he says he did fly that plane earlier this week. i thanked him for not crashing, again.
he didn't know or didn't say who it was. i didn't ask.
Thank you for the concern, guys, sincerely! It wasn't me! I was on my first day off, hanging out in Dulles.
Getting that text from Tony was a bit of deja vu all over again...
I'm afraid I don't know anything about who it was. The email from the company didn't say, we don't have a fleet wide flight tracking program available to the crew members like we did at my last job, and I've been off since it happened, so I'm out of the rumor mill.
I'm sure I'll start to hear more when I go back to work next week.
Glad they got out ok. And I'd love to hear about any quirks they have in single-engine ops.
I KNOW nothing about flying them but would have thought that the engines near(er) the centerline would have helped make it less of a handful.
But I'm just a SEL pilot so
No bizarre quirks, really, that it doesn't have with both of them turning. It does handle, in flight, a little differently than "normally" rigged planes (with both engines running), but it's nothing serious, and nothing you don't learn muscle memory for after a few hours.
SE it flies just like anything else. You get a little bit of yawing moment when you reduce power in the flare, but again, nothing you wouldn't observe in a conventional twin.
The engines actually aren't THAT much closer to the centerline than they are in anything else of comparable size - it's not like the Starship in that regard.
WAG: too much reverse on the good engine when landing? They have huge rudders with those pusher props. No experience in one.
Best,
Dave
Unlikely. You can hardly use ANY reverse in this plane with both engines running. The props are so near the rudder, anything more than shallow beta and the props wash out the rudder. The NWS is through the rudder pedals at low speed, free castering at high speed, so in either case you start getting shoved around pretty quickly if you use too much beta or (almost any) reverse, and that's with two engines. I'd be shocked if they used it on one.
I'd be willing to bet the crosswind theory has, at least some contributory merrit. It is a wonderful
flying plane; docile, predictable, responsive but well harmonized. So long as you stay ahead of it's power and plan your descents, flying it is a real dream. On the ground, however, it's a different animal all together. It uses electric NWS, not unlike older Lears, which can be... sensitive. It takes a lot of getting used to to taxi smoothly, and the landing rollout is a bit of a juggling act. Especially in high cross winds when that rudder is getting batted around, pushing your NWS. Plus, no anti-skid installed AND carbon brakes... Again, it's nothing unmanageable in normal ops, but add other failures into a task saturated cockpit and it could certainly be a handful.
