A64Pilot

If I’m high, even pretty stupid high a full rudder deflection slip will lose quite a bit of altitude. ‘I can fix high, I can’t fix low But to add to it, engine failure is pretty common in the Ag world, and almost always they overshoot and get the fence at the end of the field, I always thought it was the prop feathering, but maybe it’s just our tendency to make sure we make it, that we end up long? Very few Ag pilots actually feather the prop, they just don’t think about it, and very few ever jettison the hopper, they don’t have enough time to think about it. ‘By the time I Retired from the Army in 02, there had been several wing stores jettisons, but not once when it was needed, everyone rode it in with all that weight on the wings. ‘So we all think we will do this and that, but when it happens very few of us do, unless you have practiced, then it may become automatic.

The wind is something we haven’t really discussed, the “downwind turn” is another killer in aviation, it’s of course the crosswind to downwind, and what gets people is the 10 kt headwind becomes a 10 kt tailwind, meaning of course there is a potential for a loss of 20kts airspeed. ‘But it applies here as well, and even moreso, because we are after a relatively quick, tight radius 180 turn, so that headwind you had at takeoff is very quickly becoming a tailwind and stealing your airspeed, so you need to be accelerating in that turn to maintain airspeed, if you took off into a headwind. With the Bonanza, for some reason I can’t find an official glide ratio, but most seem to think it’s at least 10 to 1, My J model is 10 to 1. Something is wrong here. Bonanza’s do NOT float on final, in fact you can be high and fast and still pull off a nice landing in one, they bleed energy fast. I believe it may be as simple as their prop min pitch setting, a flat pitched prop is some kind of air brake, ask any turbine guy. But if you watch a Bo taxi, it takes a lot of RPM to get one moving, sure they are heavier, but they have a much bigger motor than I do, so why does my neighbor in his Bo have to have 1600 RPM to pull the same slight rise I do at 1200? Has to be his prop is pitched lower and I believe that’s also why they can have such a steep approach and not float, they slow down. ‘Anyway I think the Bo’s do so poorly in these tests because their prop is so flat and that is a speed brake. Pure speculation, but something has to explain why they slow down and have so much drag on approach, but still are pretty quick in cruise.

Understand, but free enterprise if there is a shortage due to manufacturing, by its nature goes into double overtime etc and soaks up as much profit as it can before the other companies do, so long as there is competition of course. These chips, if they were sole source the news woud have talked about it. ‘Several years ago one of the two plants that make anti-freeze burnt or something, there was supposed to be a shortage, I guess the remaining plant went into overtime because there never was a shortage even with half the manufacturing capacity gone, price went way up. but the supply was fine, just expensive, there can be serious money to be made with a shortage. Shortages don’t usually last long, unless of course something like OPEC cuts back production. ‘We supposedly have a chicken shortage now too, well if we do I bet Chicken farmers are doing everything they can to grow as many chickens as possible to get some of the profit due to a shortage, so it won’t last long, not as fast as chickens grow, and I bet “chips” don’t take a year and a half to make either.

It’s being too close to a stall is what I believe hurts people. Try this don’t fully stall. but let the stall warning sound while maintaining heading, then while maintaining heading push the nose over and see how many feet of altitude it takes to get back to say 85 KIAS and an established glide at 85 kts As a aircraft slows, it’s L/D goes to pot, it’s “mushing”, it’s not stalled but it’s glide ratio is terrible. ‘The clip that someone posted with the Mooney making it back in Winter is I think what will happen i’n most cases, watch the clip and see how often you hear the stall warning. ‘I’m not saying anything bad about him, he made it and that’s all that matters, but I think most of us will likely be slower than best glide speed during the maneuver, unless maybe we have practiced to maintain speed.

Strange as how it’s just or primarily autos that are affected by chip shortages, I would have expected TV’s, computers or other similar types of devices first.

Why 85 KIAS? Going for min sink? On edit, to answer the reason to why practice, one reason is to establish an altitude and distance from the airport to where it’s possible. That way you have an idea as to an altitude to where you shouldn’t even try, just have enough altitude practicing to where you could recover from a one turn spin

Maybe he couldn’t make the road if he didn’t, maybe with gear down he would have been in the trees? Pure speculation of course, but sometimes your better off gear up, ditching and muddy field comes to mind. I wonder how many remember to pop the door prior to touchdown?

