Inside Look: Owning and Maintaining a Cessna 310 - The Prebuy Guys

hey this is Adam from the airplane Intel podcast and the pre bye guys it's our job to make aircraft ownership simple we can help you through the purchase process of your next airplane through our aircraft owner coaching program as well as perform pre-purchase inspections on piston turboprop and jet-powered airplanes now in just a moment we're going to get the inside scoop on a Cessna 310 with owner and pilot Arthur Billingsley together we're gonna find out exactly what it takes to own maintain and manage a piston twin so if you all ready we're ready let's go I am Arthur Billingsley I'm a resident of Jacksonville Florida and I live here in the area and I fly this 310 Q from Jacksonville up to Washington DC every week it's about a 600 mile nautical trip and it takes me about three and a half hours to get there which is not really that bad but I think I'd like to cut that time down because in the course of a day I go up on Monday mornings I get there by 11 or 12 and by the time I'm in the office it's about 1 to 1:30 and need to get started a little sooner than that so that's one of the reasons for looking good perhaps do it a little faster but about the 310 Q this is 1974 310 Q fifty three hundred pounds gross weight has about nineteen hundred pound useful load and full of fuel was about 600 to 700 pounds that you can you can fill it up with and the range is about six and a half hours with 160 gallons 160 gallons and for tanks and burns about 25 gallons per hour you can get that down to 22 if you're so inclined but I try not to to run Liana peak so not to start one of those holy wars I'm I'm just running it richa peak don't do the Lena peak thing so 25 gallons per hour get you about six and a half hours in this and the range is right at about a thousand to 1100 miles if you were trying to just see how far you could get great airplane loved this airplane had it for about five years now and before this airplane I was a tooling around a 177 RG and the 177 RG is a wonderful airplane as well it's burns about 11 gallons per hour and you can get about 130 knots out of it but the useful load is around four hundred four hundred and some-odd with a full full view which was 60 to 70 gallons which would give you about five hours I was in the 177 RG because I was living in Charleston South Carolina at the time and flying up to Norfolk Virginia and also up to Washington DC and over to Huntsville Alabama retired Navy guy and so I'm doing consulting back to the Department of Defense with a company called Oracle and still doing that today but being retired Navy means I go to all the navy bases Navy sites as well as some of the the other different sites as well in doing a consulting about this q model to continental io 1 7 io 4 70s vos 260 horsepower per side and again they burned about 25 gallons total 12 gallon 12 and 1/2 gallons per side so it's pretty pretty economical and as far as the like twin goes the reason I went to this from the 177 was one I needed to carry more people and two I needed it to go further but the side benefit was if I was going to a twin I wanted to go to one of the safer twins and so looking at the single-engine performance of light twins and the only two choices were barren and 3/10 in terms of that had a great performance single engine and the 3/10 one in my case because I looked at what was in it and for the value the 3/10 came up number one the Cessna 310 q in terms of range about a thousand miles you can go on these six and a half hours and the speed is anywhere from 155 to 180 in general you can get it up to about 185 knots generally at 8,000 feet with you pulling about 22 inches of manifold and 2,400 rpm you can see about 175 180 knots depending on the temperature and this is a normally aspirated it's not turbo so a little higher you get better gas mileage and I normally fly eight to 10,000 feet somewhere in there I have done 12 to 14 but the speeds are slower and the gas used to slower so you can even get down to 20 gallons per hour at about 14,000 feet but you're only gonna be doing about 160 165 knots or so which is not bad as far as owning an airplane I didn't know that I could even own an airplane and this is coming from a military officer who's been flying a lot general aviation was one of those things where I said I'll just rent one and and be done with it but I started renting so much that it became a hassle because every time you rent an airplane you have to do not only a pre-flight but a pre pre-flight that is you have to schedule you have to hope the schedule holds hope the maintenance is good once you get there you got to find the keys hopefully they've left the key I mean there was so much hope that every flight became one of these oh I made it in the air and that got to be a hassle and so I started looking at what does it take to own an airplane and it turns out it took about a year and a half or so of research to find out what it takes to own an airplane and only because I didn't go to some other owners first I just did the research from scratch that it's basically another car and if you need another car for work you can own another airplane which is what I use this for this is my computer and I commute in this and I have a company that of course takes care of a lot of the expenses and that's how I got into the first airplane was for commuting I was driving the car that I had at that time from Charleston South Carolina up to Norfolk Virginia which is about a six and a half seven hour drive and up to DC which is about 9 to 10 hour drive in the car and so I started looking at what does it take to actually fly and it was a two and a half three hour drive fight I'm sorry and a three hour flight up to DC so it became markedly better in terms of economics to fly and with the Cessna 172 the 177 s and even the 182 so some respects you could get around 58 to 62 cents a mile is what it would cost for the operational cost that's not the all-in cost but that's just the operational cost which was right at where I needed to be to expense that clients