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I think its safe to say that the people on this site are fans of the airplane. I love mine. I have flown it across the country twice from Coast to coast. I love having the twin over the mountains and great lakes. I also fly every year down to Loreto on Baja California, again love having two engines over some very desolate country. I have a turbo and have GAMIs and fine wire plugs and it runs LOP very nicely. I burn about 19 GPH at 30 inches and 2400 RPM. At 19K feet it flys 175 KTAS. I love it over the mountains. My annuals run from a low of about 7K up to the highest was 14K. My mechanic budgets a week of time and charges 4K just for the inspection, so 3K to 10k for needed work. I have found that if you are ok staying involved in parts sourcing, very few parts actually come from Cessna. most can be found from third parties at sometimes significantly lower prices. My mechanic is comfortable working on it and encourages me to get the parts as its time for him that he doesn't want to spend. He works on several Skymasters here in Livermore. Its very tight in the engine spaces. Best advice is find a small boned mechanic. Every so often I look around at other planes and always come back to this one. The only thing Id consider as a change out would be a P model but I have mine set up really nicely with Aspen, IFD540, and Stec 60-2 autopilot. Its an amazing IFR platform.
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