Saturday, December 08, 2007

Taming 600 Wild Horses

Been quite busy with the Baron conversion flights recently after my transition from the Cessna. From riding on the puny 160 horses, now I have a whopping 600 horsepower; 300 on each engine at my disposal. Taming the beast is not an easy task, considering the big jump in power and speed adaptation. I was literally stunned by it's speed on my first flight. On the Cessna, I cruise at 120kts (222kmh) and land at 65kts (120kmh). Now on the Baron, I cruise up to 195kts (360kmh) and land at 95kts (175kmh)! My old cranky car can't even cruise past 140kmh and now I'm landing the plane at 175kmh. The engines are so powerful that it can still fly safely with the loss of one engine. But it loses 80% of the performance. Therefore, one needs to arrest and fix the problem quickly or else the plane will spin out of control. The plane is heavy and sometimes I find myself with 2 hands on the column. It's time for me to go to the gym more often to work out the muscles.



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