Cessna 210 Centurion - Review, History & Specs! 

Dad's has a 1976 T210. Years ago, he had an incident, gear up landing. He spent almost an hour trying to get the gear down orbiting the field. The breaker kept tripping on the gear and only the nose wheel would slightly extend. He tried everything including negative G maneuvers to no avail. The manual pump was also ineffective and the handle actually broke while pressuring the system. Dad, wife and 2 of my siblings on board. Lots of help from the ground and even in the air observing. Eventually he made a perfect gear up landing, doors unlatched, minimal fuel, everything and everybody firmly secured. 700 feet on a rubberized asphalt runway. 1 prop tip strike, no fire, smoke etc. All recorded on video. The plane was jacked up, placed on a dolly and taken to a hanger. The gear was tested electrically and it worked! It was also tested manually and it worked! The power-pack was removed and sent in for inspection. Turns out that the system has an interlock piston in the hydraulic unit that can become stuck in between ports effectively rendering both, electrical and mechanical fluid pathways fully closed. It is a multi stage system for the gear doors first then the gear. As I recall it only affected 2 or 3 years? Those gear doors are sitting in the hanger. Dad's been flying for over 50 years, is a Navy veteran and flew for the Coast Gaurd Axillary for 22 years. He has recently been diagnosed with dementia and can no longer drive or fly. He remains surrounded by his many flying buddies and veterans and spends many hours a week in the hangers and hanging out with these fine people. I have been blessed with a wonderful father.

I grew up in the 210. Biggest smile Ive ever had was when my grandpa gave me the yolk for the first time. And I race dirt bikes :)

I owned a 1967 Turbo 210G for several years in the 1980s. It was the first year of the cantilever wing. It was basically a 4-seat plane, but with lots of room for everyone. At non-oxygen altitudes (8,000-10,000 feet) it would cruise at 200 mph on 15 gph. Of course, if you went higher (and breathed oxygen) it would go faster, thanks to the turbocharged engine. It also had 90 gallons of usable fuel, so it would travel long distances fast. What a great traveling machine.

Been maintaining GA aircraft full time for 18 years, specializing in 210's. If properly maintained (rigging checked, hoses changed every 10 years, etc) the landing gear is great. By the way, the picture that was shown as the gear pump was actually the fuel boost pump. Overall 210's are still one of the best piston singles in general aviation.

September 1973, 4 of us were in a Cessna 210 Centurion which crashed. Pilot couldn’t get the landing gears to come down. It was at night and a small airport. As he was trying to lower the landing gears manually, he failed to maintain altitude and hit a tree. It rolled wing tip to wing tip 3 times. It also crushed another plane parked and totaled it as well. After coming to a stop, the 4 of us walked away with minor injuries. I’ve never flown in a small plane since.

Always loved the "thump-thump-thump" of the gear doors slamming shut

The retraction of the gear on Cessna singles and the 337 always amuses me.

You did a good job on the video. I learned to fly in an old 172, then progressed into a V Tailed Bonanza, and I can attest to the radical response when I put it in a cross controlled stall at altitude, working on a CFI rating. Bought a 1975 T 210, and after selling a 310 went back to a 210 D model before selling it all and sailing away on a Leopard Catamaran

Great video! Love the Centurion!

rode backseat from phoenix to new york a few decades ago. turbo and pressurized , a bit cramped but a great view

Love the 210

Very popular 210 in outback Australia. Good passenger and cargo capacity at reasonable speed over the long distances in remote areas.

CESSNA IS LIFE TIME BEAUTIFUL

a friend of mine belly landed his 210 because he could get the gear down. as I recall he said a servo got stuck in the middle position between the automatic and the manual deployment

Well done video, Subscribed!

C-210 forever ✈️♥️

Great story. Of course there was one small issue with the P210 that might be under the writers radar. Quite a number of them suffered blown engines in flight! The opinion of the day (1984) was that the continental 520 just had too many accessories hanging off of it. My dad’s partner lost their’s coming back north out of Chihuahua, Chihuahua when the middle cylinder on the pilot’s side came apart. As fortune would have it, the partner was a new pilot flying with a 20,000 hour ex- military pilot as instructor. Guess who had the clear windshield! That was the second blown engine on that aircraft. The first took place during climb out while leaving Santa Barbara.

You won't loose the gear with an engine failure on the early 210, there is the hand pump and the windmilling prop is also capable of providing enough hydraulic pressure to operate the gear and flaps. i don't know why the engine driven pump is so shunned, every car has one to run the power steering.

I guess it was about 16 years ago when I had to drive into Philadelphia….for who knows what reason….and City Hall sits at the confluence of Market Street and Broad Street, and there are court rooms nearby…..and what do I see sitting on the concrete sidewalk next to City Hall, but Richard Collins old P210, “Romeo Charlie.” No wings attached….just standing there, waiting for a jury to come out and look at some aspect of its design, probably involving attorney Arthur Wolk…and I remember thinking to myself, what an ignominious end for such a well-known aircraft.

I Fly the 210 when I’m in Namibia 🇳🇦. It’s a great bush plane ✈️

Pretty good vid however, if you’re going to talk about the landing gear power pack you ought to show a real power pack, not an electric fuel pump!

the wing and gear look very familiar; Cardinal RG

yeh...late Richard Collins had a good service itinerary with turbo C-210😎👏

Strutless 210s are the nicest-looking of all GA singles.

1:03 that was the plane Mathias Rust flew into Red Square on 28 May 1987

It is interesting that innovation continued on in other areas, but in GA aircraft it pretty much stopped, other than the panel electronics. Same engines, same crummy ignitions systems, same crummy carburetors. Same poor fuel economy. Can you imagine trying to sell a 1960s car, new, to a 2023 buyer and telling them you wanted half a million for basically a 1960s Ford. No fuel injection, that's many thousands extra, no electronic ignition, though that is available from the aftermarket, but you have to also have a 1930s magneto and an extra set of extremely expensive spark plugs to work with the weak spark that 'reliable' device produces. Oh, and your dashboard instrumentation is driven by vacuum produced by pumps which will fail, and the system is also prone to failure due to moisture ingress and freezing. Aircraft engine life is terrible. My Jeep engine is coming up on 7,500 hours and has never needed a compression test or a teardown. These GA engines are lucky to survive their TBO at nearly 1/4 of that. Car engines used to be just as bad. A 1960s car with 60,000 on the clock would be pretty tired, it would probably need a 'tune up', which it probably had many times before. New plugs, maybe a valve job, again. Just like an aircraft engine. A modern car engine at 60k, which is typically over 2,000 hours is going to need... an oil change. Plugs still good for another thousand hours. And it probably hasn't once failed to start. if it had very cheap regular maintenance.

Aww no mention of the Silver Eagle? I get it, it's a departure... but still.

Make a video about the b58 baron

We have around 500 hours on our T210N. The landing gear has needed 0 maintenance, just top off hydraulic fluid a few times. It's something that is way overblown.

Solenoids on power-packed need replacement as they get hot and intermittent causing gear malfunctions.

2:51 UMX C182 (rc plane) I have that lil bastard looool

Which (or was there ever one), single engine Cessna had a turbo prop engine in it?

I’d rather have my landing gear down and welded….🤣🤣

I reskinned the belly on one just after it got a paint job and an autopilot. Poor owner hopped over to another airport five miles away for something.... Missed the gear check on the way back to the uncontrolled airport.

Just a dizzy man provide struts to hold wings,the modern engineering use cantilever spar wings, the goal is to reduce drag,not increase.

As nice as the 210 looks I would still take a 182 over it.

That’s the worst airplane Cessna built👎