By Rod Douglas 

As I drove closer it became clear: there was not one, not two, but three majestic personal time machines sitting together on an Essendon ramp that’s usually reserved for the big iron. The high and mighty TBM 850, waiting to prove that even low hour private pilots can access the flight levels with speed and power that shrinks Australia to a manageable luncheon venue.

Today I would fly the legendary TBM 850. I would experience the might of an aircraft that has become almost mythical in my mind and discover just how much I love being wrong! Last month I was lamenting the lack of service in the Australian general aviation community and whack, bang, pow I was put back in my place.

You see it happened like this. It was a beautiful blue Melbourne December morning. Crisp, with just a gentle cold bite. I hopped out of my driver Mark’s Mercedes, knowing that this was going to be a good morning. The TBM awaited.

Now some people might choose to question whether the TBM mark has been around long enough to have legendary status but, the truth is, legends begin first in the mind. The legend of the TBM began for me one day almost 20 years ago while I was at the Mooney factory in Kerriville Texas flying an early Mooney TLS and trying out the quiet and smooth Porsche powered PFM. It was a wonderful day filled with amazing performance and incredible refinement. As often happens with innovative aircraft, neither of these aircraft made it through in the form I flew them. The TLS became the Bravo with a more reliable engine and Porsche withdrew support for the PFM, one of the most delightfully refined aircraft I’ve ever flown.

That day I heard all about the revolutionary TBM 700. It was to be built in a joint venture between Aerospatiale and Mooney, with Mooney providing the long flush riveted and efficient wing. The TBM 700 was, when certified in 1990, the world’s first pressurised single engine turbo prop. Along the way Mooney dropped out of the joint venture, but pedigree rarely gets left behind. The ambition was astonishing. 300 knots at 30,000 feet for 1,000 nm. It was a level of performance only dreamed of back then…and they delivered.

And not surprisingly, the market, which up until that point had said it wouldn’t support such a programme, woke up to the possibilities of a reliable PT-6 driving an aerodynamically tight ship. In 1982 Beechcraft had a go with the 38P Lightening which matched a B58P fuselage to first a Garrett TP331, then a PT6A-40. It died a rapid death in the market research department based on a $1 million price tag. Cessna certified the Caravan in 1984 which became the pointy end of market acceptance of single engine turbines as a replacement for twins.

As I walked across the Executive Airlines ramp at Essendon Airport it was obvious to me who the Daddy was. Flush riveted long wings that said… ‘come fly me’. Beautiful, tall and delightfully proportioned, the TBM 850 is actually an identical airframe to its older sibling the TBM 700C, even sharing the same certification plate. That morning the ramp made it look like the TBMs were taking over the world with two 850s and a 700B sharing the dew. With 400 airframes flying, the TBM has become a serious success story.

Naturally the type of owner that can slip their hand in their pocket and extract a cool USD $2.85 million expects some service. At Executive Airlines they get it. Took me straight back to the good old days in the US of A when even a piston jockey got well looked after. Executive Airlines offers a beautiful passenger lounge with full flight planning facilities, great staff and all the service that an executive jet could ever want.

Beyond that, I got to reacquaint myself with Mark Diaz, the Socata representative in Australia. Mark is one of life’s gentlemen and truly superb and professional salesman. He knows the aircraft upside down, inside out and around and around. He knows what will impress and how to ask questions in a respectful, yet probing way, to understand his buyer and to match exactly the right TBM to their needs. Australia is short of the truly masterful salesman. It was refreshing to discover the commitment that Socata is bringing to supporting the TBM in Australia and actually a very rare but insightful move by the company. Not surprisingly, the fleet has grown quickly to seven and you can expect to see more and more of these delightful birds on Australian tarmacs.

So here I am, standing on the ramp, eating humble pie as I realised after bagging the service of Australian GA in my last article, that it actually exists in a most refined form. You just need to fly something big and beautiful enough to justify it.

