Homebased help.

Building your Comp Air all by yourself is, of course, possible but you can also do the heavy and dirty fiberglass jobs NEAR the factory. With stress NEAR, because the factory that does so is not Aerocomp, but the neighboring company Skybuild of Steve Darrow. There a recent buyer, Woody Gregory is building under surveillance. "I chose the turbine. It gives me the power to move a large group of people over a great distance. The complicated part of building I do here, the rest and the painting I will do at home".

Completely different flying.

I get the same treatment a potential buyer gets. Almost without any experience with turbines (apart from half an hour sticktime in a PC-7), it takes some getting used to. Al won’t let me do the takeoff because he wants to show me the impressive rate of climb, which is no amateur’s work. Starting the engine is not difficult because this specific plane has an Autostart/Limiter System that controls the whole procedure through a processor and so protects the engine against overheating and stupid pilots. Quite a good recommendation though, but it costs another 6500 dollar, on top of the 46,000 for the engine itself. The temps and RPMs during start stay neatly within their limits, without the need to fumble with the controls. After that Al dares to push the throttle all the way to the dashboard. The engine roars as an angered Karpatian Mountainbear. And

Hard on the ailerons.

Nothing of the kind happens though. At 2000 feet Al levels the plane, and I get controls. What a joy such a turbine is! The deep humming engine pulls the plane in any desired direction. "We should collectively throw all these pistons out of the window and all fly turbines", I can’t help thinking.

The inputs to the nice formed ergonomic stick feel a little heavy, though, but you have to remember that you're moving quite large surfaces at great speeds through the air. For the rest its hardly noticeable that we travel at 185 kts indicated, "At 17000 feet I can easily do 250 kts True Airspeed", says Al. "But we won't do so now because we don't have oxygen". The plane doesn't have a pressurized hull, because of it’s boxlike shape. Put that under pressure and weird things start to happen.

Descending can be almost as impressive as taking off: 4000 fpm. Extremely painful for the ears. "ATC loves me", Al says, "because I take the plane to any altitude they want within a minute or so". Landing isn't anything out of the ordinary at appr. 70kts, although a 50kts straight headwind helps a lot.

After the flight we go off to a steakhouse nearby: the whole crew joins in: a fiberglassworker sits next to a Texan multimillionaire who just bought a plane. He gave the workers that prepared his plane for delivery each a 300 dollar tip, so everybody is quite cheerful. Outside, the typical harsh American sunlight burns at 82 degrees in the shadows. The planes are shining on the platform.

+1-321-453-6641 (English)
http://AEROCOMPinc.com

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