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O2A Weight
As others have said, your weight limit is 4300 pounds. Before you think that it should really be 4400, 4600, or 4850 (and therefore inclined to overload it) I offer some considerations: 1: USAF limits said everything over 4400 had to be on the wings. This was so you could jettison the weight if you had an engine failure. If you can't drop the weight, don't lose an engine. 2. Check to see what that extra weight does to your performance, even if both engines are running. A takeoff at 4500# requires more airspeed, 150 feet more ground run and almost 300 more feet to get over a 50' obstacle on a standard day. Other performance is similarly affected. 3. The O-2A is a 337B, which has a MGW of 4300#. Every year or so, Cessna increased the 337 MGW without doing anything else to the airplane based on demonstrated performance. But each time they did that, max ceiling, SE ceiling, time to climb and more all dropped. In short, don't lightly consider overloading that plane just because the U.S. Air Force flew at higher weights.
Its a heck of a fun plane to fly, and I can get my wife and three boys in the plane, with some baggage, and still stay within the envelope.
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