I owned a 1976 Aerostar 601P with the Machen Superstar 700 conversion. 350 HP per side. Flew it about 1,000 hours. It was a delight to fly, but a maintenance nightmare. I joked about it by saying I could not taxi past a mechanic without something breaking. Aerostar expert Zane Pritts was my maintenance guy, so the issues I had were not due to a mechanic unfamiliar with the airframe. However, after a number of cancelled flights due to unexpected problems, I finally got rid of it and never looked back. Moved up to flying a King Air C90A, a MUCH more reliable aircraft.
When taking my flying lessons at Santa Maria CA airport in early 1970's the Aerostar were being built there. Liked to see them flying low down the run way with no paint during the flight testing before delivery. Just a really great thing to see. Did get my pilot license.
Amazing how well these have aged. Just an incredible aircraft. A friend of a friend owns one and I will jump at the chance to sandbag if it ever comes. I remember when the first ones turned up in San Diego. Everybody (literally) had to go take a closer look.
I love the Aerostar and I owned a B55 Baron for several years. I don't know if procedures have changed much since I was flying the Baron but it would never occur to me to start either engine, right or left with a bystander standing in front of either engine. Honestly, not trying to be a jerk here but just posting for your safety. Murphy would say that you will almost never accidentally start the wrong engine but that's the point. Once is too many. Other than that, I hope the video was great. I couldn't bring myself to view it after that. My background is approximately 30 years flying light singles and twins. Commercial Multi Instrument, Single Engine Sea with Taildragger and hoping for a glider rating some day. I may be off base about this and if so, please excuse but it didn't look right to me and I left the page but then felt I would regret it if I didn't say something. Fly well and enjoy with best wishes intended.
@@AerostarPilot I would be fibbing if I told you I never did something as Pilot in Command that I was critical of myself for later on. This is one of the reasons why the Brotherhood/Sisterhood of aviation is so great. We all help each other to be better and better we become. Very Best Regards,
The company owns an Aerostar 601P. I am lucky enough to use it for business trips. Great and fast plane. I feel safer with all the redundancy built in.
@@AerostarPilot thanks for the reply. I will ask him on Monday. We are working on the cross turbo shafts for the Aerostar. It will solve all the problems due to the excessive modulation by the wastegate.
It is cool to watch you film your videos but Bobby Allison the NASCAR driver had a Aerostar that had a turbo-prop STC on it and i got to go for a ride in it. That was very cool. But thats still a nice airplane.
Feels the same other than rotation seems a bit smoother on takeoff and same with the landing flair. There is a 3 kt increase in TAS in the flight levels.
This is a 601P Superstar 680. The difference between the 680 and 700 is the 680 is limited to 340 hp per side due to the long props. The 700 has the short props. Piper made 25 PA-60-700P aircraft in 1984 which there are still about 17 flying. This have counter rotating props, the TIO-540-U2A 350 HP engines. The easiest ways to tell if it is the Piper 700 is there is no pitot tube on the vertical stabilizer. It also does not have the intercooler intake under the engine nacelle. This aircraft is for sale at Aerostar Aircraft in Coeur d Alene, Idaho.
Nice flight except that it took half the video to get off the ground and you cut away before touchdown. Other than that beautiful scenery in my favourite plane.
If ultimate speed was the goal for this plane, why didn’t he have the cowling converted to the reverse flow electric cowl flaps where the air exits out the top. I thought that was the soul purpose of of the conversion ?
You are confusing this conversion with the original Superstar conversion that installed the 350 HP TIO540J2BD engines from the Navajo series aircraft. It also utilized the single T18 Turbocharger on each engine verses the two Rajay turbos on each engine on Super 700. The J2BD utilized updraft cooling requiring a electric cowl flap on the upper cowling. Hope that helps you out.
Lol... "I have no idea what to make of those gauges.... I have no idea what I'm looking at"....... Hehe.. We all know you started flying before iPads made those "gauges" obsolete, and you started flying when those "gauges" were all you had to work with...... so we all know that YOU know what those gauges do and what they're used for..... Still fun to use them too. Cross check between Foreflight and steam.
Geez, talk about a potentially fatal chain of events. Going into a secondary stall, which can be deadly at low altitude, with too much pull back on the yoke too soon and with unequal power on the engines. Why bring the power up at such a low speed that she entered a secondary stall on attempting to level out and an engine power imbalance could happen? How does one get into a situation like this? Especially an advanced twin engine aviator and not a rookie C172 jockey? It can creep up on any pilot I suppose. I remember 22 years ago inadvertently feeding in the bottom rudder just as the nose paid off during a slow flight stall maneuver in a 1944 TF-51D Cavalier-converted World War 2 Mustang and she violently broke and entered a spin. Because of the Mustang's laminar flow wings she was placarded against spins and especially at low altitude. For a moment I was scared absolutely to death and put my right hand on the canopy release handle. But she quickly recovered with forward stick, opposite rudder and NO throttle input. Thank God there was no secondary spin as I believe if you have any excess altitude to play with then get a large margin of speed before levelling off. Opening the throttle too soon on a 1600 HP Mustang could also induce a spin just from engine torque alone. But following that I really haven't been terribly interested in advanced stall maneuvers in complex aircraft where an inadvertent wrong input could be fatal. Interesting that I tried a stall in an Air Canada Airbus A320 CAE built Level D full flight simulator at their pilot training center at the Toronto International Airport. The instructor originally said no because a stall wasn't planned for and he did not want to get into trouble by deviating from the planned maneuvers. But I convinced him to let me try and voila, try as I might she absolutely would not stall with her stick shaker, auto thrust and auto pilot snapping on. This being the case I wonder how airline pilots learn stall recovery while obtaining a type rating?
Technically this is a Superstar 680 since it has the long props (78"). By going to the shorter 72" props and the additional inch of manifold pressure (41-41) you will gain the extra 10 hp per side. You can tell the short vs long, the short props are square tipped vs the long with the round tips. The short props are much quieter as well.
Technically Vr is lower however it is safer to rotate at 95 kts and come off the ground at about 100 kts. Watch this video on Vmca. Really interesting from an Air Force test pilot. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Wbu6X0hSnBY.html
The comment about maintenance is absolutely not true with a caveat. A lot of these Aerostars have been minimally maintained. As a result there is a lot of maintenance since the old neglected stuff breaks. Treat you annuals as progressive restoration and the aircraft will treat you will.
What a damn waste to have a piston engine in this thing, I love to see PT-6s on the wings and see what it will do and a couple of hard points for extra fuel tanks. I know there is one pure jet version that flown.
I would also say with the available fuel on board you would not go very far! Much like the Lear Jet 23, 24, 25 you would be fuel critical at the second engine start. As a low time Lear driver with only 5000 hours in the early Lears I know! 😁🛫
Hhmm… the fastest Aerostar? I don’t think so. The Aerostar Jet 🛩 is the fastest Aerostar. Very interesting concept, to remove the old engines into modern jet engines. What do you as Mr. Aerostar think about the Jet? Did you see it or fly it already? I can’t remember on any Jet reviews from you. What happened to the Aerostar Jet? Is it still there? Might be a good idea to make some content about this. 😀🤔👏
He has a Video flying the jet Aerostar which is A prototype 1 of 1 built, Hence it's in the name Jet Aerostar, so this one being piston engine is indeed the fastest piston light twin Aerostar. Nice attempt at gate keeping something you have lit knowledge about though.