Originally Posted by j1b3h0

There are many things I agree with on these 8 pages. 1) protect your hearing...earplugs under davidclamps. 2) there is some small sliver of truth to the notion that the bigger they are the easier they are to fly. After flying navajos for cal air charter-now ameriflight, I thought the metroliner wasn't much harder but required 10 times the system knowlege and had no autopilot. Saab 340 is a big piper cherokee. The jets are not so much easier as they are different. Fuel issues are a lot less linear than on a t-prop. I also agree that tailwheel time is good experience. Some of the most challenging flying in my career (20,000hrs) was in a tailwheel beech 18. Never quite got over my fear of the beech on short final. Working through the (pilot) ranks when I did, one didn't get in a turboprop until they'd been a piston twin capt (135), or into a jet until they'd been a Tprop capt. By the time a pilot was working in the herochair of a 737, he or she could fly anything. The way things are now, I worry.