs and a sealed Icom Transceiver, which together with the Garmin D2 (a gift by Southeast Aerospace - thank you, Greg!) would have enhanced our chances for surviving if there should still be something that had been missed during the overhaul inspections or all the luck I had so far in my life would have suddenly left me. We picked up immersion suits at CYYR, too.
Performance:
We mainly used 60 % power and were getting exactly book values for fuel flow and air speeds, corrected for temperature and mass:
35.8 GPH, 1590 TIT, 208 to 220 KTAS at FL210 to FL270.
Flying down to Florida after purchase in December, with the ailerons unrigged and pointing slightly up, some more antennas and the old beacon on the belly, having no wheel covers, I was missing about 6 knots.
Our itinerary:
KMLB - KSBY - CYYR - BGGH along the coast of Greenland up to BGJN (to see the disco Bay) - BIRK - EGPC - EDDS.
At Goose Bay we discovered a small oil leak which we tried to fix with a mechanic. We could tighten a loose screw and had a dry engine on the test run. At BGJN there was again oil leaking, a bit more, but not that we would lose oil in a clearly measurable quantity additionally to normal burn. We found a loose oil pipe and suggested the flange of the oil cooler. Tightening it, test-running: everything was dry. We continued to Stuttgart, where our shop finally found an incorrectly mounted oil cooler, which had been changed without loosening the engine by just removing the bolts. The flange sealing had not been pressed on one side, but received excessive pressure on the other side.
Besides this, the aircraft worked perfectly on the trip! Fantastic to fly! I do a lot of hand flying to stay sharp, especially in bad weather and after the IAF, but the combination of the installed components made me get lazy. It's just cool to select the altitude on the PFD and let the rest be done by the GTN and the Aspen GPS steering until on approach, where the 60-2 can easily do the rest down to minima in APP mode. However, it is still an autopilot without redundancy and if the weather is hard IFR, I decided to always do hand-flying.
We had a great trip and my family (wife, little son of 7 years and a Jack Russel dog) and two friends loved the plane flying to Elba (an island in the Mediterranean Sea) last weekend.
I attached some pictures and I’m looking forward for a long ownership and membership.
Regards from Germany,
Andi
