Australian Flying - July 2018

engineers have mounted two small

strakes, almost like leading edge

slots, over the wing roots of the

horizontal tailplane.

Venturing inside

Entry into the Piper M600’s

cabin is via a single two-section

door located at the rear left side

of the cabin. The bottom section

when lowered, houses the stairs

for boarding while the locking

mechanism is in the top sill.

Integral within this lower door

are the air ducts to aft cabin.

The upper section holds a cabin

window and is then folded down

to lock over the lower door. All

are common Piper designs from

previous models.

Once inside, the rear of the

M600’s cabin has four seats in

pairs facing each other just aft

of the main spar that protrudes

slightly on the f loor.

Between the two rows of seats

on the right side wall is a fold

down table. All seats have a drink

holder mounted alongside in the

sidewall along with an individual

air outlet.

All rear cabin seats have access

to emergency oxygen masks,

which are housed in a drawer

under each seat. They are the

airliner style nose and mouth

mask. The two front seats have

EROS quick-donning masks

located in their boxes behind each

seat facing inwards towards the

access-way into the cockpit.

Moving forward into the

cockpit is not without some

difficulty. For the larger pilots

amongst us, the cabin ceiling

is quite low and after bending

over and then lifting one foot

over the main spar, you are able

to slide forward into the cockpit

seats. Once seated the f light

deck is very comfortable with

all controls falling easily to view

and hand without effort without

any extended reaching. Similarly,

the view over the long nose is not

limiting for all operations.

Being quite a hot and humid

day in SE Queensland, we

quickly got the ventilation fan

going, as there are no opening

windows in the cockpit. Also

the last person entering will

close the cabin door behind

themselves. Once the ventilation

fan was operating, airf low could

immediately be felt exiting from

the eyeball style air outlets at the

base of each side window.

Looking at the cockpit layout,

everything was in the right place

with little wasted space. Above

the windscreen is located the

main switch panel with mainly

electrical, avionic master and

other systems switches nearest

to the command pilot on the left

side. This may pose problems

for those pilots using multi-focal

glasses looking upwards.

The five screens of the Garmin

G3000 GNSS/SBAS Avionic

System dominate the main area of

the panel. The visible components

of the Garmin G3000 system

comprise three main display

screens and two GTC 570

Touchscreen Controllers.

The three main screens

display most of the information

required for IFR f light with the

two outboard screens primarily

displaying the Primary Flight

Display (PFD) information using

vertical tape displays of airspeed,

altitude and VSI with a full 360

compass rose at the bottom.

The centre Multi Function

Display (MFD) screen shows

the engine indications vertically

34

AUSTRALIAN FLYING July – August 2018

Speciications

Wing Span 13.15 m

Length 9.05 m

Height 3.44 m

Wheel Track 4.15 m

Wing Loading 140 kg/m^2

Cabin Interior Height 119 cm

Cabin Width 125 cm

Max Ramp Weight 2744 kg

Max T/O Weight 2721 kg

Max Landing Weight 2631 kg

Standard Equipped Weight 1656 kg

Useful Load 1065 kg

Max Zero Fuel weight 2200 kg

Vmo/ Vne 251 KIAS

Vo 153 K I A S

Vle 168 KIAS

Flight Test

LEFT: Cruising

in comfort at

10,000 feet doing

240 KTAS.