Quote:
Originally Posted by 1257
Take the Metro stories with a grain of salt, you can find the same individual oddities with Beeches.
It was 5000+ hours of some of the funnest flying I've done personally.
Generally the guys who liked the Metro were guys who liked fast bikes/cars and were into hand flying.
The guys that didn't like it, in general, were the ones who wanted to relax/be quiet and read or not fly.
The 3/4 were much better powered/developed than the 2 was and most of the 2's are retired.
If the ops specs say two pilots are required, you can log SIC.
This is the way it worked at Skywest. In fact, Skywest's ops spec
changed from single pilot (ferry flights) to always dual pilot due to an "exuberant" guy....
He was SP ferrying a Metro and decided to do some aerobatics.
Fell out of roll and overstressed it on the pullout.
It was caught after the first flight of the day, yeah with pax, and ferried to PSP.
The Swearingen engineers came out from San Antonio and measured the deflection and estimated 6g.
They pulled the skin and the spar returned to the normal displacement and they simply re-skinned the wings and put it back out.
I flew that plane many times afterward and it was fine. They are tough and just require a some skill and attention/maint. to fly well.
The stories could go on and on for pages, good times.
It's a fast, no BS, pilot's airplane. 248 (kts) to the gate was the saying for the outer marker.
If you take it seriously and respect it, it's a kick in the pants.
Oh yeah, keep your finger ready on the nose wheel steering button......heh
I've rolled a few airplanes but I'd never have the guts to roll the Metro. The ailerons could be disconnected for a week before anyone found out.
I've often thought of finding an old air frame in the dump somewhere, dragging it to Oshkosh and charging guys $5 a swing with a sledge hammer.
Be careful with the cross flow switch, it's between two identical fuel shutoff switches. The cockpit was designed long before the phrase "user friendly" was invented. It will help if you are 5'4" like Ed was. 1257 is right, it'll make a man of ya, along with some hearing loss. I just hated to see the paying passengers in such misery.