What's hard to fly, what's easy?

[enigma]

[Hand flying qualities: On a scale of ten. The Jetstream31 rates a one, (heavy breakout forces, yet barely stable. meaning that you constantly have to fly it but it's heavy on the controls and wears you out. It is difficult to land and taxis like the the way a worn out Ford pickup drives).
The MD 80 rates a five, (it's nice and stable, but the non-boosted controls take a lot of deflection and muscle. The Douglas might be easy to land, but good landings must take more than a thousand hours to learn, because I'm not there yet)
The tip tank Lears rate a seven (they are nice and light on the controls, responsive, and obviously climb well, yet the tip tanks add to dutch roll and the drag rise at approach speeds will bite you quick. Landings are OK, just don't use too much bank in a cross wind)
The Brasilia rates a seven as well, (it was a little heavy but responsive and stable and landings were only moderately difficult )
Longhorn wing Lears rate an eight for the 55 and a nine for the 60. (the 60 gets one more point because its engines are FADEC controlled. These airplanes are well balanced in pitch, roll and yaw, they are stable and don't require constant attention yet the control forces allow for low effort flight. Landings are easy, and in nice smooth air you can even feel the 60's delta fins push the nose over when they hit ground effect, very cool)

Autoflite qualities: The J31 gets a pass here becaouse the piece of trash doesn't even have an autopilot.
MD80's rate a three (the autopilot and autothrottles are of the same vintage as the radio shack TRS80 computer. It is not intuitive to say the least. It can be flown well but requires a lot of mental effort)
The Brasilia rates a six, ( my memory is fading a bit, but it was fairly easy to manipulate)
The Lear FC200 a/p found in most of the thirty series flys the aircraft well and is intuitive to operate but suffers from the lack of an altitude capture feature. It gets a six as well.
The Lear 55 with it's FC500 a/p gains the altitude capture feature but is otherwise the same as the FC200 in the Lear 35. but the altitude capture is worth an eight.
The Lear60 a/p rates a nine, it is easy and smooth.

Systems: The J31 ties with the Brasilia at a rating of four. The J31 is physically built like a tank, but its systems are weak or poorly engineered, like the steering and antiskid systms.
The Brasilia is more complicated than a 737 or the MD80. It's computer controlled flaps, double acting hydraulic props, automatic everything electrical system, etc are just too much for a thirty seat tprop.
The MD80 rates an six on systems, it is simple and reliable. The electrical system is much more simple than the Brasilia. I would rate the Douglas an eight, but it requires to much mental effort to operate because it it almost totally manual. For example, there are six steps necessary to turn on the wing anti-ice system.
I rate the Lears at a nine, because they are dirt simple, reliable and easy to learn and operate.

Ergonomically, the Brasilia was the best cockpit layout and the Jetstream the worst. I trained on the 737 and liked it, but I've not flown it since the rating.

I left out the B1900 series because they were not transport catagory aircraft. For that matter, I'm not sure that the J31 is either, but it is such a piece of cra* that I had to include it for the sake of comparison. For the record, had the 1900 been a part 25 aircraft, it would rank an average of eight.

regards
8N




BTW, your buddy is correct about the DC9 series leaking liquid into the cockpit. The pilots will get wet if you sit on the ramp in a rain shower.

 

[bigD]

No really enigma, tell us what you REALLY think of the J31! Heh!

Anyone here fly a 777? UAL flies them a lot in and out of Denver, and every time during landing I feel like I'm gonna die. I've been through eight 777 landings and only one of them didn't make my a** pucker. I originally chalked it up to plain old bad luck, but my girlfriend just got back from D.C. this week, and within 5 minutes of greeting her at the baggage claim she said, "BigD, you need to show those 777 pilots how to fly that plane. My back is still sore."

Yeah yeah - she thinks I'm the greatest pilot in the land. Hey, what she doesn't know won't hurt her, right?

 

[boscenter]

Thanks for all the input guys.

I'd like to hear about the 777 though, I've heard a lot of this "i'm gonna die" talk by passengers on the approach. What exactly IS up w/ that?

 

[JerryP]

If bricks don't fly well, how do you explain the F-4 Phantom???

 

[waldopepper]

camels

personally I like the camel. it's the perfect conservative mans airplane, it only wants to turn right. Ernst Kessler says the Bucker/Fokker, but what's he know?

waldo

 

[HvyjetFO]

My .02

Here's my list of goods and bads...

Be-1900: Awesome airplane to fly. Very responsive and easy. Flew an ILS like it was on rails down to the runway. Plenty of power (D model) and good instrumentation. Simple systems that were easy to learn but could have been a bit "beefier". Very little room up front for anything besides 2 pilots. Handles ice very well. Landed regualrly on 33R in BOS (2200 ft long) with plenty of room to spare.

E-120: Fun after you learn it's quirks but otherwise a systems nightmare. Prop, electrical systems very complex. Constant need to retrim rudder with any pitch/power change. Comfortable ram horn yokes. Maintainence nightmare (at least for the company I flew it for). Electrical relays would chatter like a typewriter sometimes. De-icing eqpt was awful.

