Best Pilot Watch for $100

Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Yeah,every once in a while I learn something that is so big and so
fundamental that it frightens me that I'd been flying around in
ignorance of it for so long and worse, makes me wonder what else I
might be flying around not knowing..

It's amazing the crap we all pull off while flying without killing
ourselves. I should have been dead years ago with some of the boners
I've pulled off in my life :-))



Yeah, not many left now. A buddy of mine nearly bought one with his
brother when they were both fairly young, but they walked away from
it because of the daunting task of rebuidling the wing. The friend of
my dad's from the story had sold his by the time I'd gotten into his
neighbothood, but I did get a ride in his Apache. My first in a light
twin.

Bertie

Had a buddy once who bought a 150 Apache. He had trouble fining an FAA
type to go flying with him. They liked it with both fans running, but
giving a flight test in it was another matter :-))




What? You're kidding? They were the perfect trainer and probably the
safest thing to do flight tests in. It was the only light twin ever
certified for spins (later revoked). The thing about them was that you
had to do everything right or they wouldn't go up, even light, but more
importantly, as a trainerm they were less likely to kill you than any
other light twin if the student got it horribly wrong.
For instance, if you got a failure on the left,( I think, it;s been a
while) during takeoff and you had to go, you had to pump the gear up
manually. If you lost the left whilst going around, you also had to get
the flaps up using the same hand pump. So, the pocedure was to quickly
select the flaps first so they would blow up due to aerodynamic load and
save you the trouble, then start pumping like hell to get the gear up.
You had already caged the engine, of course.
A VMC roll was very progressive, and if you were doing those at altitude
you could let them develop well past the point you could with any other
light twin I know of and even if it rolled over on you it was entirely
recoverable.
During my own MEI checkride the FAA inspector wasn't happy with my VMC
demos. They weren't agressive enough to suit him. We were doing these
relatively low, BTW, due to overcast. He took it form me and suggested
that I had to really show the student what a divergence was all about.
Long story short he got it wrong and we did about 3/4 turn before we
recovered. That wouldn't have been a happy ending in a Twin Commanche.

I remember reading that Cessna's chief test pilot was demonstrating the
T-50 Bobcat to the FAA for certification. He went through all the
manuevers required for the inspector and after the tests were all done,
casually mentioned that he didn't have a multi-engine rating and could
the inspector sign him off fo one. The inspector went nuts, but
eventually decided that the guy hadn't actually violated any rules
technically, and that the three days of flight testing had actually been
a pretty good flight test, so he obliged...

Oh, and Larry, before you start looking to get the guys prosecuted, this
would have been in 1940 or so when the rules were different and they're
both prolly dead anyway..
..



Bertie