I had to do an assessment on a Czech registered one about 4 years ago. Looking out my notes, I made the following comments...
- Cockpit had plenty of room, but the rudder pedals weren't adjustable and shorter pilots would need cushions.
- The Y-shaped stick between the seats was comfortable to use.
- View out was excellent
- Va was 97 mph, Vne was 150 mph, Vso was 44 mph.
- At MTOW it climbed on a roughly ISA day at about 660 fpm.
- Horizon was below the coaming in the climb, and I had to weave the nose in the same way one has to in a Cessna.
- Cruise was 85-90mph @5,000 rpm
- Pitch stability was poor, making speed control difficult, and to an accuracy better than ±10mph almost impossible. It became divergent at high speeds, and would if released exceed Vne on its own.
- Pitch response in manoeuvre was very crisp (for the techies, a 1 second SPO very highly damped)
- The phugoid was divergent due the negative pitch stability at high speed, so workload in the cruise would be quite high constantly correcting.
- Manoevre stability was about neutral, so care would be needed not to overstress in steep turns and pull-outs.
- Spiral stability was about neutral, so prolonged flight without a good horizon would necessitate either an AI or constant monitoring of heading.
- The aircraft could readily end up out of balance if the slip ball wasn't monitored.
- Best roll rate was about 30°/s, which is fairly good. Roll control was quite crisp.
- There was lots of clear and heavy airframe buffet prior to the stall, but the actual stick force to stall was very low. The stall characteristics were very benign, with no obvious tendency to drop a wing. From a badly mishandled stall entry, I could get it to show an incipient spin, but didn't look deeper than that.
- Approach speed was about 80 mph flapless, but there wasn't much tendency to float.
Hope this is of some use, but in summary, nice ergonomics, reasonable performance, dubious handling.
G
Last edited by Genghis the Engineer; 8th Apr 2003 at 19:27.