I'll never forget the disgust and disdain in the voice of a pilot who had to position and hold for a Lear 20 series departure on 1L @ Milwaukee Mitchell (KMKE).
"Did we really have to hold for the Lear doing an audition for the Blue Angels?"
The Lear pilot held her down level while building airspeed then gave her a good pull at the end of the runway.

The 20 series burned about as much fuel per hour on the ground as they did in the high flight levels at cruise. Always taxied out on one engine, and started the second one approaching the runway for take off. Restricted climbs shortened the range.

Not all of those showboating takeoffs worked out so well....

https://aviation-safety.net/database/re ... 20011122-0

Yes, I've heard of the ballistic flight plan for early Lears.
No matter how little time you'd be up there, go up there.

After I got my type in the 23 a Texas oil company sent me to Flight Safety on the Lear 35 and I flew it for them until the oil bust and it was sold.

Then I moved back to northern California and flew a Lear 24B for a car dealer that had 13 dealerships and did a lot of television advertising on the west coast. The airplane had the Dee Howard Mark ll smooth wing, hydraulic reversers , drag chute and a gravel kit. It had a 98 knot basic ref. We kept it at the bosse's ranch which had a 3000 foot oiled dirt strip and our own 10,000 gallon Jet-A tank.

That airplane was a blast to fly. We were always light and came off the ranch straight to FL450 coming out of the Sacramento area. But like all the 20 series Lears they were range limited, and too many times we were in the descent with the low fuel lights flashing.

I kept pressuring the boss to get a Lear 35, and after I went to the airline he got one.

For those who aren't familiar, Cal's TV ads always featured an animal; a bear, a lion, an elephant, whatever, and he always called them his dog Spot. He never owned a dog as long as I knew him.

Cal also dipped his toe into the used airplane market

[youtube]youtu.be/pg8-mx4KGK8[/youtube]

https://youtu.be/pg8-mx4KGK8?si=BXqYUHdpyTqeIUvz

Well, no idea why a YouTube won't post right. They used to.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/pg8-mx4KGK8[/youtube]

600 pph per side at idle on the ground.

1500 PPH for the first flight hour, 1200 PPH for the second, maybe a little less for the third. A 2:1 descent profile from there put you on the deck with about 1000 pounds remaining, assuming an unrestricted VMC descent and a full load of fuel at taxi out.

That was hilarious, true to form. " I'll eat a bug" was used often in his commercials. I don't know who the guy was, not Cal, but maybe Cal Jr. He was about 7 when I last saw him. Thanks for posting.

At what fuel level did the lights come on?

Those fuel burns don't seem that awful when you compare them to an old citation, and you are going a bit faster!

Lears always struck me as the kind of plane you make the owner of the company is also a pilot. Maybe I am biased b/c I am an engineer, but the best products I have ever used were created by companies where the leader was an engineer or at least engineer minded.

A major aerospace company recently in the headlines needs to go back to that model of leadership.

The Top of Descent lights? IIRC it was at around 750 pounds per side but it may have been a little more.

Great book called "The Learjet Diaries: A Coming of Age Story" on Amazon Kindle. Love these stories of the beginning a personal jet travel.

Kevin

The Gates Learjet 24B Pilots Manual I have says the low fuel lights come on when either of the wing tanks have 450 pounds remaining. That would be 900 pounds total.

Regarding fuel burns, my recollection for first, second and third hour for the the Lear 24 was 2000, 1400, 1200 from 5600 full.

I recall the burns for the 35 were 1400,1200, 1100

So you flight plan to be on the ground 3 hours after takeoff, max for the 20 series.
.

There are some owner-flown Lears, but it definitely is a two-pilot airplane, with the 20 series much less forgiving than the later series. In the first 3 years of production of 104 Lears, , 23 of them crashed , but not with a lot of fatalities, mostly loss on control taking off or landing.

The model number 23 was designed to be single-pilot certified under FAR Part 23, but during early certification flight one crashed on takeoff with the FAA in the right seat, not fatal, but that was the end of the single-pilot certification. It can be nasty with an engine loss around V1, and many cartwheeled. Now that there are sims, I would never do V1 cuts in the airplane in an old 20 series.

Of course they could be easily flown by a fighter pilot, but that wasn't the target market, in fact when I took a 35 up to Wichita for a wing mod, the post-mod flight test was flown by a former Navy fighter pilot who instructed me to only operate the radio, and otherwise sit on my hands while he put it thought all the deep stall and over speed test, literally single-pilot.