Fedex C208 Drivers...

USMCmech said:
While many people think of the 208 as a bush plane, it was never designed to be one. It will fly in and out of almost any GA airstrip in the US but when you start talking about 1500' grass strips or off airport ops, the Caravan was never designed to go there.

1500' of mud or gravel bars is the domain of Porters or even Kodiaks. I'll reserve judgment on the Garavan as I've never flown one.
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Most vans here fly into 1150-1200 feet strips daily at max payload and 2.5 hours of fuel left.

The porters and the kodiaks are great but they can't compete in terms of operational costs/revenue with the van. This is why there are none of them here.
 
swisspilot said:
I guess this applies mostly to our operation and the fact that I operate into the same places with other airplanes: C206 and the Twin Otter. When operating the caravan at similar load %s you really need to look for the speed to get off the ground, and it uses both for takeoff and landing more runway then any bush airplane that operates here (the Twin Otter and the C206 somehow will always make it off the ground), the Supervan does a bit better but the only real difference you feel it once you are airborne, even at MTOW that thing really climbs. When flying into a bush strip with little room for go around, loaded, you can't afford to be slow in the Caravan, we land on the horn with most of the other planes, and sometimes the horn is on on the flare feet before the runway's threshold, you really can't do this safely in the Caravan. Lets not even talk about coming in high-power with high angle attack.....Same thing when flying into tight valleys it just doesn't turn downwind to final like most bush planes can...I'm fairly new on this plane but I could bring you many more reports of 10K hours on C208 bush pilots we have in the company. The C208 was also not really designed for strips with slope.
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Yeah, see, you would be out of your mind to try this in a PA31 or presumably a 402.
 
Roger Roger said:
Correct sir. If they were building a bush plane from the start they would have given it a lot more grunt. 675 hp isn't a lot on an airplane that grosses out at 9000 lbs. The various up engine options do a lot to address that issue but I don't know how they do in reality as we don't really do any legit bush flying.
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The garret conversion doesn't really make a huge difference on ground roll, the books says 30% more static Thrust, but in real life you can't on bush strips do a static takeoff with the garret, especially if the strip is tight..so at the end you have the same performance as the PT6, then of course when the 900 is airborne then it`s an other story, on the same leg you can climb 2000-3000 feet higher in the same clmb time as the pt6 and still take 15% less to cover the distance.
 
swisspilot said:
I guess this applies mostly to our operation and the fact that I operate into the same places with other airplanes: C206 and the Twin Otter. When operating the caravan at similar load %s you really need to look for the speed to get off the ground, and it uses both for takeoff and landing more runway then any bush airplane that operates here (the Twin Otter and the C206 somehow will always make it off the ground), the Supervan does a bit better but the only real difference you feel it once you are airborne, even at MTOW that thing really climbs. When flying into a bush strip with little room for go around, loaded, you can't afford to be slow in the Caravan, we land on the horn with most of the other planes, and sometimes the horn is on on the flare feet before the runway's threshold, you really can't do this safely in the Caravan. Lets not even talk about coming in high-power with high angle attack.....Same thing when flying into tight valleys it just doesn't turn downwind to final like most bush planes can...I'm fairly new on this plane but I could bring you many more reports of 10K hours on C208 bush pilots we have in the company. The C208 was also not really designed for strips with slope.
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See @USMCmech 's post above...

The Caravan was not designed to be a bush plane.

You also realize that of those 3, the Caravan has the lowest power-to-weight ratio? (excluding the Supervan)

Always amazed that operators use aircraft for something it was not designed or intended to do, yet always seem to complain about performance issues.
 
Roger Roger said:
Yeah, see, you would be out of your mind to try this in a PA31 or presumably a 402.
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I didn't said the Van has similar performance characteristics as heavier twins, but rather that some of the flying and handling in my opinion is similar, like I mentioned the need to look for a speed in order to get off the ground at high loads, it is very, very stable (ever flown a porter?), it needs room to turn downwind to final and so on...
 
ctab5060X said:
See @USMCmech 's post above...

The Caravan was not designed to be a bush plane.

You also realize that of those 3, the Caravan has the lowest power-to-weight ratio? (excluding the Supervan)

Always amazed that operators use aircraft for something it was not designed or intended to do, yet always seem to complain about performance issues.
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I wasn't complaining, just saying it adds extra challenge. One of our twin Otters has the -20 engines, if you wanna talk about power to weight ratio (clearly the engines are not what makes this plane fly, funny is it gets off at slower speeds then the -27).
 
