cujet

As Director of Maintenance of a corporate flight department with some very interesting toys, I get to play with speed issues on a fairly regular basis. There is no magic to it. Drag is king. 1) Flight control rigging 2) External drag, such as antenna, wing steps and any other added external components, strobes, beacons, etc. 3) Cooling drag issues. Including baffle issues, cowl flaps and more 4) Weight, such as fuel load, coupled with CG related drag. In general, the only way an aircraft will make "book numbers" is if everything is optimized. When you see an airplane that is 18kts slow at a particular power setting, it's drag and nothing else. Remember, many aircraft were speed tested with one external VHF antenna and a transponder blade. No ELT, VOR or 2nd com antenna, and probably no wing step.

As a current G550 and previous G650ER operator, we discuss fuel efficiency regularly. The G650 is slightly more efficient per trip (mpg) than the G550. We get about 1 to 1.2 MPG depending on the length of the trip. But we can carry as many as 16 passengers. So as high as 16 passenger miles per gallon. That compares favorably with a solo Mooney pilot on a trip. Note: 1mpg is achieved at M 0.925, 539Kts TAS in the G650ER. The G650ER is 20 minutes faster than the G550 on a 2 hour (1000 mile) trip. It's M0.87 climb speed covers much more ground than the M0.75 climb speed of the G550. The M0.90 normal cruise saves some time, and the M0.93 descent saves some time. I bring this up, because the same thing applies to the 305 Rocket. 150Kt climb speed, 200+ in cruise and 230 in descent all add up to time savings. It's not just the cruise speed.

Airplane ownership makes other things in life possible. Including the ability to work long hours at earning a good income and then go where you want with limited time off. That flight to a desired destination one of took last Wednesday (hypothetical) was made possible by aircraft ownership. That single day could be spend driving to the next town or flying 3 states away and back.

The 305 Rocket is an amazing time machine, and is among the very fastest piston singles. People try to justify all sorts of things in aviation. Reality is that for productivity, speed matters most. A flight from Florida to North Carolina is 2 hours 45 min, enabling a productive day at the destination, and a return flight the same day. People tend to forget that airlines can't do this to most destinations. And that slower aircraft can't do this. Even at 145kts, that's a real world 4 hour trip. Total flight time is 8 vs 5.5. Only one aircraft makes similar day trips possible and leave you enough time to be productive. God forbid trying that in a 172. 12 hours of flying into a headwind both ways.....

We had a bit of a headwind. Ground speed was in the 180's to 190. That same day, your J would not have made the trip at no wind, planned numbers either. As you would have been fighting the substantial headwinds at lower altitudes. 2.5 and 25 would be close for you that day. Which brings up the point, the 305 Rocket is a nice choice for longer flights.

Without a fuel totalizer, I don't really know that all the 45 gal was used up. We had a discussion in flight and it came out to be 10MPG in cruise.