There was this one airport in Lower Alabama, near Ft Rucker. Hanger use got out of hand, not only did you have the storage issues, but several were running businesses out of a hanger, lawnmower repair shop, a cabinet maker setup shop etc. Airport management waited too long to enforce rules and were up against it. (This is third hand info by the way, I didn’t have a private airplane then) It’s my understanding that the Fire Marshall was called, and he put an end to storage and shops etc being in the hangers as hangers apparently at least in Lower Alabama don’t meet code for storage and shops etc. So Airport management didn’t have to be the bad guy, the Fire Marshall settled things. However when we went cruising for a few years, I had my little 140 pickled and covered in my hanger in Camilla Ga., but also two cars and lawn equipment and grill, and many other things that didn’t require climate controlled storage, and no one cared, but then there is no waiting list there either. ‘If I had to leave my airplane outside while others were storing boats and cars etc. I’d raise Hell. starting with the Airport Manager, going to the Airport Commission, and City Hall. I’d be sure to let them know that if they had accepted a penny of Federal money that they were in violation of Federal law, ( I’m no Lawyer so I have no idea really, but I’d bluff)

Mine is a Gann “performance engine” too. He is big with the Maule crowd and my motor I believe does in fact run better than most. He also apparently has the fuel servo set to run a little richer than stock as mine runs a little over 19 GPH on take off. Mine will run so lean and still be smooth, but so down on power it just about won’t fly You have to like red powder coat though, because a whole lot of the motor is. However he doesn’t use new cylinders on the angle valve motors but does on the parallel, not sure why, but I have heard of no issues with the overhauled cylinders. ‘Quite a few around here will go with a Gann motor over a factory zero time motor https://www.gannaviation.com/engine-overhauls

Concorde was a passenger aircraft, I don’t think any of these types are. Concorde of course never came close to breaking even, government subsidized transportation for the rich and famous There are some incredibly rich people out there, enough I believe to pay for a not so small run of these things. I remember when the Gulfstream 650 was being Certified that Gulfstream had sold several years of production, prior to Certification, and the production line was already building them as fast as they could. Any aircraft built prior to Certification, the FAA has to do the production test flight, at the time the Government didn’t have enough money to rent a car or airplane for their test pilot to get to Gulfstream, so Gulfstream flew fhe 650’s one at a time to him. ‘The 650 sold without a interior etc for 65 mil a copy, and several brought way more than that because they had been bought to sell, sort of like Super bowl tickets. ‘I woudnt be surprised if they are still sold out.

Avgas never sees a pipeline. I have idea if it’s raw materials do or not. Avgas here is about $4 a gallon, never saw any increase just little ups and down But within just a few miles the difference in cost is over $3 a gl, so I don’t think actual cost is the driving cost of Avgas, it’s how much can you get for it.

Same here, substitute parking brake for wheels down

You shouldn’t have too much of. a problem finding a mechanic to use owner supplied parts I woudn’t think. Finding parts can be a pain, one I’d rather not have to go through myself

It’s the gear down water landings that suck

VD or velocity dive which has to be flown is 1.2 times VNE. On some aircraft VNE is determined by windshield structure,

Absolutely it is. I took the S2R-H80 speeds to the point that it’s Vfe was higher than the nearly identical S2R-t34’s VNE. We did tighten up the flight control balance requirements, but the controls are identical. Took the gross weight from 6,000 lbs to 10,500 lbs too with analysis and some flight testing. But even then I left some on the table, the aft CG limit is determined by 50 lbs of lead over the tail wheel, we had substantiation etc for 50 lbs but no higher, plus there is no realistic way to load that far aft, so why go through all the extra analysis for a heavier weight to test to, so the aft CG limit, isn’t the actual limit, we don’t know what that is, just that we don’t need to find it. ‘Even with the increased numbers, none were the actual limits, just numbers we determined that gave us all we wanted, testing to the absolute limit can be scary and harder than you might think. ‘But it should be noted that limits are limits. It’s odd to me that the same pilot who would never, ever come close to exceeding 400 cyl head temp. will regularly drop the gear at the max limit every time. There may be less wear if you wait until much lower speeds.

I will soon hopefully be attending Baker’s in Lebanon Tn to test to get my IA back, a quick check online said that he cheapest car from Enterprise is $500 a week. I used to rent cars every so often when we were sailing for about $200 a week. ‘I just rented again what was supposed to be the cheapest car from Enterprise to go to a funeral in Albany Ga and paid $80 for a few hours to attend a funeral. No fees at the FBO, but I left them $20 tip because they went overboard and were nice. ‘What Albany and Lebanon have in common is that they are holes in the wall, nothing near either one and both small airports. I didn’t know there was a rental car shortage, but it would explain it. Supposedly the Auto manufacturers are learning a lesson now from what I read, and that’s there is increased profit in shortages, labor costs are down, all costs are down but profits per unit are way up, so overall profits are up. The second thing supposedly they are learning is to no longer manufacturer or offer the little cheap cars, there just isn’t any money in them. ‘All I can say about high buck FBO’s is do your homework and avoid them as much as you can. ‘CBP made me go through Miami International several years ago to export an airplane, Millionaire was the FBO there, Jet-A was something like $7 a gl and 20 miles away it was about $3 a Gl, but the G-650’s etc didn’t care, they all bellied up to be topped off. That’s who the FBO’s at bigger airports want, our little 10 or 20 gls of Avgas is a nuisance. It’s the smaller towns that the town owns the airport and FBO I have found to be the places to go, and drive an extra hour if needed. Your airplane is a lot less likely to get jet blasted or it’s nose gear busted because they won’t move it too.

