Cessna 310 Down in Compton, Calif.

On Apr 16, 12:02*am, Frank Olson
wrote:
Cary wrote:
On Apr 14, 5:57 pm, Frank Olson
wrote:
There are several twin engined aircraft that can't fly on "one mill".
The Cessna 336/337 springs to mind as the best example (in this case).
Some twin engined helicopters are unable to maintain level flight with
one engine out. *The 310 is extremely difficult to fly on one engine
particularly at lower speeds or with gear and flaps down. *The Aerostar
(of which I'm quite familiar) is another challenge to fly on one mill.

I owned a C310B for 6 years and had over 700 hours on that plane. I
had 4 real engine failures in that time and never found the plane
difficult to fly on one engine, or to land at low speed with gear and
flaps down. The plane was very stable and easy to fly on either one or
two engines. Maybe your comment applies to later models of the 310,
but it certainly doesn't apply to the 310B.

Cary Mariash

700 hours and four engine failures... *That equates to about one failure
every 175 hours. *Now that's scary. *I'd be having a serious talk with
your friendly mechanic. *There were two 310's (don't recall the
variants) based at Abbotsford (BC) which accumulated over 2000 hours of
flying time between them in a year and NEVER had one engine failure in
the four years I hung around there. *Gear problems were another matter.
* I never found the 310 "stable" or "easy to fly" on one engine, but
mind you my check pilots/instructors always seemed to favour "killing"
the critical engine. *:-)

Frank,
I don't remember if it was you or someone else I responded to
privately. Publicly I will let you know that the 1st engine failure
(right engine) occurred when the gear on the engine that drive the wet
vacuum pump started to deteriorate. It sent metal into the crank case,
a piece eventually damaging the front main bearing. This led to loss
of oil pressure and loss of prop control. I shut the engine down and
flew home without incident. The other three were related to an engine
rebuild (left engine) where the rebuilder used the wrong main bearing
the first time, did not fit the correct main bearing properly the
second time, and still couldn't fit it properly the third time. This
rebuilder is no longer in business! My plane did not have autopilot
and I spent a lot of time hand flying in IFR, and a lot of time with
an instructor who pulled engines on me all the time. I think all the
practice I had flying single engine made these engine outs non-events.

Cary