Well since much of my background is night freight and bush flying in Alaska, I would liken the Howard to an Airliner in cruise, nice smooth and quiet, very tame. But once it touches down, it is like throwing a saddle on a grizzly and spurring the hell out of it. You just don’t know what will come next. It is no beginner's plane and demands a pilot's utmost attention all the way to the end. In deed it is a thoroughbred, it just really wants to go. When taxing it will go 30kts in a heartbeat unless you learn to tame it from the start. It requires a lot of lead-time for everything you do, turns, stops and rollout. On take off you must lead the left engine by as much as 20" MAP in order to stay on the runway. There is a point where brakes have no more effect as it will just drag the locked wheel along for the ride to wherever you are telling the engines to go. It wants to follow those 12-ft paddles wherever you point it. When you are approaching 50" + MAP up to 58" MAP you have to have it stabilized. It all happens very fast and the beginner is overwhelmed with the information you need to interpret in a matter 10 seconds or less. I scan and verify all the engine instruments one against the other, check flight instruments, set power in smooth increments and determine if the take-off is a go in less than 10 seconds. While I am doing this I have to watch where I am going and give commands to the copilot. You really have to have a feel for these larger radials when you spool them up as they are much like a turbine waiting for them to make power as the supercharger kicks in. The moments in the Howard are so large that there is just no room for error. When going through a transition period, you are the most vulnerable prior to the tail coming up. It is at this point in the roll you just don’t want bad things to happen. For example, a few years back we were just leaving to go to Oshkosh. As we came through 90kts the right engine blew an intake tube right off the jug. This unleashed nearly 60" MAP out one tube. The mixture ignited and blew a flame ball a good 8 ft out through the pressurized cowl and in front of the plane. Exciting to say the least, not to mention that now I had to deal with the huge moment created by instantly loosing 2400hp in a 35,000 lb. taildragger! Imagine what’s running through your mind. You’re sitting there not knowing what happened, trying to figure, well what the hell…. In the meantime you’re running out of runway, if you don’t react immediately you’re screwed, there is no room for complacency You really have to be ready for anything. I just wiped everything out and got on and off the binders and we taxied back to the hangar replaced the tube and two hours later we went on to Oshkosh. There is a lot to be said for being a pilot-mechanic when you fly the Howard. There have been many instances where we would have been stranded if not for that.

In the event we are using water, the ADI system, we can push the throttles up to 58" MAP. The significance of using the ADI is that we gain an extra 400 hp on take off. That can be nice on a hot summer day with a heavy load. In our plane we use an equal mixture of methyl alcohol and distilled water, to that we add a few ounces of water-soluble oil. The alcohol keeps the water from freezing up at altitude. Using distilled water means that it will not have any unwanted minerals in it to leave deposits in the lines pumps and regulator. The oil keeps the valves and moving parts lubed due to the fact that the alcohol is so corrosive. The entire system is stainless steel and uses high performance Teflon coated lines. This is a fragile and high maintenance system. The Idea of the Anti Detonation Injection for those that aren’t familiar with it, is that it allows us to use much higher manifold or power settings for takeoff than we normally would. Engines make their power at the top end, they need more fuel and air, increase the size of the pump, how? More rpm or more manifold the problem with this is that the poor pistons and jugs can only take so much heat. They begin to glow and will burn the fuel air mixture as soon as it is introduced or detonate. The water is introduced by a water regulator and metered directly into the fuel feed valve, that goes directly into the blower section and out the plenum to the jugs. With about an 8.5 to 1 compression ratio and 2804 cubic inches there is a lot of air/fuel being moved here. If you were to think of the fire in the jug as out of control this just helps to bring it back. Put a little water on the fire. If you run out of water or have a blockage you have about 2 seconds or less to catch it, this is not an exaggeration, bad things will happen and you will find parts of the inside of that engine strung out along the flight path of the plane like right now. So running the ADI properly and understanding what is going on in there is very important.

The plane rotates at 100kts but I have found that if I carry an extra 5kts it has a much more responsive positive rate instead of mushing as we attempt to gain speed. It is no short field plane as it is a 120 knot final plane. It has very high wing loading that gives it great cruise. To give you some perspective, a DC-3 maxes out at 26,900lbs and has a wingspan of 95’ 7", the Howard weighs 8000lbs more and has only 70’4", that’s 27% less wing.

On take off we accelerate from 105 to 120 flaps up and on through 170kts depending on our weight we can climb as fast as 200kts. For those of you that are multi-engine minded our Vmc is 95kts with the bad one caged. It doesn’t matter much what speed we pick it is mostly weight that dictates the climb rate. We carry as much as 9300 lbs of fuel so there is a big swing in speeds. In general 160kts is good and gives a rate of about 1200 ft to 1500 ft per minute. We usually climb to about 9000 ft on short trips of 100 to 150 miles. If we go say 300 miles we go on up to about 15,000 to 16,000 ft. For long hauls of up to 1500 nm we play the winds aloft and like to go to about 20,000 - 22,000 ft. The cabin at these altitudes stays about 2500 ft if we don’t go above FL220, above that it begins to drop off to about 4500ft at FL250.

