Hello good afternoon.

I just saw on the PMDG website the 747-8 Queen of the Skies II.

Here's the link from the site:
https://www.precisionmanuals.com/ProductCart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=108&idcategory=13

Someone can tell me what this is.
I'm very confused!
Thank you.

22 minutes ago, joaopereira said:

Someone can tell me what this is.
I'm very confused!

Welcome to the forum. Please note that full names - first and last - are required here in the forum.

To answer your question, please have a look here:

 

It was John Travolta that hit the buy button ... he thought it was a real aircraft because $325 M is actually a bargain for a 747-8, ready to roll with delivery costs I thought they were more like $400+ M. 🙂

What I never realized is that the highest (by far) operational cost of an aircraft are the engines ... I think the 777 is about the largest one can go for 2 engines and ETOPS?  Weren't the Tri-engine large commercial aircraft originally designed to get around ETOPS?

Maybe PMDG should hook up with BOOM engineers, test flights this year (tri-engine setup), commercial versions service planned for 2022 and a bargain at $295 M for Supersonic travel "over land" with no restrictions from sound since it doesn't create a sonic boom.  Ticket prices = business class on current goat shufflers. 🙂

But I digress...

Cheers, Rob.

Chump-change....I'll take 2  I usually find that much under my couch cushions.

32 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

What I never realized is that the highest (by far) operational cost of an aircraft are the engines .

This is true even for piston twins.  The purchase price of an aircraft is very much driven by time on engines and their history.  The operating cost is driven by fuel cost but also consider that an overhaul on a pair of TSIO520s can run $80,000 easy, and that is due every 1400-1800 hrs.

It was an eye opener for me and triggered more research into engine TBO on GA ... Checking the TSIO520 is Turbo so that's going add considerable to cost and reduces TBO time at little (about $54K per engine).  IO520 you get 1700 hrs and cheaper overhaul $40K per engine.  So lets say one flies 40hrs/mo ... so we're looking at 3.5 years before dropping another 80K into the engines ... don't think I could do that much flying unless I was retired.  I didn't know that TBO hours are measured from wheels off ground to wheels on ground.

Don't think I would ever opt for a Turbo piston engine on an GA aircraft for my personal use, had enough Turbo failures on earth bound engines to know reliability goes down considerable as complexity goes up considerably for a little more HP.

Cheers, Rob.

When you live in Colorado the equation has another factor. Do I want a bigger plane and engine or a turbo to get me over the continental divide? When I was younger and invincible I used to fly Piper Warriors and Cessna 172s over the divide using soaring techniques. That was until I realized that by renting a turbo equipped plane I could go direct and get their in half the hobbs time. The trip cost me the same and I got there twice as quick. Not to mention my passengers often didn't enjoy the ridge and thermal flying as much as I did.

Ted

17 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Don't think I would ever opt for a Turbo piston engine on an GA aircraft for my personal use,

Exactly... mission profile dictates the airframe or it should.  The important thing that turbos gave us was pressurization and while we rarely cruise above the TA the air density half point is about 14000, which means speeds at a given power setting at 17500 is much higher than 7500.  Higher speed at same fuel flow is a good thing and there is very little traffic, either big or small, in that magic range from 12500 to 17500.

I don't know Ted, this tends to happen when I add a Turbo (a game of chase the weakest link): 

 

Must HAVE MORE POWER, POWER! 🙂

My TBO was about 15-20 hrs 🙂 ... at 360 ish HP

Cheers, Rob.

Ouch! 

The Mooney I used to fly was what they call turbo normalized. The turbo was designed to just maintain sea level manifold pressure at high altitudes so you didn't lose power as you climbed over the continental divide and the engine was not over stressed as long as you monitored the cylinder head temperatures.  I think the difference is you were using a turbo to turn that Yamaha motor into a Tim Taylor Binford Especiale.   I agree that to increase power the safest approach is more displacement. Now how can we twist this to apply to PMDG 747-8? oops.

Ted