L-1011: Wonderful airplane. Enormous cockpit. Systems were not extremely difficult. Great innovative ideas like Direct Lift Control - spoilers would raise to 7 degrees when flaps went down 30 degrees. While descending on glideslope, pushing forward on the yoke would pop the spoilers up to 14 degrees, and cause an increased sink rate with no change in attitude. Conversely, pulling back would push spoilers back down to zero to decrease sink rate with no change in pitch. With this system you could fly an ILS with your fingertips. Excellent autopilot with outstanding autoland capability. Very good 2 engine performer. I did a 2 engine ferry MCO-IND and 2 engine climb rate was almost 2000 FPM, but then again we were empty. Took a little while to get used to the nosegear being 19 feet behind the cockpit. Mains were 92 feet aft (or thereabouts). Upon main gear touchdown the pilots were still 32 feet in the air. 2 elevators mid cabin to get down to the lower galley. I could go on forever...

B-727: Fun, fun, fun to hand fly. Simple autopilot. Handled like a sports car. Descent size cockpit but not a lot of extra room. Good systems but definitely out of touch by todays automated standards. Just when you think you got the thing figured out how to land it, she bites you in the A$$. Pull the power to idle and she'll come down like a greased bowling ball. Eats runway like nobody's business! Ya gotta love her.

Hvy

 

[avbug]

avbug never said he was "sh!t hot".

I did say that a professional pilot who finds glitches in his equipment, such that he is drawn to say it is poor equipment, should look at himself first. I stated it before, and will state it again; only a poor carpenter blames his tools.

As for the 20 series learjets; there are no bad habits. The airplanes fly honestly, have much more performance than they need, and are simple, straightforward machines. These airplanes are older, and not graced with the latest autopilots, avionics suites, or other acouterments. Big deal. They're a lot of fun, give a good ride, fly great in weather and ice, and perform very well on one engine when should the need arise. The powerplants are bulletproof for the most part; very reliable. (Their two great drawbacks being high fuel consumption and noise, and for some the latter is no great drawback). Personally, I like the sound.

If a pilot finds an airplane hard to fly, the pilot has no business in that airplane. Challenging is another matter. When we cease to be challenged, we become complacent, we die.

 

[Ameriagle]

The Beech 99 is a gem. I good beginner turbine......the systems are simple and straight forward, the PT6 is bulletproof, and it has great performance (c-99).

Another post mentioned the ATR. The 42 and the 500 series 72 are relatively decent handling birds...good performance. At Eagle we were flying the 42 into some confined runways. The 72-212 is like flying a Greyhound bus. But all aircraft are very capable and do a good job of moving large amounts of people and bags. Another note about the 500 series ATR....its interior noise level is actually less than that in the EMB I am flying now and vibrations for a turbo prop are almost non-existant.

The EMB is another great airplane. Good performance, great handling.....a real sports car. Probably the easiest airplane I have ever flown. Dispatch reliability and range (145) are the 2 most common heard gripes.

 

[cougar6903]

How does the Dash 8 compare? Is it easy or hard to fly?

 

[NuGuy]

Hi Cougar,

I have a fair amount of time in the DHC-8, so here goes:

Nice flying bird. Built like a tank. A bunch of years back, Horizon had one with a engine fire that burned out all the hydraulics, but they put it on the ground, bounced off the terminal and some ground equipment and everyone walked off the airplane.

The thing had some really low gear and flap speeds (something like 158 and 148, I think). It was the only airplane I ever flew that you put the gear down before the flaps. Coupled with a very low cruise/descent RPM (900), it was interesting to fly an ILS at 170, then try to slow up to drop the gear and flaps. Most people I knew brought the props up to 1050 to slow up. The gear was straight legged, so getting a decent landing was a matter of extreme skill or luck.

OTOH, once slowed up, the ship was semi-STOL, and you could regularly land at DCA on 15 and hold short of 19 (about 1800 feet, I think). Pretty impressive for something that can land at 33,900 lbs. We also took it into Hilton Head, which was pretty short, and we were rarely weight limited.

You almost never left people, pax or jumpseaters behind. On the -200, you could take 37 people, 2000 lbs of bags, 5000 lbs of fuel and a jumpseater.

Cruise and climb for the -100s were weak, especially in the summer (about 245kts true), but the -200s did alot better (around 280kts).

Same with the AC. On the -100s it was weak, but the -200s had better AC. Best bet was to leave the APU running anytime the engines weren't. OTOH, they had some pretty restrictive rules about running the APU unattended.

But the autopilot rocked, and DHC-8s either have a KNS660 or a UNS-1B for nav, and the thing would fly itself.

It had fairly complex systems to learn, but once flying, they were all automatic. Very nice cockpit layout...plenty of room. Some AC had EFIS, others steam, but they were equally nice to fly. On the non-EFIS birds, the radar had a graphics unit that would display the waypoints and route of flight from the KNS.

Best,
Nu