Flying Is Pushing Performance to the Max

It was a cold Sunday morning in Cuneo, Italy. Snow covered the landscape and the runway but the weather was fine — ideal conditions for Flying reader Paolo Cassina to test the performances of his Cessna P210 Silver Eagle with its 450 shp RR turboprop engine. We reached 16,000 feet in a little more than 10 minutes. Cassina says TAS at this altitude was 209 knots and in the low levels they could have reached 5 more knots.