flyinghedgehog
Well-Known Member
I am flying Beech 99 and it is my first turbo prop ever. My instrument approaches are good but my visual maneuver sucks! (that is not an exaggeration.) For example, when I do stalls it took me too long to set power to max torque (can't firewall it and can't fixate on one instrument, not used to how much the travel is for the throttle so ended up undershooting twice (400 foot pound less than what I need) and lost a couple hundred feet.) It is frustrating, how hard could it be to set torque quickly without fixating? Then the circling approach and traffic pattern---as I start leaving MDA or descending I would set power too low and end up bleeding off a lot of airspeed.. Things this simple (like being able to tell if the airplane is high or low, fast or slow), are somehow difficult. I just can't seem to eyeball the runway environment and stuff and set the power right. (frustrating because I was able to eyeball it just fine flying light twin so don't know why flying turboprop should totally throw me off the loop)
I did not even know what altitude/distance from the runway I should be when I make my base turn and final turn (and well, when you are circling there are even more variable, your power setting would depend on how far you are from the runway, etc...)
What is funny is I can tell what power setting to use to do precision and non precision approach. It is when I do visual maneuver that I have a hard time.
Any advice? By the way as we all know , flying piston we fly 1000' pattern altitude, turn base around 800, final around 500. What would the number be like flying pattern in turbo prop? What about when circling? Any tips on learning to "see" the visual cues and figure out your power setting? There seems to be no time to hunt around. The company is kind of small and the pilots just eyeball it and I did not get concrete answers out of them when I asked.
And this may be a silly question---why 1500 foot pattern altitude? Must be something about geometry but I don't understand.
Please, please, somebody help!!!!
Thanks a lot!
I did not even know what altitude/distance from the runway I should be when I make my base turn and final turn (and well, when you are circling there are even more variable, your power setting would depend on how far you are from the runway, etc...)
What is funny is I can tell what power setting to use to do precision and non precision approach. It is when I do visual maneuver that I have a hard time.
Any advice? By the way as we all know , flying piston we fly 1000' pattern altitude, turn base around 800, final around 500. What would the number be like flying pattern in turbo prop? What about when circling? Any tips on learning to "see" the visual cues and figure out your power setting? There seems to be no time to hunt around. The company is kind of small and the pilots just eyeball it and I did not get concrete answers out of them when I asked.
And this may be a silly question---why 1500 foot pattern altitude? Must be something about geometry but I don't understand.
Please, please, somebody help!!!!
Thanks a lot!