Originally Posted by
okonokos
Ahhh the mighty 'Van. I hated that airplane for the first 100 or so hours, but after that you really come to love it. As far as flying it, it's honest, and almost impossible to mess up. You can take off with no flaps, the condition lever in low idle, the yaw damper on, bleed air heat and airconditioner on, inertial seperator in bypass, and a fuel selector off, hell, even both of them off (for about 4 mins. anyway) on and it will still go!
The weirdest thing about it is that it wags it's tail for about the first 500 or so feet while you're slow. Once you get the rudders figured out (for that big swinging prop out there) it's a blast to fly. If you fly one with a cargo pod, the total limit for the pod is the same as the temp. start limit (1090). Also, ALWAYS make sure to turn one of the fuel selectors off after you land or shutdown. It will transfer fuel like no other just sitting on seemingly level ground. Oh yeah, the low fuel lights blink off and on with over an hours worth of gas left, thats kindof annoying, but the boxes won't care. Enjoy it, it's fun to fly and painfully easy to operate. (Painfully slow too)
There's a book out there called "The Caravan, Swiss Army Knife of the Sky" that should be required reading, it's full of tips and tricks that are nice to know... For instance, there is a max fuel imbalance of 200lbs. for flight, someone figured out that 8 circles standing on a brake will take care of that for you if you happen to forget to turn one of those selectors off...
Enjoy!
This guy hit the nail on the head. Great airplane...very forgiving.
I flew the wings off of a Caravan as a diver driver...I've also had it in instrument conditions with a non-RNAV equipped King Silver Crown avionics suite. It is a solid platform that any Cessna bred pilot can handle.
I think AOPA had a really good article on the plane that you can pick up...I recall it discussed the useful 10-11-12 rule. 10 degrees of flaps, 1100 ft/lbs torque, and 120 knots for approaches.
If this is your first turbine aircraft, be careful on takeoffs. The torque indications will increase about 1-200 ft/lbs of torque when you're leaving ground effect. So, if you set the power right at the takeoff torque limit (the normal red line), you will likely cause an over-torque situation on the climb.
Just a few things I recall...maybe I'll remember a few more things later on.