[WebMaster]

We went from renting 172's to owning a 337. I started ME training with 138 TT. Went to a school, focused training. Came back from that, started flying the 337. Immediately started IFR training. Got my ticket for IFR the day before we left for the Bahamas. Fly IFR frequently, and regularly.

Commented to someone over the weekend, that I was at PWK, leaving at night, in IMC. The departure sequence takes you out over Lake Michigan, and they hold you at 3000 for quite a while, out over the lake, before they will let you climb up and out. In a 182, or any single, it would have been far more disconcerting to be 10 miles over the lake at 3000 in night IMC, alone.
Get the plane you want, enjoy it, fly it often, get the IFR ticket, practice that a lot. Do your IFR in the plane you are going to fly.

When I first looked at a 337, it was for sale some distance from here. I looked it over, we flew it. There had been a Tri-Pacer that landed at that airport earlier. A couple the age of my wife and I. We flew over the crash site. They went 3 miles, had an engine failure. Plane was upside down in a field, fatal. I can not say enough about the comfort factor of having a twin.

My wife will never be a pilot, but listens to the radio, makes notes for me, and enjoys the safety, and flexibility of having our own plane. She did a girls weekend with some friends on Beaver Island, northern Lake Michigan. I picked her up, and we went direct for Meigs Field, straight down the lake. Would never consider that in any single.

The fatality that prompted the Lycoming recall was a Malibu that lost an engine over Lake Michigan, at altitude. They tried to glide to BEH, and didn't make it.

IF you want your companion to be comfortable with your flying, do it in a safer plane. I don't consider any single to be safer.

One of the folks who did a presentation at Nashville flys across the Atlantic, on a regular basis. He bought a Skymaster to do it safely. Any single has inherent safety concerns. Pilatus and Socata both make high performance single engine TurboProp planes. Everyone knows a turbine is reliable. Yet, a PC-12 had a dead engine, and went down in the Pacific. A TBM had a dead engine, and went down in the Atlantic. Bad places to only have one engine, because no matter how reliable it is, when it fails, you are all done.
Just my opinion.