It’s how tight the pattern is, is the difference. You fly a tighter pattern, your closer to the runway. ‘I believe but am not certain that higher altitudes you will have a higher true airspeed due to thinner air, but you will also have a higher rate of descent due to thinner air, and your glide ratio will remain the same, at normal altitudes for an airport anyway. Just as it does at higher weights

You also loose those wonderful wing mounted fuel gauges too.

Also where your based and how you fly. Probably more than 75% of my operations are off of grass, and while it’s not a rough runway, it’s not real smooth either. ‘So finding a airplane with ladders was high on my list. But both Ag Aircraft brands manufactured in the US, both have wet wings and not all Crop Dusters fly off of smooth pavement, and yet they survive, so maybe rough runways aren’t as bad as we think?

It’s also often where a good fire truck and sometimes even an ambulance is located.

Not to beat a dead horse, but it’s largely airspeed dependent as well as altitude, it’s actually energy dependent, but altitude and airspeed are pretty much interchangeable, the big motor guys pretty much do everything faster than us little motors guys and speed is energy. ‘It’s also I believe a logical argument that the big motor guys are climbing at a much higher gradient, so at pattern altitude they would be closer than my J. Might make an argument that they would be in better shape than a lighter Mooney with a smaller motor. ‘Then weight doesn’t affect glide distance, a big motor Mooney ought to have the same glide distance, excepting maybe the bigger prop will have greater drag, it will have a higher glide speed which will amount to a larger diameter turn of course, variables would be hard to quantify without test flights

No, of course not, speed and altitude are interchangeable, it’s the basis of energy management, However almost any normal person if an engine quits even throughly trained ones freeze for a few seconds and do nothing while processing what’s happening, I assume that’s the reason for the 3 sec wait on the videos linked to. An aircraft at a high angle of attack climbing under high power will very quickly be at or close to stall within 3 set of the power being removed, so to make a turn much less a tight turn a strong nose down attitude will be needed and that goes against most people’s instinct, to shove the nose down hard at low altitude. For those with significant helicopter time this is actually a nearly identical to a helicopter autorotation, what’s different with helicopters and airplanes is a helicopter has a height/ velocity diagram, AKA the “deadman’s curve” There is a document you can refer to illustrate whether you can make it or or not, unfortunately there is no such graph for a turn back that I’m aware of. If you look at one you will see that it takes an enormous amount of altitude to replace speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height–velocity_diagram ‘Then talk to a Crop Duster about his turns back to the field, whether a little extra altitude is preferable to a little extra speed. The Crop Duster’s turn is pretty close to what we are trying here, When spraying a field the throttle remains set, your not jockeying the throttle constantly and it’s energy management. The Vietnam era gun ship drivers doing a return to target turn is also pretty much identical, they are all energy management. Probably one of the best examples of energy management on video is Bob Hoover’s demo flights in the twin Commander. The “impossible turn” is energy management, but sometimes “speed is life” On edit, if you have had mountain training, this is actually very close to a box canyon turn too, yes you have an engine then, but the terrain is rising faster than you can climb.

I am not the one who printed an article trying to sell injectors and claimed that excess air cooled cylinder heads when LOP, your “combustion scientist” did. He made thet statement over and over, it was one of his prime selling points. That’s been years ago, one I read when I bought Gami injectors for both the C-210 and Maule, maybe 04 or so? But what has come out over and over with your posts abdicating use of non approved parts etc is your belief that your more knowledge than the FAA etc. ‘In the Army you woud have been an outhouse lawyer

My normal cruise in my J is 135 kts and leaned out to 7 GPH, Sure I can fly faster too, but I’m often not in a hurry and flying with slower aircraft in a group. ‘I have also on occasion flown leaned out at 20” or 21” at 6 GPH, this gives me 1 GPH an hour more than my C-140, and 30 kts faster, so I’m actually burning less fuel per mile than my C-85 in the 140 ‘I don’t think she will fly comfortably at 152 speeds, but it will at its burn rate. ‘I’ll spend more in a year maintaining the Mooney than I will in ten for the Cessna though