As you walk around the aircraft, one of the first things you notice is the airliner feel. Beautifully machined parts abound. Hinges, latches and elegant retractable steps could be lifted off an Airbus. The flush riveting gives the skin enchanting, sleek long lines. This is a smart plane built by very smart engineers. Everywhere you look are smart, simple things that remind you that this isn’t the top of the line but, rather, the personal sister ship of a family of airliners. It sets this aircraft in a class of its own.

Its big sleek airframe is dominated by the 2.31m diameter, four- bladed Hartzell, fully feathering and reversing propeller. That big prop reminds you of just how amazing it is to get 320 knots of performance out of this elegant ship. Under the cowl you’ll struggle to find any real difference between the more than capable donk of the 700 and the refinement of the 850. Fundamentally, the only change that you can see is the two bleed air lines that allow the 850 to produce its extra 150 horses. The new version of the venerable PT6A, the dash 66D, is capable of producing 1825 hps at sea level, but is flat rated to 850. To avoid the cost of recertifying the airframe with additional take-off power, the creative engineers at Socata came up with a unique solution of creating a new flap setting, called simply 850.

The flap selector has just four positions. Landing, takeoff, up and 850. Select any flap setting other than 850 and the PT6 is limited to ‘just’ 700 hps and the automatic torque limiting system remains live. Go through the magic go fast gate to 850, the torque limiter is disengaged and suddenly the pilot has one more thing to think about and is required to observe torque limits. The aircraft is well behaved, particularly with the yaw damper engaged and the flight director and autopilot ensure that this extra workload is more than manageable.

The tricks to getting the additional horses was to upgrade from the dash 64 engine, simply adding a dual-bleed air tap similar to that used on big jets and using use single-crystal turbine blades allowing higher temperature performance. This provides a reliable and steady source of pressurisation at all altitudes and power settings. To pressurise a turbine aircraft, high pressure air is ‘bled’ from the engine compressor before it reaches the combustion chamber. This results in less power being produced, as there is less air available for combustion. The second air tap bleeds air from a higher compression section of the five stage engine. During cruise and high power climb, the engine requires only a little compressed air from the first stage to maintain the 6.2 psi pressurisation. When the power comes off, it is the higher pressure stage tap that keeps the cabin pressurisation stable. Even low power, high speed descents give no sign of pressurisation instability, ensuring a superb cabin experience.

Best of all with the 1,825 hps engine flat rated to the named 850, it has the capability to provide that power through 20,000 feet. Fortunately, the higher fuel burn is an almost direct swap for the additional airspeed, meaning that range is maintained.

When I asked Mark, ‘why add even more power to an already superb airframe’ the answer was simple. “Our owners asked for it.” Now that’s an advanced way of looking at customer service. It seems that the owners of the TBM are a very loyal and dedicated bunch, with one owner on their fifth aircraft. They also seem to think as one. It seems that there was very little dispute about the fact that the owners wanted more speed followed by a glass cockpit. The speed has arrived and a brand new fully integrated G1000 is the next innovation to be kitted out and currently being delivered to the first customers.

So, with the extra power dealt with, let’s check out the rest of the airframe.

Mum has plenty of pedigree. EADS Socata is part of the group that delivers the Airbus family. The more time you spend with the airframe, the more you understand the depth and sophisticated methods that are used in manufacturing it. From the titanium firewall to the superbly machined doors and hardware, the whole aircraft feels like the son of an airliner. The TBM cockpit has that big iron feel about it. With a high level of automation and integration, there isn’t much systems management to concern yourself with. Everywhere you look the design endeavours to make it easy, all the way down to the automated fuel selector which changes from one side to the other every 10 minutes to keep the fuel load balanced.

The strength of the airframe becomes obvious when you walk around the corner and discover Mark doing chin ups on the tip of the tail plane. The wing has four spars and is wet with 1100 litres of fuel which give a range of 1,520 nm in still air…and still allows you IFR reserves.  This is one strong beast. All seats are rated with a crashworthiness of 20G which allowed the previous C2 model to be certified 2002 with an 816 lb increase in max takeoff weight which increased the stall speed to 65 knots. The TBM engineers were required to prove that the new seats and other changes delivered the equivalent level of safety with a 65 knot stall speed that other single engine aircraft achieve with a 61 knot stall speed. Stall speed naturally reduces as the weight decreases but it is a testament to the strength and engineering of the airframe that the FAA accepted the change.

