Pilatus P3 is a great plane, I used to own N135PD. Too bad there aren’t enough of them out there making insurance very expensive, and some of these planes have been turned into high flying and cold weather planes by installing twin-turbo engines in them. Try flying one in any heat above 90 degrees and you’ll need to land every hour for fuel. So those planes now are useless for formation flying with other planes at less than 2000′ because you can’t lean the mixture much worried you’ll fry the turbos, unless you’re flying in winter in the upper states. If you can find one with an IO-540, that makes way more sense than one with a TIO-540 engine.
Here's one we missed in our Sun 'n Fun 2024 coverage. Oxygen bottles rule the general aviation space because pedestrian oxygen generators simply aren't...
Pilatus P3 is a great plane, I used to own N135PD. Too bad there aren’t enough of them out there making insurance very expensive, and some of these planes have been turned into high flying and cold weather planes by installing twin-turbo engines in them. Try flying one in any heat above 90 degrees and you’ll need to land every hour for fuel. So those planes now are useless for formation flying with other planes at less than 2000′ because you can’t lean the mixture much worried you’ll fry the turbos, unless you’re flying in winter in the upper states. If you can find one with an IO-540, that makes way more sense than one with a TIO-540 engine.