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Seriously considering leaving Mooney behind....


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Sweet plane! Go twin if you can! I flew a 340 with a friend (his plane) many years ago - just to see what it was like - I was hooked but, couldn’t get that past the CFO (wife ;o)

looks like a blast - the family pic is one ‘many’ of us could take too ;o)

-Don

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On 5/28/2020 at 5:29 PM, philip_g said:

It feels like wrestling a pickup truck, super heavy feeling... Probably because it is.

The Seneca II’s I’ve flown feel about like that.

Most of the time flight control feel is a function of the design rigging and the flight control surfaces themselves (aerodynamics).  For example: a Mooney at 150 knots feels heavier on the controls than a like weight bonanza at 150knots. It’s purely a function of the aerodynamics and rigging of the flight controls themselves- not the weight of the aircraft.  Mooney’s could be designed to feel lighter on the controls (could be modified that way too)... but they weren’t.  Most Mooney pilots consider the heavier control feel to be a “feeling of stability”... because our aircraft tend to be statically and dynamically stable.. or at least neutral... in the roll and pitch axis. 
 

when I hear Mooney pilots say that, though... I know they have never flown a Seneca II... that thing has heavy controls and is definitely not stable in the roll/yaw axis- lol... indeed... it flys like an old 1980’s Chevy S10!  My point... heavy controls don’t make for a stable platform.  Nor do light controls (a bonanza IMO) make for an unstable platform.

Edited by M016576
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6 hours ago, M016576 said:

The Seneca II’s I’ve flown feel about like that.

Most of the time flight control feel is a function of the design rigging and the flight control surfaces themselves (aerodynamics).  For example: a Mooney at 150 knots feels heavier on the controls than a like weight bonanza at 150knots. It’s purely a function of the aerodynamics and rigging of the flight controls themselves- not the weight of the aircraft.  Mooney’s could be designed to feel lighter on the controls (could be modified that way too)... but they weren’t.  Most Mooney pilots consider the heavier control feel to be a “feeling of stability”... because our aircraft tend to be statically and dynamically stable.. or at least neutral... in the roll and pitch axis. 
 

when I hear Mooney pilots say that, though... I know they have never flown a Seneca II... that thing has heavy controls and is definitely not stable in the roll/yaw axis- lol... indeed... it flys like an old 1980’s Chevy S10!  My point... heavy controls don’t make for a stable platform.  Nor do light controls (a bonanza IMO) make for an unstable platform.

Right - as I understand it there is a cam that is like a gear that translates a certain number of inches of movement of the yoke into a certain number of inches of movement of the control surfaces.  How that is designed, high gear or low gear, also effects how heavy the airplane feels.  Just like a bicycle going up a high in high gear feels heavy but in low gear it does not.  This is a factor separate from the other good properties of aerodynamic stability, dynamic and static stability.  I presume Al Mooney designed the airplane he wanted it to be.

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19 hours ago, M016576 said:

Seneca II... that thing has heavy controls and is definitely not stable in the roll/yaw axis

When I first got my Seneca III (which for the purposes of this discussion should not be different from a II), I was building hours before carrying passengers. I took it out to the practice area and set mid level power. Then put it into a 30º left bank. It did six complete 360º turns without me touching the controls and without changing altitude or airspeed. Finally after six turns it started to lose altitude but only lost 50' on the next turn. It is the most stable airplane I've ever owned.

Edited by KLRDMD
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On 1/4/2021 at 8:41 AM, KLRDMD said:

When I first got my Seneca III (which for the purposes of this discussion should not be different from a II), I was building hours before carrying passengers. I took it out to the practice area and set mid level power. Then put it into a 30º left bank. It did six complete 360º turns without me touching the controls and without changing altitude or airspeed. Finally after six turns it started to lose altitude but only lost 50' on the next turn. It is the most stable airplane I've ever owned.


that isn’t even close to the experience I had.  If I didn’t have a significant amount of rudder in at 30 degrees AOB, the nose would fall rapidly.  I was interested in buying one (a Seneca III, actually...until I flew this Seneca II).

Now...I’ve only flown one Seneca- and don’t have a ton of hours in it- so single source of info on the airframe.. but I had quite a bit of experience single and multi before flying it... so I am confident in what I saw/felt.. and it wasn’t good.  The one I flew was all over the map.  Any power change required considerable re-trimming in all three axis, despite the prop sync.  Small, even amounts of force in any single axis resulted in non-linear control outputs, and those input/outputs changed markedly with speed (most mechanical flight control systems do though).  “Statically Neutral stable“ is how I’d define it in the yaw axis... where I almost had to continue to provide known yaw deflection inputs or the heading would wander like a lost puppy.  It flew a little better the faster it went... but it was a full “riding the bicycle” experience during instrument approaches.  And the controls were very heavy. Annoyingly so for how imprecise it tracked.

the aircraft I was flying (the Seneca II) did not have a functional autopilot... so that experience was about 15 or so hours and maybe 15 approaches all hand flown in the Bay Area through scud layers, etc over 3-4 days.  It’s quite possible that the airframe was bent- it was in use by an ATP school.

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4 minutes ago, M016576 said:

It’s quite possible that the airframe was bent- it was in use by an ATP school.

That's my guess. I flew my Seneca to minimums a number of times going into HHR, no issues ever. It handled well, for a Seneca. It's not like it is a Baron.

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2 minutes ago, KLRDMD said:

That's my guess. I flew my Seneca to minimums a number of times going into HHR, no issues ever. It handled well, for a Seneca. It's not like it is a Baron.

I flew that nasty Seneca II down to minimums a number of times too.... and hated almost every second of it lol.  
 

N101SA... stay far, far away ;)

 

edit... a quick flight aware show it looks like it’s out in MS now... still flying though (much to my surprise)

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7 minutes ago, KLRDMD said:

That's my guess. I flew my Seneca to minimums a number of times going into HHR, no issues ever. It handled well, for a Seneca. It's not like it is a Baron.

 

5 minutes ago, M016576 said:

I flew that nasty Seneca II down to minimums a number of times too.... and hated almost every second of it lol.  
 

N101SA... stay far, far away ;)

 

edit... a quick flight aware show it looks like it’s out in MS now... still flying though (much to my surprise)

You guys are comparing 2 different airplanes. A seneca owned by @KLRDMD and a seneca owned by ATP flight school are very different.

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