Seminole Observation

I completed my observation flight on Tuesday, October, 5 2010 with David Atkinson and Dilpreet.

Tail number: Seminole N978WC

Starting Tach: 2912.8
Ending Tach: 2913.9

Starting Hobbs: 4078.0
Ending Hobbs: 4079.7

Total Hobbs: 1.7

This was definitely an exciting flight!  It was very beneficial to me to be able to just watch and see how everything is done.  Many of the operations are the same in the multi, but you just have to do them twice.  It was David's first time flying with Dilpreet so we took things a little slower and more in depth.  This made it even easier for me to understand how things worked and the proper procedures for operating the aircraft.

One of the first things I noticed is that there are many more things to check on the initial startup and then on the run-up before takeoff.  Like I said, you have to do everything twice.  You have 4 mags to check instead of only 2, and you have 2 mixtures to set also, etc.  So, the run-up took a little longer than I expected.  During the run-up, one of the mags dropped past its limit and so Dilpreet showed us a good fix for that.  He said that this is most likely due to carbon deposits/build-up in the cylinders, which is caused from running the engine with a mixture that is too rich.  He told us to lean the mixture to the hottest EGT (peak EGT) and then run the engine at a high RPM for a few seconds to burn off the deposits.  It worked perfectly!  I thought that was really cool and I definitely didn't know that the fix was so simple.

The next big difference I noticed was the increased pace of everything.  There is more to keep up with in the airplane and less time to do it because of how fast you go.  It is definitely manageable, though.  One factor may have been the increased radio communication because we decided to go to Ogden since Tooele had some questionable weather.  Anyway, it was pretty cool to see the performance increase with 2 engines.  We were able to do a cruise climb at 105 KIAS up to our altitude for maneuvering.  It was pleasing to see a climb of over 500 FPM with a groundspeed of around 120 knots.

The maneuvers that we did (stalls, slow flight, and steep turns) seemed to be generally the same as in the other planes, as well as the instrument flying that David did under the hood.  It was definitely a fun flight and I'm glad I got to experience the plane and see the operating procedures before I actually fly it myself.  I think that will be beneficial a couple months down the road when I get into the plane to do my training.

-TB