I just rode along with Antares in his 305 Rocket from SAV to PBI. It was a very hot, afternoon departure from Savannah, GA. My impression: 1) Smooth takeoff, with adequate acceleration. Takeoff roll and initial climb match other Mooney aircraft. 2) IFR cruise climb to 16,000 was uneventful, with a steady 900+ FPM in cruise climb. Including the takeoff roll and a little vectoring, it took us 17 minutes to reach 16,000. I did notice the climb rate was exactly the same with the initial lower airspeed and greater pitch. Guessing (remember, I'm just an observer) that about 135Kts indicated gives the standard 305 Rocket cruise-climb rate. I also noticed indicated airspeed remained rock steady in climb, but TAS increased as we climbed. Oh the joys of a turbocharged engine. (same power, thinner air) 3) Once at 16,000 feet, 205Kts TAS was achieved rather quickly. No waiting long times for speed to build as is the case with some sleek, normally aspirated light aircraft. 4) The climb higher was a non event, with plenty of power to go up. 5) We tried an economy cruise setting, at 16,000 and lost about 20Kts. Lowering fuel burn by about 4gph. We talked about getting 10 miles per gallon and I thought (to myself) the lower fuel burn would put us 40 miles behind after 2 hours. Wondering if it's worth it to go slower. I'm doing this by memory, so don't hang me out to dry if I'm wrong, but by going slower the potential is to save 4 gallons on a 2 hour trip. (40 miles, 10mpg) . OK, I'll admit it, I wanted him to fly as fast as possible, as quite frankly, it's fun. 6) 18,000 is about as high as I can go on full flow O2, with a silicone mask. (health issues) So I was unable to observe what the 305 Rocket's high altitude performance would be like. 7) The ride into South Florida low altitude thermal turbulence is fantastic. Relatively high wing loading and rapid turbulence penetration speeds lead to a very secure feel. This is not weather related turbulence, but rather the small cell turbulence that upsets light aircraft in the pattern and makes the pilot fight the controls. 8) Fuel burn is high, we took on 45 gallons at SAV and used it all by PBI. NOTE: I believe Antares' 305 Rocket to be 10+ below book speeds and in need of a drag reduction (antenna removal) and weight reduction program. He still has ADF, Loran and the associated antennas. His ailerons are reflexed 1 inch in flight and there may be other issues slowing him down.

In the large aircraft world, we quantify damage by measurement. Just this week, we are repairing lower fuselage skin damage to a Gulfstream G550. All dimensions matter, the width, depth, area and location. Hence, the amount of stretch is known. After rework, the bottom line is that no wrinkles or oil canning is permitted. Clearly, the top skin of a wing is likely to "oil can" in flight. The wing bends under load and it's 100% normal. What's not normal is to see major wrinkles on the top skin, on the ground. That is the indication of a stress to yield event. A local aircraft cleaner recently noticed something similar on top of a wing. The plane had been flying with a broken spar. Not cracked, not bent, broken. The good news is that the failure was near the tip and carried little load. The pilot fessed up and admitted to an event, and his 8 passengers backed up his story, as they were experienced passengers in this airplane and were able to give good testimony. It's good they are all still here. Wing spar failure The above is a video of Chalks wing failure. It took time for the failure to occur. It's interesting to note that all the external signs were there for a very long time. External repairs were made on a regular basis.

I've seen the latest generation of Boom Beam for light aircraft. Quite simply there are no LED's, certified or experimental, that come close. If you need a lot of light, that's the right option. Our Gulfstream G650ER came with 3 LED taxi lights. They seem to be a tenth the output of the replacement Boom Beam setup. Sure, I know it's not relevant to the above discussion, but there is no question when flying behind the different products. One stands apart, every time.

Any structural part that is wrinkled like that has been seriously overstressed, regardless of how it happened. What many people don't know is that that many manufacturers "post incident, minor" (over speed, overstress, minor impact etc) inspection requirements are often simply an external skin inspection. No cracks, wrinkles or distortion and the structure is intact. As the skin is a stressed part of the structure. Put another way, the skin is much of the structure. The wing spar carries the load to the airframe. All are engineered to be as light as possible, without sacrificing strength. That means that when one part is clearly overstressed, associated structures have also experienced overstress, visible or not. The lower skin will likely be stretched (even if it looks good) and spar did it's job carrying that overstress right into the airframe, while yielding (bending permanently) somewhat. It takes a lot to bend a Mooney wing. That kind of stress can, and does, destroy much more than what's externally visible. My opinion, that wing and it's spar are scrap.

That is correct. There has never been an IO360 that actually made 200HP. Note also that Lycoming`s initial testing of the IO360 around 1960 showed it delivered 195 HP with a specific tuned exhaust and no airfilter, and a touch less with an airfilter and OEM exhaust... using the rules the FAA then allowed (different now), they could round that up to 200 HP, which was a marketing decision.

There is some truth in that. Reflexed ailerons can provide a speed advantage in certain conditions. Whether that applies to a Rocket, with lots-o-weight on the nose and 1 inch up on both ailerons, is another matter. Having flown in the above mentioned aircraft, it is significantly below book speeds at rated power. 150Kts indicated at 18K just seems low. It could be drag related due to high tail loading.

