At noon I put on my SmartWool socks and my long jacket and my thick gloves, and I drove down to Frankfort, stopping at McDonald's for lunch, and went flying with Ethan in the 340, doing all the maneuvers you don't do on a day to day trip. And here we both learned something new about his avionics. I had him do a steep turn first. Basic 45° bank, right? He gets it over there, and suddenly the airplane says out loud "Autopilot Engaged", and rolled us wings level. It has something called "ESP", and if you exceed 45°, it warns you visually on the PFD in front of you, and then it kicks on the autopilot and rolls your butt wings level whether you want to be or not. Like an Airbus, or a Cirrus with the "I can't fly so please fly it for me" button. Next up we went to do stalls. Same thing. As we got below 90 knots, a warning came up on the PFD, and then the stall horn came on, and the airplane shoved nose down to not allow you to stall. Power on, power off, it won't let you stall, at least not creeping up on it it won't. Now...I think that's interesting, and it's nice that it's doing its dead level best to not let you kill yourself. Kinda cool, and it eliminates a couple of the more common accident scenarios in high performance airplanes, twins, etc., like having an autopilot engaged and then doing a missed approach and hitting a button but not adding power, with the autopilot pulling up until it stalls, or same coming in on an approach with autopilot on. This will alert you while you're still at a reasonable speed of 90 kts, and then it won't let either you or the autopilot keep pitching up. And if you're hand flying, say a circle to land approach at night, and you try to crank around to get to the runway, and you exceed 45 degrees bank or get too slow, like the Lear that just crashed, it will kick on the autopilot and level your wings. Interesting features in a piston twin, except I don't like trying to do something in an airplane and having the airplane tell me "no". I want to tell IT what to do, not have it tell ME what I can and can't do. So I spent 15 minutes figuring out how to disable that function for training purposes. Got it off, and then I couldn't get it back on, other than rebooting the avionics. So Ethan figured it out from the manual later. ;)
Ethan and I flew, did the steep-ish turns, power off and on-ish stalls and recoveries, and multiple single engine engine out drills. Then a short field takeoff and landing. Then he got out and I took the plane over to Kokomo and picked up Spencer, and by then I'd figured out how to disable the "ESP", so Spencer got to actually do full steep turns and full stalls. ;) Then we did engine out drills, then on to two instrument approaches, then two takeoffs and landings. He and Ethan are officially getting checked out in the 340 for insurance by a guy named Dan coming from Kentucky, and they just want to get as ready as possible. Insurance wouldn't let me do it for them, but I can at least run them through the paces and get them ready so Dan will be pleased with their readiness. ;) We go again on Monday, and then Dan will be here Tuesday-Thursday to do both their official checkouts. I'm betting he's not here all the way through Thursday, but...maybe he will, who knows.
I stopped at "The Milky Way" on my way home for dinner, which consisted of a fresh hot order of fried mushrooms with ranch dipping sauce and a scoop of black cherry cordial ice cream. Good stuff, man. That ice cream place is great, and has good food, and I hope they stay open all winter.
I got home after 6 pm, and I'm in for the night. Tomorrow is maybe watching Glenn do some flying in BOB, but he can have it. It's going to be cold and windy. No thanks. ;)
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