On 14-Jul-2005, "Paul kgyy" wrote:

My low wing Arrow gets about 14mpg at 75%, 100 ROP, 175 mph. If I'm
willing to accept 150 and run LOP, I can get it all the way up to 16
mpg.

175 mph = 152 kts. I presume you have a Turbo Arrow, since the top cruise
speed (75%) for a normally aspirated version is around 141 kts.

Our normally aspirated Arrow IV cruises at 135 kts, 65%, 9.4 gph (just LOP)
at around 8000 ft. That works out to 16.5 statute mpg. Out of curiosity, I
recently compared fuel consumption for an extended XC with what my Dodge
Caravan (which gets about 22 mpg highway) would have consumed for the same
trip by Interstate highways. The numbers came out pretty close: 199 gallons
of avgas for the Arrow vs. 187 gallons of mogas for the Dodge. The kicker
is that the round-trip highway mileage would have been 4134 sm compared to
3515 great circle sm.

Yes, the avgas cost maybe $120 or so more than the mogas would have, but in
the Arrow all of the legs between destinations were less than a day, while
by car I would have had to pay for several nights' lodging on the way. And,
I figure my time is worth more than the few pennies per mile extra it costs
to get there in one third the time (or less) by air.
--
-Elliott Drucker