Make it an easy transition

No company has built more business jets than Cessna. And while the market has been hard on all used business jets these past couple of years, the Citations have held up as well as any. With the used market beginning to firm up a bit, the time is right to consider a business jet before the best of the lot are gone. The lighter end of the Cessna CJ line—CJs, CJ1s, and CJ2s—can provide great value and, with their respectable flying habits, make for an easy transition to those new to turbines. Light jet expert Cyrus Sigari explores just how versatile the CJ fleet is in “The Deal on CJs,” .

While CJs have great flying manners, they, like other turbines, are fast and demanding, especially when things go wrong. As author Neil Singer reminds in “ Mentoring Matters: Profiles and Callouts,”, knowing instantly what to do when certain things happen keeps you ahead of the airplane and on a safe trajectory.

October 2011
Turbine Pilot Contents

• Turbine Intro: Make It An Easy Transition: Callouts for safety and managing your turboprop
• The Deal on CJs: Legacy Citations make great buys for economical entry-level jets
• Mentoring Matters: Profiles and Callouts: How jet pilots remember what to do, when
• Systems Synopsis: Fuel Control Manual Override (MOR): When a turboprop single’s fuel control unit fails, it’s time to go manual

I’m always amazed at the capabilities of single-engine turboprops. I’ve flown a TBM 700 across the North Atlantic and Piper Meridian over much of the eastern United States. They just soldier on. One of the more confusing systems on most single-engine turboprops is the fuel controller and the corresponding fuel control manual override. In my experience, manually managing the engine’s fuel control is not as scary as some would like you to believe, but you better approach it with a degree of respect. Editor at Large Tom Horne ferrets out the nuances in “ System Synopsis: Fuel Control Manual Override (MOR),”.

If you’re someone who has recently made the transition from pistons to turbines or likes to think such a transition might be in your future, read on. These special edition pages are for you. Only a small subset of the AOPA membership gets this special Turbine Edition—those whom we believe have an interest in reading about higher-end aircraft. In this monthly special edition you get all of the content in the standard editions, plus these extra pages. If you would rather not receive this edition, just let us know at: [email protected]. We’re happy to switch you back to the standard edition.

I hope you learn some new advanced flying techniques and a little about turbine operations in these pages. Let us know what you think at [email protected].—Tom Haines, Editor in Chief