Originally Posted by
Loose rivets
Chris, I imagine we probably got a one-off charter that your lot couldn't do.
It's hare to believe, but this thread has possibly given me the answer. I could fly our early Heron single crew, so it must have been below twelve-five. [...]
I don't know when the change to licensing rule I mentioned
above was introduced, and you haven't stated which year you were flying Herons single-pilot. And was it for public transport?
It occurs to me that, just as some airlines have operated a/c at reduced MTOWs to reduce landing fees, it might have been possible to do that with the Heron to enable single-pilot ops. But it wouldn't have been practicable if you wanted to carry 15 passengers more than a short hop.
Originally Posted by
Loose rivets
Memories again. Two crew and we were headed back from Billund IIRC. I handed over to my young mate and settled into a snooze. I remember shouting, turn left onto one seven zero! as I commenced shut-down of number one.
Uuuuug! The engines couldn't be feathered, so the fuel pumps had to be lubricated by leaving the fuel on. Something like that. Can't quite remember. [...]
Yes, that makes sense with the engine still turning at around idle RPM.
For the non-cognoscenti: the only mark of Heron to have fully-feathering props from manufacture was the 2D. To re-cap, the Mk 1B (fixed undercarriage) and Mk 2 (retractable U/C) had a feature known as "positive coarse pitch", which reduced the drag somewhat with the power at idle. As someone else mentioned previously on this thread, a (perhaps unusual?) feature of the Gypsy Queen 30 constant-speed propellor system was that there was no separate RPM lever. I think the power lever (we called it a throttle, but that was a misnoma) must have had a detent at the idle position and some kind of latch which, when released, enabled the pilot to retard it further to the positive-coarse-pitch position.
The windmilling prop turning the engine must have continued to create some drag, which presumably explains why only the Mk 2D was compliant with the requirements of Performance-A, as we called it in those days.