Many years on the 146 in Oz.
Flying with some of the older captains was a lot of fun whilst they would demonstrate what she could do. No QAR/Acars- nothing. GPWS would never keeping up with some of them (in clear wx).
TOD was POB. Barber-pole to 10 miles. Stabilized at 500'. Vacate after 500m. It had every device available to go down, slow down and stop. Nothing the other way round!
Under powered it was, as has been mentioned above.
Operating in ISA +25*, full flap, full power, curvature of the earth takeoff.
Even on descent in icing, power had to be above 80% to cope with the bleed load of the anti-icing
Icing was it's nemesis. Engine roll-backs were happening all the time. Descents in cruise were normal to get out of ice and of course that exacerbated the range issue.
We went everywhere and then some. Remote islands and remote inland destinations. Many right on the limit on it's range and they all had the pannier LR tanks installed. 14 aircraft if l remember.
Lots of 'Jeppesen whizz-wheel' action going on recalculating continually and some times replanning or diverting.
No APU was a good one in remote hot places. Shut down 1,2 & 3. Get PAX off. Start 1 shut down 4. Refuel and get bags off/on. After that start 4 shut down 1 and load PAX shut door start 1, 2 & 3.
This was all done to keep the electrics available and a pack on. No bleed required for starting, as it was electric starters all round.
And not starter/gen's either. Each motor had an individual electric starter. Then the inboards had hydraulic pumps, the outer had generators. Weird.
Living on the radius of my base airports visual arrival was perfect. At max flap extension, start feeding them out. The missus would hear it and come and pick me up! Also gave her a chance to get rid of the boyfriend
Every maintenance issue was a nightmare with the QRH/FCOM/MEL pages everywhere trying to figure out what worked and what didn't.
Yes it had redundancies with hydraulics helping electrics vis a vie and other stuff but it all came with caveats. That's why there was a lot of head scratching.
Earlier someone mentioned the fir tree rudder limiter. It was called the Q-pot limiter. Don't know why. Weird
Another engineering oddity was the use of screws around the whole aircraft.
Not Philips head but some sort of proprietary three pointed thing. Bit like an offset Mercedes emblem. Weird
The 300 series was prone to tail strike.
Mitigation? Put a four foot metal strap longitudinally where it would strike. Weird.
The 200 series we operated were all steam driven gauges.
The HSI/DBI was located behind the yoke. Weird
Could go on but wont. 🤣
halas