MT Flight Test…

WX finally broke and I got a chance to fly her today with the MT.

Was a really nice day, sea level, wind 280 at 8 (rwy 240) DA was -800. I was pretty light with 27 gal of fuel, 2170 gross at T/O.

Very first impression? Hard to say… For sure I wasn’t tossed back into the seat with some neck snapping acceleration. Really the biggest thing I noticed right away was the whacky sounding strange high whooshy noise. On the first take off I had to pull my headset off to make sure nothing was going to fall off.  Later on I did a 170 mph buzz job on my friends field and he said it was much much quieter.

That said, I think I’m going to like the prop. I only was able to do a couple of laps around the patch, but although I didn’t feel the A/C accelerate any faster, the data didn’t lie and I was getting some pretty short T/O numbers compared to before.

Of course it wasn’t scientific by any means and just by eye, but with 2 notches of flaps, I was easily lifting her off in the sub 200 range with my best at around 175 ft. I’ll try a camera on the strut to get a more precise measure, but with some more confidence, I think I can do a bit better. Climb out was also a bit better. I wasn’t pushing it, but at 85mph/2550 rpm, I was seeing around 1300ft/min. All pretty respectable for a 180 I would say.

So is it worth it? Yes. Worth the price? Jury is still out.