and expense to folks that that I'm doing the work for so that's great however in owning your own airplane there are some other things you got to take into account one is insurance two is the maintenance and you got to have a good maintenance team and three is training those three things are what your support team becomes yeah I got to have regular training you got to have regular maintenance and you got to have insurance and the insurance is important because if anything does happen you don't want this to be something that you take on board yourself it's not that you have to have insurance you can have just liability liability only and that's cheaper but that doesn't protect you in terms of making sure that your business can survive or that you can continue to do your business or get to where you need to be so include insurance when you're doing your calculations and the light the training is important because that's part of your safety factor being proficient is one thing but there are some things that a good instructor can bring out or show you that you just don't get to do and every day every day flying one of the things that I do see if specially flying the twin about training is that you can get into a mode of flying so normally that nothing ever really happens and so you need some time to experience and go through these mental exercises of what if what if you lose an engine or the gear doesn't come down or there's some other incident in air and you got to think through it rather than just pulling the checklist which of course you can do but there's some memory items that you want to be sure to just be able to do right away so training is an important part of owning your own airplane the other part number one part is maintenance the more you fly the more maintenance you need generally all the airplanes whether it's singular twin you're going to need 50 hour or changes so you want to calculate that in right now unfortunately I'm in the 300 club and applying some 300 hours a year which is uh means I'm doing about six oil changes a year actually it's four or five between annuals but all changes are good for a lot of reasons but the main ones are this opening up the engine and being able to look at the oil absolutely if you can do a survey on your on oil analysis it helps to show that there's any patterns developing or anything that's uh that's coming the other thing that's useful is borescope and you don't have to do that on every oil change but once a year you want to get in and look at those cylinders to see if there's any trends developing any burns that are irregular anything that's that's looking a little different on the cylinders with that it's a great safety part because the guys that I've flown with who have regular maintenance them have ever experienced an engine failure engine failures are rare but they're rare still when you make sure that you're doing some regular maintenance on the airplanes the engines themselves the the design of these engines are from the 40s and so there are older designs they're well known and they can take a beating but you just have to stay on top of the maintenance because any little variances can cause some problems that develop into big problems we call it the the critical chain or that chain of events that leads to an incident and if you can stop those incidents back in pre-flight or maintenance or any kind of thing while you're on the ground that's the time to do it have I ever done any owner assist annuals yes I try to do owners sustain Ewell's and taking off the covers the expression plates and certainly watching what some of the mechanics are doing in terms of looking at the Indy engines and parts they're pulling away the part that I don't do much of us when they pull out the seats and pull up the carpets and doing the interior other than looking at the the rods cables pulleys things like that making sure that they they look reasonably a good condition turning wrenches during owner assisted met owner sits and annuals I haven't done much of that other than I had an alternator that I needed to put a pulley belt on and I did that I put in spark plugs I pulled off the fuel injectors and cleaned those but nothing major where you're pulling off a cylinder or doing some torque torque tolerances just something like that so on the cost of ownership cost of owning an airplane with the 172 which is pretty common 172 177 the insurance is going to be based on your number of hours and whether you are instrument rater or not if you are just a private pilot and you have about 500 hours or less the insurance is going to be around $1,200 if you are Private Pilot more than 500 hours and instrument-rated it's going to be about $800 a year and that's where insurance for 170 to 177 something in that neighborhood for the twins today go up based on the airframe the c310 is the entry level for the twins and the insurance is going to be around three thousand dollars for a five hundred hour of pilot if your instrument rated and have about 800 hours or so you'll get it down to 25 to 2,600 depending on the the whole frame that you're covering it for generally these are around 100 to 120 thousand dollars if you're carrying you know 1 million plus the whole value which is going to be about 120 or so it's going to be around 2500 to 3000 dollars if you are having a higher whole value like around $200,000 it'll be about $3500 so if you're interested in a 340 which is the next step up from this one which is a pressurized cabin and turbo on the engines that's going to be in the four thousand dollar range and so on up you know with each one the 414 the Chancellor that's going to be in the $4,500 range for insurance and for the 421 which is the Golden Eagle that's going to be right around five grand if you're paying about four hundred thousand dollars for the airplane it could be five to six thousand dollars but that's just to give you an idea of what it costs for insurance as for maintenance regular maintenance on the 172 can range not including consumables like oil your tires and any of the other things that just