When you climb into the aircraft you discover yourself enveloped in a luxury world. The deeply stitched leather club seating is, when combined with the polished timber trims and fold out tables, simply beautiful. And at USD$2.8 million so it should be. Everything is as you would expect it and as the big wide door, (over a metre high and wide, and developed for future medivac uses as the airframes get older and take on a new life – don’t you love how well this company plans), gently closes and locks into place, there is suddenly a delightful quiet and complete feeling of luxury.

Luggage is well taken care of with a 60 cm deep area behind the rear seats which extends to the height and width of the cabin. Heavy webbing restrains the contents.

Moving forward is simple and while you can’t stand upright in the 1.22m headroom you might expect the cabin to feel a little cluttered. It isn’t. Access to the cockpit is spacious and you pass a pair of low level stowage cabinets that quite naturally delineate the office from the lounge room.

Having seated myself in the boss’s seat, I now understand why the engineers went to so much trouble to create the very strange and obtuse angles of the pilot’s window. Most aircraft hold a line that connects the windscreen to the cabin windows. The TBM is distinctly different with the shoulder of the pilot’s window drooping and describing a line that, if extended, would meet the tip of the propeller. Once seated you understand why. The view is sensational. More smart engineering.

The seats are fantastically comfortable and adjust intelligently on all axis’. Mark quickly worded me up on using the propeller governor, which forms a bump in the forward cowling to get the appropriate height adjustment just right. This was very important later in the day when it came to getting just the right touchdown attitude.

I’d flown a Cirrus SR22 into Essendon on my trip south and I have to say that I was surprised that while the start procedure was clearly different, the workload in preparing the TBM for start and flight was probably lower than a full run through of the Cirrus’ excellent checklist. Mark, who is a former airline pilot and has a delightful manner as he teaches, was able to quickly and effectively talk me through the whole process of preparing for start, starting the engine and making the bird live in a few short minutes.

The start itself is simple with great care given to ensuring that you don’t over heat the turbine, which requires a very costly rebuild. It is this very precise demand of turbine engines that is the biggest challenge for the piston jock moving up. To start the engine your left hand selects the battery, ignition and starter to on. Attention is firmly placed on the engine instruments which form a five gauge column to the left of the Garmin centre stack.

The blades of the big prop are by now starting to move and we are looking for 13% Ng (gas generator RPM) as our target to lift the fuel condition lever to low idle. This introduces the fuel and the rapidly increasing whine accompanies the Ng dials’ lively dance forward. Attention now goes to the ITT (the inter turbine temperature) gauge to ensure that it doesn’t exceed 840 degrees. Our start was cool and we peaked at 660 degrees.

What can I say except that it’s exciting. The whine. The smell of burning jet fuel. The sense of power. But there is more to do. Starter off (the generator auto-couples). Open the inertial separator. Check the master warning system. Now it’s time to move the condition lever to high idle. The plane, my friends, now wants to fly.

Once cleared to taxi from Executive we began the journey to the runway. One of the things that made this particular taxi into a journey was my first experience with Essendon’s new ‘jet gates’. Installed at a cost of over $1 million, the jet gates are a complicated series of gates that have allowed the airport to build a new roadway that directly connects the airport to the Tullamarine Freeway.

So here we are sitting waiting for the cars to stop, the gates to close the road and then the other gates to open to allow us through. It gave me the opportunity to reacquaint myself with one of my favorite turbine tools, Beta. Beta is the zero thrust point on all fully reversing propellers that allows you to control your progress without brakes. Apart from being incredibly effective, it sounds great. As you lift the power lever back through its gate, you hear the deepening roar of the pitch changing fine pitch to a zero degree and then, when needed, into reverse (-11 degrees negative pitch). It’s all part of the superior sense of control that a turbine pilot gets. A quick wave to the cars waiting for us to cross and we’re off to Runway 17.