On the way up to 19,000 ft for instance it takes us about 18 mins to get there and we consume about 160 gal of fuel per engine (total 320 gal.). Climb power is 38" MAP and 2400 RPM. We burn about 160gal/hr per engine on climb. As we go through about 12 to 14, 000 ft we shift the blowers from low to high. We try to use them on almost every flight if you don’t use them you loose them. The clutches gum up and stick. Once this happens you’ll never get them out without pulling the rear case. I have had to do that more than I care to so I try to use the blowers often. When you shift, the entire plane rumbles and shakes, you need to notify the passengers what is going on lest they think we just lost the left main gear or something. I must admit it’s fun to be up there where you wouldn’t expect a radial engine plane to be. Often we will hold at like 18,000 or something while we wait for crossing airliners descending or climbing to or from their destination. When they look out the window and see this big oversized beech 18, as most think it is, at 20,000 feet they are quite surprised they usually get right on the radio and ask center, "what the hell was that we just passed". As we level out we gain speed to indicate about 200 to 210 knots which gives us a 260 to 270 knots true. We lean back to auto lean then to peak on our BMEP and back another 2 to 12 drop below that. This gives us about 50 to 55 % power at 32.5" MAP and 2200 RPM. The adjusted fuel flows are now about 91gal/hr per engine. Our props settle down to a quiet 990 RPM and we usually switch tanks to the wings or rears and put on the tunes to enjoy the rest of the flight as the noise level comes down so much that we don’t have to have headsets. We do not have an autopilot due to the expense of a one time STC, but no bother I never had that luxury when I flew automotive freight either. It keeps you on your toes anyway.

On descent from FL190 we would like to start down at about 95 miles out. Our speeds go through the roof on descent as there is no mechanism for stopping the effects of gravity, at least on this plane. We just can’t pull the power back to "flight idle" like our turbine driver friends, we have 36 screaming cylinders out there in 30 degree below temps. So we come back about 1-2" MAP and enjoy the ride. (Actually leaving it right about at cruise with the increase in ram air pressure) Remember, again I am the same guy that has to change the cracked cylinders. Typical ground speeds are in excess of 320 knots, and this persists all the way down to about 8000 ft where we hit thick enough air to slow us down to about 250kts. If we don’t get held up to the end (by center or approach) we stand a chance of coming down in time to land. Now this takes diplomacy as well as knowing what the plane is going to do. We first have to give a lesson to the controller or approach to explain that, "No we aren’t a Hawker" and "sorry I can’t do much about the 300+kts, so how low can I go?" It is like a circus for us to go into a place like O'Hare or JFK. It’s more like "move over… we’re coming through". I once landed in Billings Montana, kind of behind a NWA DC-9, but really we ran a big circle around the 9 then landed. The air is thin at altitude and we just couldn’t slow down. Approach held us up and asked us what type of plane we were. We explained it, or tried to, next he informed us there was a Northwest DC-9 20+ out for the field and that he would be number one, we were only 18 miles or less out coming from the opposite direction and we had to go to the other side to line up for final anyway so it seemed feasible that this should work out. Well I told the controller I needed to get down really quick here or I would be running over the inbound 9, he told them to keep their speed up as there was an older radial engine plane about to over take them. They said, "what did you say"? just about then we came sailing along on their left side and did a left break back around to final to fall in behind. This was at about 6 mile final and they were still clean and keeping their speed up so we could keep the spacing. It was just so funny to see them look back at the Howard. I could see the captains face out the window as I turned, we were the only two planes around. After we taxied in and started fueling for our next leg these two NWA pilots came walking up to us saying that they couldn’t believe their eyes when we came by at 240kts. I said," yeah and I had her throttled way back trying to slow for you".

We usually intercept the localizer 12-15 miles out at 220kts and try like hell to slow to 190kts so we can get the gear down and get in line. The next number is the 170kt mark once we get to a few miles outside the marker, once we get there we are good to go. Flaps can all come down at 147kts and it slows right down to 135 once deployed. The plane is definitely designed to be loaded aft so it is a bear to land if there is no weight in the back. We usually ask all single passengers or a pair go to the last row and sit so we can land slower and use less braking. With a 40 ft long cabin it makes a huge difference if they’re all huddled up front trying to watch the landing at a short field, short being anything under 5000 feet.

After landing we answer the towers questions about this "taildragger Hawker" You see on their strip they see HW50, the planes FAA designation, and the 300+kt speed and they get all confused. Therefore, most of the time we are deemed a Hawker, a lot of times they start calling out like a mother bird looking for their young "where’s the Hawker, and who are you guys?" it can be pretty funny sometimes. Then we taxi in to the FBO to join the ranks of the heavy metal GII, III, IV’s, and countless Citations. We run the Darton Clean Kits (our oil recovery system) for about 10 minutes to help put the oil back where it belongs in the tank until we preoil again for the next start.

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