I have been to the beautiful Idaho backcountry strips 8 times in my Avid Flyer MK 4, but this year a friend with a 206 wanted the experience and for us to be his guides.

His 206 has tip tanks and a huge gross. There were 4 of us going into Johnson Creek, Suphur Creek and Big Creek.

Even with the Cessna at gross, we did great in these high altitude mountain strips.

It was nice to be able to fly from Southern California and have our camping set up and ready for the night time campfire and libations in just one day.

In our light sports, it takes an overnight stop at Columbia, Ca.

However, fuel costs in the 206 are a LOT higher than in my Jabiru powered Avid Flyer. My share of the fuel cost was $752.

Fuel cost in my Avid would be about $400.

It was nice to be able to visit Idaho in style, but I'll take my Avid next time.

John M

Your math doesn't make sense to me.

That's about 1400 miles round trip, rounding up to include hitting your strips. Using conservative numbers, in a 206 averaging 120 knots, that's 11.6 hours of flying. Burning 15 an hour, at $5.50 an hour, that's $957. 1/4 of that (your pro rata share) is $239.25. A damn cheap ticket to Johnson Creek.

I also ran some numbers. Are we getting the entire story? I’m assuming by your share of the costs that you are paying for two seats, because there is no way that could be for one. Therefore the total fuel cost for the plane would be $1500. At 16 gph, 120 kts, and $5.50 per gal, you could fly that plane 2100 NM.

On another note, one could operate an injected engine LOP and reduce fuel flow by about 4-5 gph. Let’s take the assumption that the trip distance were about 1400 NM. At 120 kts and 12gph, the fuel total for the entire plane is now $770, or $192.50 per seat.

Don’t have a math lesson for you. I would like to know how 4 of you camped out of a 206 though. We could easily fill ours up with 2 people, and that was staying in town in a hotel. I swear when we go camping in the Fall in CO it takes at least 2 additional pickup loads plus the contents of our 26’ travel trailer for a week. Maybe even an extra trip to town for supplies half way in. When I was young my mother packed a chest of drawers to Lake Powell for a weekend camp out. Guess I came by it honest[emoji1]. I read about these folks taking extended trips in Cubs or the like in pure amazement.

Squash wrote:On another note, one could operate an injected engine LOP and reduce fuel flow by about 4-5 gph.

Sometimes, I'll go LOP, especially if there's no wind or a tailwind and I'm in no hurry, or if the winds are such that LOP will allow me to avoid making a fuel stop that I'd have to make if running ROP. Most of the time, it seems like I choose speed and time over fuel savings. Running LOP on the normally aspirated IO520F in my plane reduces fuel burn by nearly 1/3, and reduces cruise by 10 knots. So LOP is a good deal, unless you're in a hurry. Apparently, I am. Someday, I hope not to be.

For a guy named Skypics, you're a little dry in that department