The panel on Sierra Mike Zulu is more than complete. The pilot has a half glass panel with an EADI and EHSI from Bendix King delivers the flight director and navigation functions for the pilot while the copilot has analogue instruments. The Garmin stack includes a pair of 530 navigators, a GMX200 moving map display which also displays the weather radar, a GMA340 audio panel and a GTX 330 Mode S transponder. You have available to you everything that is need to operate in the RVSM (reduced vertical separation minimums) altitudes above FL280 with the big boys.

A short stop in the run-up bay of runway 17 allowed us to cycle the propeller twice, check the propeller’s overspeed system, select take off flaps, confirm trim settings and dial up our code. ‘Line up and wait’ was the next instruction we received and I sat excited and waiting for ‘cleared for takeoff’. When it came, the whine became a roar as I pushed the power lever forward to 90% torque knowing that it would creep towards 100%. Nose wheel steering was delightfully light and the aircraft absolutely leapt forward. Anyone who has flown any of the modern 310 hp rocketships will know about the bootfull of right rudder that’s required to keep them straight as you rocket forward. Surprisingly the TBM, with 700 hp, required marginally less right rudder than say the Mooney Bravo. Good simple engine positioning making the pilot’s life easy. The acceleration however, takes your breath away.

This is a fun way to fly. It took moments and probably about 500m for us to reach 80 knots at what I calculated was about 90% of max takeoff weight. The rotate force through to seven degrees was light and we leapt into the sky. Dab the brakes to stop the wheels spinning, gear up, flaps up, inertial separator stowed and away we went. Mark had offered me the flight director and autopilot which allows you to select climb speed but I was sure that the autopilot would be a delightfully tuned piece of kit and opted only for the flight director and to fly the aircraft by hand. We accelerated through to 130 kts and I saw better than 2000 fpm climb rates on the VSI.

Once established, and with our clearance in hand, we relaxed into a 160 kts cruise climb where I was able to experience the full power of the new engine. Moving the flap selector from up to 850 gave me the opportunity to move the power lever forward to increase the torque to 120%. This may seem strange but as the takeoff power is limited to 700 hp, any additional horsepower beyond that baseline is in excess of 100%. The aircraft surged forward as the tap was opened. In this mode, the automatic torque limiter is disengaged and some old fashioned pilotage is required to calculate the maximum torque for a given altitude and temperature to avoid any overstress.

The overall sense of flying the aircraft is one of great reserves of everything. Tons of power. Crisp smooth controls that feel solid and immediate. A quiet and stiff airframe that will ride well in turbulence. This is a personal airliner.

We were held at FL120 and leveling off and watching the speed build was a delight. We were quickly accelerating towards 250 kts indicated when our clearance for higher came through and when I pulled the nose up I could have been forgiven for thinking I was in a fighter. When we finally levelled off at FL310 it had taken us about 20 minutes in the climb. We were indicating 201 kts with a TAS of 312 kts while burning 55 gph (214 lph).

I took the opportunity to explore the handling of the aircraft at altitude. Roll rates are crisp and the controls deliver excellent feel. While the ailerons are manual they operate with a frise action and are interconnected with spoilers. This arrangement helps to eliminate adverse yaw. A similar system is used on Airbus airliners. There is an interconnect with the rudder and overall the controls feel well harmonized and it’s easy to precisely put the aircraft where you want it in the sky.

All this flying around at better than 300 knots had taken us a little further than intended and on a beautiful severe clear day a look south indicated that we were probably half way to Tasmania. As we turned back to Essendon it was time to discover some more about just how strong the airframe actually is. The VMO (velocity maximum operating) is a very high 266 knots for all altitudes. It is unusual for turbine aircraft to have a single VMO because unlike piston aircrafts VNE (velocity never exceed), the VMO accounts for the effects of Mach at higher altitudes. The TBM approach was simply to build an airframe that was strong enough to deal with its high 266 knot VMO at all altitudes.

