Kingairer/E-Jet Drivers

C150J

Well-Known Member
Kingairer aluded to the fact that the 170 "tells you" when to deploy flaps... was this said in jest or does it really dictate the most efficient time to throw them out? What are your overall thoughts on its automation? Good, poor? Can you easily "click it off" and fly a tight visual/circle-to-land?

Just curious, as I haven't heard too much about the flying qualities of the airplane. For example, the POS AFCS in the CRJ-200 won't fly a smooth ILS in windy conditions - it's much smoother to handfly it. Any idiosyncrasies with the Embraers?
 
Naw he's for real. I was talking with Nick about it in Vegas, and it sounds like one mean machine. It sounds to me like they fixed every problem from the EMB-145.
 
There is a little green dot alongside the airspeed tape.

This dot is the lowest speed you can fly at that configuration. Any slower and you need more flaps.

It is like an angle of attack indicator translated into an airspeed -- quite ingenious.

You sure can click everything off and fly it in a traditional way.

I will now bow out and let Kingairer and Polar742 and others who have vast experience in the machine give you their take. :)
 
The 717 had the same thing on the A/S tape. The 757/767 will also do it but, you just have to move the little bugs on the outside of the A/S indicator yourself ;).
 
And flap retraction is based on "F-Bug" which is a an "F" on the airspeed tape on departure.

...Yes you can do all those things, You can go flaps full on landing and stop on a dime. Approach speeds are 118-120ish. You can do a Flaps 4 depature and jump out of any field, like EYW. I enjoy it, I think moreso b/c i flew the 145. THe 145 was great to, but there were certainly things that could be improved, and they were for the Ejet.
 
There is a magical floating green dot when you're below 20k (I think...many beers ago). It equates to 1.3 Vs (so at landing flaps, guess what? should be right about Vref;))

It's a real-time bug, so you can see when the airplane unloads at the beginning of a turn or loads up in the turn.

It was a handy feature. Long downwind? Just maintain greendot + 10 straight and level, and when you turn a standard rate, you'll have a safe margin above stall.
 
I think the 145 is pretty ingenious...The white/yellow/red speed tape and all the other "stuff." It's not really a mystery between that, the PLI and our min maneuvering speeds if you're getting slow.
 
I think you're right, but there have been times when I've wondered about the PLI bars.

One day I was climbing out of Grand Rapids and through about 2,000' the skipper was like, "Lower the nose" and I had no idea why. I lowered it a few degree's and sped up to like 245. I asked him why he wanted me to do it later and he said the PLI bar on his side had dropped down. I never saw a PLI bar, nor could I figure out why he'd get one and I wouldn't, nor how we could get one at such a high speed.

I think they work great 99% of the time, but after something like that happens I wonder about the gremlins that live inside the -145 ya know?
 
Yeah, the PLI can definitely pop up after take-off...Being heavy with some bumps the green will pop up every once in a while maybe even a yellow.

Generally speaking though, while the autopilot/fms does some little strange things like the clearing turns, overall it's a pretty solid system. Has it ever not caught an altitude or not maintain an altitude despite huge thrust/config changes? Only time it's ever kicked off for me was severe turbulence.

I'll agree the ILS tracking can be a little crappy, sometimes I think it's the combo of a crappy nav unit and a crappy signal.
 
Agreed, completely It's the only jet I've flown, but I generally thought the systems in the thing worked incredibly well almost all of the time.
 
I think the 145 is pretty ingenious...The white/yellow/red speed tape and all the other "stuff." It's not really a mystery between that, the PLI and our min maneuvering speeds if you're getting slow.

Yeah, the PLI can definitely pop up after take-off...Being heavy with some bumps the green will pop up every once in a while maybe even a yellow.

Generally speaking though, while the autopilot/fms does some little strange things like the clearing turns, overall it's a pretty solid system. Has it ever not caught an altitude or not maintain an altitude despite huge thrust/config changes? Only time it's ever kicked off for me was severe turbulence.

I'll agree the ILS tracking can be a little crappy, sometimes I think it's the combo of a crappy nav unit and a crappy signal.

The EJet has all that crap you mentioned about the PLI and speed tape colors. The GreenDot, FPV and what not are fine additions to the system.

On the Barbie Fun Jet, I always found that it did fine if you'd slow to Brasillia-ish speeds prior to intercept, once locked it did better (Note BETTER not good;))
 
Getting more comfortable with the machine, I finally tried a fast-until-the-FAF type approach today since tower requested it.

250 knots until 2000 feet on glideslope with a 15 knot headwind and everything was spooled up, hanging out, and checklist complete at 1000' AGL. It slowed more rapidly than a guy in my class had said it would.

I'll take one please. Can I get the 30 year loan option?
 
...while the autopilot/fms does some little strange things like the clearing turns...

Ours will do that if you engage the autopilot (coupled to the FMS) without first centering the heading bug. The software will do a little transition into heading mode before switching to nav mode. It'll start a turn towards the heading bug, then turn back to the course line as it detects a needle deflection. Head fake left, turn back right...ugh.
 
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