Originally Posted by
chazbird
One other fun factoid was that some of the III's had a provision for AWI alcohol water injection. We flew dash 11's, rated at 1100 shp but I think the extra 100 shp of that was AWI. Never used or carried it, but I guess some did. The earlier II's or straight metro's could carry a small jato bottle in the tail cone. That tells you something there.
Correct, the dash 11's were rated 1000 w/o water and 1100 w/water.
Your guess that some carried water is an understatement.
It was required to have for heavy dash 11 S/E take off performance in the summer
at places like SLC/SGU/LAS/PHX/FLG/PGA etc.....fired it every day in the summer.
The stations had large carts, with hand pumps usually, to fill the nose tank
to its 16 gallon capacity. Never timed it, but the consumption was fairly fast.
Skywest had one fail at LAS on a 110+deg. day at liftoff with the plane heavy and
the airplane settled back down for the abort (25R).
It felt like more than 200hp total and would also allow
the airplane to indicate 300kt @10K ft. if fired in flight.
(the euro Vne was 300kt. due to lesser restrictions on the plexi center window)
The water would also allow easily getting to the 31K ft ceiling, which was difficult without it.(but not cert. for)
It was def. more than 200hp total, but they just called it that.
(Imho they didn't want pilots to know they had a +400hp lever....heh, it was fun)
The earlier JATO's were fun to fire on the ground at the hangar when their expiration date had passed.
As far as a useful S/E second segment climb device (why they were there for cert.).....not so much.