Which also means that when you push the nose over, pull the power back (no shock cooling to concern yourself with), and point the nose to the earth that you can descend in the order of 6,000 fpm. The most amazing aspect of that incredible descent rate is the lack of any noticeable pressurisation drift, the result of the two tap system on the new engine. Approaching VMO, the airframe is rock solid and gives you great confidence about the strength of this airplane.

As we approached Essendon it was time to slow down this rocket ship. Having spent years calculating and carefully planning descents in turbo charged aircraft to avoid shock cooling, it’s actually a shock to realise how simple it is to pull up a thoroughbred like this one. It goes like this. Pull the power lever back. Wait and watch while the huge spinning disc in front becomes a massive airbrake. The airspeed bled off rapidly and, in what seemed to be moments, we were approaching the gear extension speed of 178 knots IAS. The gear extension is quick and smooth and with three greens we were ready to join downwind.

With hundreds of hours in Cirrus’, I wasn’t prepared to discover that this mighty aircraft would follow exactly the same speeds that I use for the SR22 in the pattern. 120 knots on downwind. 110 knots on base. 80 knots (using the turbine standard of 1.3 times stall speed ) over the fence. It’s an interesting point, as the last two TBM’s sold in Australia have gone to previous Cirrus owners.

On our way down Mark and I had been talking about landing technique. I’d commented to Mark on how ‘Mooney like’ the flying qualities of the aircraft were. With a couple of hundred hours in M20M’s, the venerable Bravo, the brotherhood was noticeable. Mooney’s, particularly the long body high powered versions, have a reputation for needing a quality technique to land them well. For me landing Mooney’s has just always worked. So I flew the TBM the way I flew the Mooney. It worked. The aircraft was as superbly behaved close to the ground as it was in the air and with an absolutely consistent power response throughout the throttle range. With a little beta to help, the TBM pulled up quickly and we taxied back for another quick circuit.

With the reconfiguration complete we were ready to go. In the circuit it all happens very fast, but in truth not that much faster than in the Cirrus. The aircraft handles well, the cockpit is well laid out and, if worst comes to worst, you can always extend the legs as needed or significantly pull the power back. My second approach had that nice stability that often comes with the confidence of having succeeded once and the aircraft gently arrived back on the ground.

As we taxied back to Executive Airlines, I realised that just about any experienced high performance single pilot with an instrument rating, and the 500 hours that usually goes with getting to that point, would be competent, given the right training, to handle this speedster. I understand from Mark that, with those provisos, insurance in Australia for the TBM 850 is not only available but actually cheaper than in the States.

Which then drives me to answer the next obvious question. Why would someone pay USD$2.8 million for a turbo prop when they can have a Cessna Mustang, an Eclipse or most of the other field of VLJ’s for the same money or less? The answer is the same answer that sees King Airs continue to sell. Because it has a propeller, which gives you more options and means that your operating costs are probably going to be half that of the jet brigade who will, in most cases, not get there any sooner than you will.

And this, of course, brings us back to where we started in the first place. Australia is a big country. There is lots of business to be done. Our conditions are perfect for private aviation. Why don’t more people use it? That afternoon, as my adrenalin settled I got a call from Mark. ‘Do you want a lift back to Brisbane?’ I had to say no. Michael James, the world’s youngest TBM pilot and a joint owner of Strategic Aviation was flying MRJ back to Brisbane from Essendon at mid day. Unfortunately I had some meetings I couldn’t break. Michael’s flight time. 2 hours 42 minutes. My flight time on a large kero burner that Friday night. 2 hours 10 minutes. But wait a minute. What about the extra drive to the airport? The security checks? The 95 minute delay? The car parks? The list of inconveniences goes on.

It’s time to set a new goal. My own personal airliner. I like the idea of shrinking Australia so it all becomes a manageable luncheon venue. How about you?