USMCmech said:
Oh, I'm not saying it can't do the job but that wasn't what it was built for.
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I agree! and I got to that point to say that even if it is an easy airplane in most circumstances it can become challenging when flown in this environment. Here the Single Pilot C208 position is probably the most regarded of any other. Pilots upgrade to it after having flown several 1000s in the 206, one of our last pilot that got on the Supervan got upgraded with almost 5000TT, 4000 of it in 206..
 
swisspilot said:
I didn't said the Van has similar performance characteristics as heavier twins, but rather that some of the flying and handling in my opinion is similar, like I mentioned the need to look for a speed in order to get off the ground at high loads, it is very, very stable (ever flown a porter?), it needs room to turn downwind to final and so on...
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Ok, fair enough, but I still disagree and say that flying the 208 is much more like flying a 207 than a PA31. How much cabin class piston twin time do you have?
 
I found our A models (pt6 & Garrett) are much more stable at slow speeds just above stall and way easier to land short compared to our grand. Off the runway the A's are comparable empty and the Garrett has a slightly shorter take off as weight increases. As for ice, a booted 675 has no business in it, the Garrett's are completely different animal in ice.

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Text book ice only building on the boot, the Garrett has the power to keep the speed up at 12k to keep the boot clean.

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Clear ice getting behind the boots, well it is still a Caravan airframe, but the Garrett takes a scary situation in a 675 and gives you more options/time to get out of it.
 
I think the Caravan EX was a "good enough" bush plane when I was flying it up north - but the 206 that's all modded out feels much better than the Van does on the back side of the power curve. We fairly routinely went in and out of 1800' in the thing and it was comfortable enough with a full load up at 9000lbs, and while I don't remember the 675 much, but the EX felt just fine in the slow speed regime - I routinely flew that thing on short final at Vso x 1.1. It also did great on sloped runways in my experience. It is relatively heavy on the controls for an airplane of it's size, I'd even say that ours were heavier than the Navajo and MUCH heavier than the Pilatus /47 - making maneuvering in tight terrain more tricky. Frankly, if you don't have to contend with mud in your bush flying - get a PC12, it's a better airplane for most missions a Caravan can do in the North Country - I can't speak to what Guyana is like, but if your leg-lengths are longer than about 1 hour one way, we did the math at my old company, and the PC12/47 smokes the Caravan in terms of operating costs and payload. The AoA indicator on the PC12 is a nice feature, and makes your landings consistent - if you fly AoA, you will get the book performance during landing - in fact you can even beat it by a little bit if you're on your A-game. The Caravan on the other hand has you trying to estimate what the perfect approach speed is going to be in your head for "really short" work - as opposed to simply giving you a needle to fly.

I'd also agree that flying the Van is more akin to flying a 207 than a Navajo in my experience, though the mission tends to be similar to the Navajo, I think the handling and performance characteristics were more "207-ish" than Navajo-like. The "SPIFR" skills are similar, but the van is much more forgiving than the Navajo. I'd actually venture to say that the Navajo is the most challenging airplane I've flown if you try to fly it right - harder to fly single pilot than any King Air series airplane - that's for sure. It's also my favorite airplane I've ever flown. If I'm filthy rich one day, I'll own a nice Chieftain to fly around my family in it.
 
Roger Roger said:
Yeah, see, you would be out of your mind to try this in a PA31 or presumably a 402.
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I mean, we used to do some of that stuff in the Navajos - it's a lot more capable airplane than most people think. The van obviously does better - but make no mistake - the Navajo is pretty capable. Our standard strip in the Navajo was 3000' of one-way gravel, and in the winter it was very challenging. The shortest I went into in the Navajo was like 2500' or something like that, in the Van the shortest I saw was like 1500' or something in that ballpark. The Van just consistently does 1000' better than the Navajo on takeoff or landing.

I've seen a Navajo taken out of 1800' once - that was pretty cool, it did it with copious room to spare - but it was empty. @Joepilot84
 
ppragman said:
Frankly, if you don't have to contend with mud in your bush flying - get a PC12, it's a better airplane for most missions a Caravan can do in the North Country - I can't speak to what Guyana is like, but if your leg-lengths are longer than about 1 hour one way, we did the math at my old company, and the PC12/47 smokes the Caravan in terms of operating costs and payload.
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There is a much cheaper airplane that smokes the Caravan, the Britten Norman Trislander.
 
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