From another ex Rattler
No plane is great in ice....some are just better than others. Sure the van isnt as good as some, but it certainly is NOT a "death trap".
If you cant handle flying in bad weather, go fly freight in florida, arizona, california somewhere you dont have to ever scare yourself, or learn that "bad weather" is a very subjective term. In reality there are VERY VERY few days when it is actually just not safe to fly. And on one of these days, I actually had the infamous M.VN call me at my house and say the weather sucks dont go. Does this happen offten? No, but again if you dont want to fly in bad weather, go fly somewhere that doesnt have it.
Maintenance is as bad as you make it. If you have a plane that has a few broken items they will let you fly it all year long if you dont say anything. If you start writing up every screw that is missing maintenance will hate you for making their life a pain. The point here is this is 135 freight. There MAY be a company out there somewhere that can replace every screw that falls out when it falls out, but good luck finding it. I was NEVER asked to fly a plane that was not SAFE there. I too had broken radar more times than I can remember. One thing they wont ask you to do is go fly through a line of storms with it. If they dont want to fix the radar, just fly around the storm..so what if that takes you 200 miles out of the way and you have to take so much fuel that you can only put 200 pounds of checks in the plane. If they dont want to fix it, thats what they are setting themselves up for.
135 Freight is not for everyone. If you dont want to fly crappy(but safe) old turboprops around in lousy weather just dont take the job and save everyone alot of bitching later.
GOOD LUCK!
I'm sorry that you feel that I may not know what I'm talking about. I would say that my A&P/IA licence puts me ahead of the curve for judging that AN's maintenance SUCKs. I also work on 135 aircraft (helos, jets,and recips) so I feel that I can make a good judgement on how their maintenance is done, having been DIRECTLY involved with their maintenance program. Oh, and by the way you are the only person that I have EVER heard say anything positive about M.VN. I'm sorry that my time is to important to fly 200 miles around t'storms when the company could just fix what should be working properly anyway. Best wishes, bell47.