I did a few real world flight tests a few weeks ago. Loaded the aircraft to MTOW and with the help of 2 ATPL friends on board, I did some real world stall, take off and climb performance tests.
I have a 3 blade MT propeller so it definitely climbed about 50ft/min better than book values. But what was really interesting is that at MTOW the actual stall speed was 60mph despite Vso being 64mph at full landing configuration. This is the speed at which the airplane started buffeting and we tested this at least 3-4 times back to back. Just curious.. is the Vso on the ASI the actual stall speed where buffeting starts or does it have some margin in it?
I then shot some approaches at 1.3x the actual stall speed meaning as slow as at 78mph. I have always been approaching at 85-90mph with the Arrow 200. I was very surprised to see how easy it was to approach at 78-80mph despite the max weight and land real nicely. We managed 3 full stop landings shortest one being at 950feet distance to full stop. I've also managed to return to airfield at as low as 700AGL.
Maybe some of you can do better but it was very important for me to go out there and do some tests with the help of my friends to see what the real world performance of my airplane is when I am flying it.
On that day we had winds calm and conditions very close to standard.
I have a 3 blade MT propeller so it definitely climbed about 50ft/min better than book values. But what was really interesting is that at MTOW the actual stall speed was 60mph despite Vso being 64mph at full landing configuration. This is the speed at which the airplane started buffeting and we tested this at least 3-4 times back to back. Just curious.. is the Vso on the ASI the actual stall speed where buffeting starts or does it have some margin in it?
I then shot some approaches at 1.3x the actual stall speed meaning as slow as at 78mph. I have always been approaching at 85-90mph with the Arrow 200. I was very surprised to see how easy it was to approach at 78-80mph despite the max weight and land real nicely. We managed 3 full stop landings shortest one being at 950feet distance to full stop. I've also managed to return to airfield at as low as 700AGL.
Maybe some of you can do better but it was very important for me to go out there and do some tests with the help of my friends to see what the real world performance of my airplane is when I am flying it.
On that day we had winds calm and conditions very close to standard.