normally deteriorate so or have to be replaced you're in regular maintenance is going to be around eight hundred to two thousand dollars a year for 170 to 177 something something in that neighborhood they annual for 170 to 177 is right around $1,500 and it could be $3,000 depending on how often or how detailed the annual is because there going to be some in some manuals where you have to catch up on maintenance one of the things about general aviation that we both like and have to deal with is that we don't have scheduled maintenance as we do in turbines and jets where there's a plan of scheduled maintenance and you know when it's going to happen well we could do it in general aviation but we just don't it's so normally there's going to be an annual that you come in you're going to have to do a catch-up work you're going to have to replace alternators or Magneto's or do a new starter or whatever you're going to do one of those and that's going to be around $5,000 for 172 177 anything in that that range on the twins the entry twins like this 310 you can expect your annual cost to be about $2,500 to $10,000 per annual and the reason for that variance is there's more things that have to deal with if you've gone through a few annuals and gotten through all of the detailed maintenance you can expect about three to four thousand dollars for an annual but they're not going to be cheap so you factor that into your cost of ownership just that's the hangar cost because you got to do it you got to do it what makes that cost vary 8 so much of course is the twin engines because you've got two of each and they don't necessarily wear at the same rate or cylinders don't have to replace at the same time the tolerances are different on each engine in terms of being tight over time even little variances in how the valve seat can cause a wear patterns that are different on the different engines and so they wear it differently and so you have to replace different parts at different times and the cost goes up now if you're doing owner assistant you can cut that cost by twenty to forty percent depending on what kind of annual it is opening the inspection plates making sure that you take the cowlings off and just taking care of that kind of labor can cut your cost by ten to twenty percent and the other thing that can be a factor is if there's any heavy lift or a thing where there's lots of bolts to undo or you have to write down all of where these bolts go that saves you in labor as well the going rate for labor at most of the shops around is $80 an hour some if they're in the city or around 100 to 120 dollars an hour and you can expect at least like I said about $3,000 in labor cost and then about $2,000 in in parts tires for the 310 for instance the main tires are about $200 each the Front's about oh it's about 200 also it's 180 these are about 250 220 and so you go through those well now that I'm flying 300 hours a year I go through them every two years so just the tires loan that's 600 bucks that I have to factor in there's bearings of course with each one of those that you want the mechanics to look at and the reason why I can't do a greater honor this is because I'm not an AP like Adam is so being able to look at different parts and tell if they're wearing if they're okay knowing what to look for that's the experience that you're paying for and it's worthwhile experience to pay for the reason that you want to use mechanics so if they sign up and say yes we've looked at the parts and we don't see any deterioration or any problems here the last annual I did I went as they were pulling out some of some of the panels on the interior we saw some rust why not rust but we saw some problems with the aluminum and I was able to take those panels out scrub them down clean them off obey the rust or corrosion it's what I was trying to say couldn't think of the word it's an age thing corrosion and was able to evade that and so now it's good and it's one of those things that why wasn't it caught at a previous annual the answer is I don't know either I wasn't looking or the mechanic wasn't looking so while I like going to one mechanic all the time it is good to have another mechanic that you trust look at your parts and planes and whatever it because you get a different set of eyes for cost of ownership for this 310 the cost was 110 for the was a hundred thousand for the plane and generally they're still running 80 to 120 thousand dollars for a good good air print this has about five thousand hours total time on it the engines are close to tbo but I'm a Mike Bush guy so I'm gonna run them until I see some problems with them the cost of ownership is this you factor in the cost for your maintenance for your insurance for your training and then the cost of operation and then the cost to have the actual airplane which is in my case I took out a loan for this airplane so I'm playing a cost every month for having the airplane and then I'm paying a hangar cost all told what those look like it's about $1,000 a month to own and the hangar is about 310 dollars per month the insurance is about $2,400 for me and I'm a 15 under our pilot with the instrument the training cost is roughly about oh four to five hundred dollars per year the maintenance costs high figure eight to twelve thousand per year and some years is going to spike I just had the boots down on the back here and those boots were seven thousand dollars the boots up front here gonna be ten thousand dollars and you can see where they've been patched over the years and it's gonna gonna take time by the way I should say this this is 74 c3 10 Q and I've got a five-year restoration plan that I started this year which is why I started on the boots gonna do the boots up here and then I've got to do the engines in the next two years and then the paint and interior and so it's gonna take about another four years to get through all of that but as I was saying the boots here are gonna be right around $10,000 probably a little less the cost is about seven to eight and the labor is about right at $1,000 or so so ownership cost