I flew in Antares' Rocket yesterday. The ailerons fly an inch high as mentioned. After the flight, we pulled up on both ailerons simultaneously. With only minor force, both pulled up to the inch up position. With roughly 40 pounds up force on the trailing edge, both pulled up to near the maximum deflection point. With a very "springy" feel. I've never worked on an airplane that is configured with "flexible" aileron rigging. However, I have near zero Mooney experience. Not knowing the system, it's my guess that there is too much "give" in the aileron mechanicals and I don't believe having them reflexed up near 50% of normal travel helps flight control feel. They feel stiff and unresponsive, even for a Mooney. I understand Rockets are heavy. But this seems unusual to me.

Both Extra 300's have tuned, 6 into 1 headers with tuned megaphone. No muffler, or restrictions/screens for obvious reasons (we want it to sound good during shows)

In our corporate flight department we've had experience with a few high compression engines built by BPE. They are AEIO540 Lycomings in Extra 300L stunt planes. The bottom line is that we had 2 Extra's, one with a stock engine, the other with 3 different variations of the high compression setup. The AEIO540 uses the EXACT same cylinders as the IO360 in the Mooney and the 10 to 1 pistons are the exact same ones used by Firewall Forward. Stock, the angle valve cylinder produces (rated) 50HP on IO360, IO540 and IO720 engines. We've dyno tested the engines multiple times. The 10 to 1 pistons add 25HP to the AEIO540, which is to say that the engine goes from a real world dyno of 289.5HP to a real world dyno of 315HP @ 2700RPM. I conclude that the 10 to 1 pistons raise the HP from 48.25HP per cylinder to 52.5HP. On an IO360 the real world HP goes from 193 to 210. EDIT: the BPE engine is a bunch smoother and more responsive. Pilots clearly prefer it. A few kts faster too.

As DOM of a corporate flight department, I purchase quite a few Concorde batteries. I see a lot of love for them here, and I want to set the record straight, they are good, but not great. The first thing is that any lead acid battery degrades. Concorde batteries are no exception. When new, they more than meet their AH rating. A 44AH battery will test at over 50++AH on either the 10 or 20 hour test. However, as time passes, they lose capacity and eventually at the 3 year mark, (here in Florida) they won't pass a properly performed capacity check, not even close. Recently replaced a pair of 3 year Concorde old batts in our Pilatus PC12/47, #1 tested at 30%, #2 at 60%, starting performance was still excellent. Since lead acid batteries tend to last longer in cooler weather, it's possible that a cooler location may allow it to pass a 3 year cap check to 80% or about 35AH. That's a good bit off the 52AH (real world) new capacity though (remember the 44AH rating? ) . I strongly suspect that those of you using very old Concorde batteries are using batteries that are far from rated capacity, not to mention new capacity. I spoke with Concorde and they admit the maximum life is 4 years in ideal conditions. That means passing the 3 year cap check might be possible and failing the 4th year. But remember that the way Concorde does it is by "sandbagging" the specs. The degradation still happens on schedule. The capacity is required to run avionics and put the gear down after the charging system fails. The capacity has little to do with starting. Edit: Also, I get 2 years from the single Concorde's in hard use. At which point, they are toast and starting suffers.

Today in the G550, 471Kts, 542Mph, FL470. That was a good day too. 471 542 47,000

Of course for you high altitude guys, If you have a WAAS GPS source like a 430W-530W or similar, one easy solution might just be the $2400 KT-74 transponder ADSB capable transponder. It's uses the KT-76/KT-78 tray and will simply slide in and work (for now) Just swap it out for now and when 2020 comes, hook up the GPS and Squat switch (or pitot pressure switch) and it's good to go.

