"The OTHER Kevin in San Diego" skiddz "AT" adelphia "DOT" net wrote in
message ...
Did some transition training in a Raven II today. Man, what a sweet
ship that thing is compared to the 22s...


It is sweet moving up to a more powerful machine, isn't it! I got my fixed
wing license in a wore out 1967 C150 with a climb prop. Max cruise was
about 105 mph! After my check ride, my instructor took my through my high
performance check off in C182. Man, what a difference! :-) At one point,
we did a max performance short field take-off with just the two of us and a
little less than half tanks. Accelerate in a 3 point attitude to Vx, rotate
and climb to clear the 50' obstacle. We hit Vx, I rotated and the aircraft
kept accelerating. I kept pulling the nose up to hold Vx, or rather get
back down to it (!), until my instructor said enough. Push the nose back
over to a normal climb attitude and accelerate away and we're at 400+ feet
and not quite half way down a 5000' runway. Great fun! :-D

My question is, how did you have the Raven loaded? I imagine that the R22's
you trained in were flying close to gross weight most of the time. I know
that we kept that old 150 right up next to gross weight all the time.
Flying a more powerful aircraft and running it as a relative fraction of
it's carrying capacity doesn't hurt the performance figures!

Fly Safe,
Steve R.