Lear 45 advice

Joshwa

Joshwa

Well-Known Member
I have been offered (and have accepted) a job on the company's Lear 45. I am starting the type in a few weeks, and will be moving from the 737 on to the Lear. I'd welcome any advice you guys and girls have about flying the Lear, especially from anyone who has gone from flying 70 tonne beasts down to the flying sports car.

I am also taking advice from my local yoga teacher as I am 6'4 and I gather the flight deck is a bit of a squeeze....
 
I may have some "study" materials that I have provided other JC members. PM me your email address and I will see what I can dig up. For real world advice, I would wait for @SteveC to chime in.
 
I'm not sure I have a lot of advice since I don't have any experience in anything bigger than the 45. Not really sure what transition issues to watch for when coming down to the Lear. Don't flare too high, I guess. :-)

The cockpit is snug, but you should be OK height-wise. The rudder pedals are adjustable and move a long distance, and the seat goes down for plenty of headroom. The seats are notorious for being uncomfortable for long legs though - something about the way they don't distribute weight well along the back of the legs. I get the most relief in cruise by raising the seat as high as I can stand it, then moving the pedals back so my legs can stretch out. The combination puts more weight onto my thighs and relieves the pressure on my tail bone. Not much storage space, and it is tight climbing in and out.

Other than that, it's a really straight forward airplane to fly. Presuming you have the BR engines, it climbs well and goes to FL410/FL430 without issue. Good performer - it will red-line at any practical altitude you can climb to, but we run 0.76 or so for most legs. Lots of computers on this plane, so many of the issues have been of the Ctrl/Alt/Del type - power down, power up, problem gone. It's a pretty clean airplane, but again I don't know how it compares to what you're used to. Not allowed to use the speed brakes and flaps at the same time, and the final flap setting is limited to 150 knots so learning how much room and time you need to get slowed down is something to be aware of. Not really difficult at all, just different than some other planes.

We only have one -45 in our fleet. We also have (4) LJ-40's and (2) LJ-70's, so I haven't spent nearly as much time in the 45 as I have the 40. Not much difference of course, except the -45 has an APU (option). )I kind of prefer the 40 with a GPU running the optional air conditioner for ground comfort, but the APU on the -45 does OK as well.)

Quite a few other guys here fly the -45 and they'll chime in with more I'm sure.
 
I'm 6'2" and I can't stretch my legs out all the way in the front office and the seats are horribly uncomfortable. I can't raise the seat any like Steve because I'm taller than him and if I do, I get the Lear Jet leans. I came off of the CRJ-200 and I think the biggest things with going down to a smaller airplane is realizing your wheel base is narrower and wingtips are shorter. Since the 73 doesn't have a terribly tall flight deck I don't think you're going to have too many issues with your sight picture on the ground, though it might be a little disconcerting in the flare for a while. Shouldn't take you too long to get used to it. Thankfully it's an easy airplane to land.
 
Pretty much every thing @SteveC said is dead on. There might be thread in the pics or corp sections with some more discussion. The carbon brakes are awesome and will stop on a dime. Good luck, have fun. Feel free to pm with any questions.
 
Thanks for the suggestions and tips guys. I have got all the manuals now, and it looks a damn sight more modern than the 737NG! I'm fairly used to flying a large slippery aircraft with tons of inertia, so hopefully it will feel more nippy if anything. I'm more concerned about flaring massively high, as whenever I fly GA these days it feels ridiculously low on landing. I imagine the centreline thrust means engine failures are fairly painless, ditto the lack of large trim changes with thrust changes?

Looking through the AFM, it's got a good section on thrust targets for flight phases, but I would be really grateful if somebody has a crib sheet for approximate pitch attitude targets for different phases of flight.
 
Part of the problem is that the 45s rudder is too small. Supposedly, that's why they added the "edge" to the trailing edge of the rudder on the airplane. It's a great little airplane with the exception of the yoke sitting in your lap in cruise and the absurd lavatory design.

Also, you won't need the crib sheet because the trend vectors work flawlessly in the 45 - especially compared to Boeings antiquated glass. You can very precisely hand-fly the airplane even without the flight director (especially if you use the flight path vector cue) using trend vectors.
 
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