let's look at the cost again so $1,000 for having plane that's per month and I guess we should break it down per month the cost of insurance is going to be about two hundred dollars per month so that puts us at $1,200 the cost for maintenance is right around five hundred dollars per month so we're at seventeen training about 50 and the hangar space is three hundred and forty three hundred and twenty dollars per month and then the cost of operation so it's right at $2,100 per month to operate this airplane the cost is 25 gallons per hour to operate it and 25 gallons per hour at four dollars a gallon is $100 so $100 an hour and I'm flying about Oh 30 sometimes 30 actually it's the last 20 20 to 30 hours per month so that's a you know roughly 2 grand there and in operations floss so 4 to 6 grand per month so is the use of the airplane worth the investment of the four thousand six thousand dollars yes absolutely my alternative is this the reason I've been using general aviation for commuting is because I tried and still do use civil aviation that is going on the commercial airlines but here's the kicker even in the three and a half hours to fly from Jacksonville to DC I still beat the airlines and that's because I don't wait in line for security I don't have to check bags I don't have to go and get my car the car is brought out to the airplane the rental car is brought out to the airplane so I don't have to go to get that and then there's the time of getting through the terminal and waiting in line for different things and whatnot you don't do any of that so my time to get to DC from Jacksonville I still beat in this general aviation 310 even though it's a three and a half hour flight the flight for commercial aviation is about an hour and a half to two hours and you tack onto that the security waiting in line animation beats commercial aviation when you are a certain distance and that distance is right at 400 to maybe 800 miles away from your target I go out to San Diego often probably two or three times a year and that's not real often but often enough that I want to fly it there but it's a 9 to 11 hour flight in the 310 so that's the flight that civilization or commercial aviation is going to meet is going to beat general aviation so I don't try that but in terms of commuting general aviation can beat commercial aviation for ranges of 100 to 600 easily hundred mile radius even in the Cessna 177 heart RG I was able to beat the commercial guys rather than having to take the commercialization door-to-door in general aviation I've been able to beat the commercial guys consistently for the past five years in this Cessna 310 queue I've got 530 wasp 430 regular at 696 this panel minor mounted and Aspen 1000 PFD and a Stratus 2 and that's the basic now for the engine I've got a EDM 9 764 monitoring the engine and each cylinder and a shade and fuel flow for looking at totalizing fuel all those are tied in via the rs-232 bus into the GPS and into the into the Aspen and I put in a flight stream 210 a couple years ago and so now that connects to the iPad and this was probably the best modification I have made in the years has been that flight stream 210 and the reason for that is if you're had a Garmin 5:30 or 4:30 and you got either waypoints or Victor Airways or some other thing that you couldn't find easily on the unit now you don't have to worry about it you just put it in your iPad and push the send button whether you're using Garmin pilot or for flight and it's taken care of and it crossed fields across the Aspen the Garmin the 696 it does not cross fill into the 430 because it's not a wash unit and so wasps and non wasps won't talk to each other thanks Carmen even though they should but that's one of the things that I've added that I really liked was a flight stream 2:10 there's now the flight stream 5:10 that comes with the that comes for the unit's like the 1000 and 3000 but the 210 if you have a Garmin unit Garmin GPS and you want to be able to interact with your iPad it's 900 dollars or so well worth it the installation cost was a couple hundred dollars so about eleven hundred dollars all in to get that installed and yeah I pay it again it's been worth that because even on the reroute if you're doing a lot of IFR flying and you're in the air and you invariably get the call from the controller that says hey we've got a reroute for you when are you ready to copy you're able to punch it in and send it to the panel no problem for ATSB about two years ago I decided to go ahead and take care of that so when I did the flight stream 210 I went ahead and sent my 330 es back in to be upgraded for a DSP out and so this plane is now a DSP out compliant 2020 compliant I do not have a DSP in except through the Stratus - and that's one of the upgrades I plan on doing when I do the 430 wasp I'm gonna get a DSP in either by doing it 3:45 a garment 3:45 or maybe a GDL 88 or something I'll put something in to get in into the into the plane right now with the 696 the Garmin 696 I do get whether via Cirrus and so I hadn't been stressed that much and I also get weather of course on the iPad via the Stratus - for watching if you enjoyed this video don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to find out more about our aircraft pre buys and aircraft ownership solutions head on over to our website pre buy guys com2 here a weekly aviation podcast search for the airplane Intel podcast on iTunes stitcher SoundCloud or YouTube see you soon and stay safe

Channel: Airplane Intel

Views: 561,511

Rating: 4.8243952 out of 5

Keywords: Cessna 310, Cessna 310Q, Cessna 310 For Sale, Piston twins, Twin Cessna, Aircraft ownership, owning an airplane, flying, flying airplanes, pilots, the prebuy guys, airplane intel podcast, adam sipe, don sebastian, aircraft prebuys, aircraft pre-purchase inspections, how to buy an airplane, aircraft comparisions, aviation, aviation podcasts, flight training, pilot training, aircraft maintenance, aircraft maintenance tips

Id: 5mO23NYMt_I

Length: 30min 27sec (1827 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 25 2017