CPL day 1

Well, the day is finally here!

Only the weather isn't :-(

Yet another deep Atlantic depression causing more miserable August weather, though strangely no rain in Leeds. However, the wind is forecast to be too strong and all crosswind. Still needed to get all the paperwork done and so met with the other two who were starting the CPL on the same day:

• Nick - from the RAF having flown Jaguars and more recently instructing on Tocanos. He's only got to do the minimal time (about 10 hours) to get his ME rating and convert his IR.
• Dave - the same position as me being just short of 70 hours P1
  

After much chatting about what is required in the CPL and many questions, I asked Nick if I could tag along on his first ME flight which he nicely agreed to. I wanted to see how things worked and help get a head start on familiarising myself with the Beech Duchess systems and checklists which I need to memorise. It was definitely a trip worth taking.

Firstly it seems like it's not that trivial to correctly judge the positions and equalities of the power and prop levers, though I daresay you get used to them quite quickly. It does yaw about noticably if you don't use them in unison.

Secondly, I knew that on engine failure and simulated asymetric flight you get a large yaw moment from the opposite engine but I was still unprepared for how much you get. With no action it really does yaw very strongly and quickly Nick really had to put the boot in to the rudder to maintain straight and level flight, and even with max rudder trim on 25/25 (inches of manifold pressure/hundreds of rpm) he said he still had to put in quite a bit of rudder. I picked up an aide memoir for identifying the dead engine - because you have to put in so much opposite rudder you could have the other leg dead and still fly, hence the phrase "Dead Leg, Dead Engine" ie. if you don't need to use your right leg (all left rudder) then it's the right engine that had failed.

Finally another thing which I think will help me is that Nick observed that whenever you touch the throttle you need to be thinking about doing something with the Carb Heat (hot when reducing power for descent/asymetric) and/or the Cowl Flaps (closed for cruise/descent and open/half open for climb). Here's a mnemonic I thought of - "Throttle, Carb Heat, Cowl Flaps" Ten CC (as in the 1970's pop group). This will hopefully be a particularly useful one as I'm often forgetting about the cowel flaps in G-BFMH.

Really looking forward to flying the twin now! :-D