Hello, I'm based at F45. Hangar space is very hard to find, especially in winter. Our company has a 4 plane 55x60 corporate hangar in a prime location at F45, at the moment, it's full. However, that may change "if" I relocate my plane to PA. Additionally, my boss may relocate one or more of his aircraft. I have personally been on the F45 T hangar waiting list for over 12 years! Contact me if you want to chat. cujet@aol.com or five six one, three zero one, eight seven five four. Up till about 10PM. Chris

We operate an Experimental Exhibition Extra 300L, with a BPE AEIO540. The chief pilot experienced a near complete injector blockage after a takeoff and snap roll. He barely made it back, struggling along at about 150 feet. The engine was running horribly and he never thought to pull the mixture lever out a bit. Once on the ground, the Dynon Skyview was very helpful in troubleshooting. Here is what I noticed: Black smoke and very rough running at full power, no EGT on cyl 2 once power was increased. Although idle and some small amount of throttle was OK. However, at no point did the engine run like it had 5 healthy cylinders until a pull of the mixture lever to get EGT's high enough to get into the normal range. I found a small piece of black rubber in the injector. Who knows if I as the pilot, would have tried to pull the mixture... However, this much I do know, it's good to try various things to troubleshoot a bad engine. Try each mag individually, try the fuel pump, try pulling the mixture, try moving the throttle, etc. Even as an A+P, I can't instantly diagnose an inflight problem, heck I'm probably way off base on my first guess.

I use Tdata's IA Approach basic. It's not cheap, but I maintain a fleet of 8, so it's very helpful. I don't make any claims that it's the best. In fact, it's a little old-school clunky, but it works and produces very easy to understand, professional looking AD sign off sheets in chronological order, that I place in an organized binder. About 10 AD's per page. That binder contains Tabs for airframe, each engine, each associated accessory and a tab for misc related AD's. I've discovered that during aircraft sale, the AD research is super quick, as it's already self evident. I update the sign-off each year, or as needed. I generally need to update only the top sheet in each section. One heck of a lot easier than searching through the logs for random sign offs.

The lack of sufficient power has been a safety issue from the very start. Climb rate is often (almost) directly proportional to available thrust. It is my fervent belief that underpowered aircraft are less safe when compared to a similar example with sufficient thrust to weight. A partial loss of power, either via density altitude, cylinder issues or for other reasons, puts underpowered aircraft at far greater risk. We lost a cylinder in our Extra 300L just after takeoff. The remaining 5 cylinders were able to manage a fairly normal traffic pattern and landing. I lost a piston in a 150 in cruise and the descent rate was 700FPM with a still (barely) running engine. Extreme examples, sure. However, I think my belief has merit. Minimizing the time spent near the ground is a good thing. EDIT: It's one reason why I prefer 6 cylinder engines coupled with excellent thrust to weight. As individual cylinder issues or partial power loss events are less likely to be catastrophic.

Thanks for the accurate accounting of the steps leading up to the crash. I only hope to be intelligent enough to learn from this.

Other than a few episodes of rough running (stuck valve, fouled plug, etc) I've only had one real in flight failure. It was during flight training in a 150. The instructor and I noticed a severe loss of power while cruising at about 2500-3000 feet altitude. The engine still ran, but was only able to achieve 1700RPM, mostly windmilling due to our 700 FPM descent to the nearby airport, which we barely made. The culprit was a cracked piston, that was then perforated by hot combustion gases. The failure was not instant, and worsened over a period of about a minute or two. Always remember that the loss of 1 cylinder in a 4 cylinder engine can result in near zero power. While every situation is different, a 6 cylinder engine will often make 50% power with the loss of one cyl. Because of that incident during training, I always try to maintain sufficient altitude to glide to the next airport.

I am unaware of this. I think the state of FL imposes a "use tax" of 6% if an aircraft is purchased outside the state of FL, and brought into the state for more than 20 days (with a number of exceptions) I am unaware of any FL counties charging a use tax. CA will want to know your engine time since overhaul, to calculate a pro-rated tax, based on engine hours remaining. I overhauled my engine myself, for $6,600. CA wanted to tax me on an engine value of $35,000. I chose not to move there.