Exactly.

Also, this is internal Hartzell policy that an overhaul entails a grinding of the blade. That's not what an overhaul needs to mean (and it doesn't on the Hamilton Standards), but in Hartzell-speak, it does. The reasons are obvious. They claim the fine high vibration cycles/harmonics stiffens the outer layer of the blade and makes that brittle, which makes very little sense to me as that outer layer sits about 0.5mm further away than the inner- or rest-of-blade's material - surely, they would be equally affected in a thin airfoil like that?

Great thread!
There is a Low Utilization Program for the 441. My plane has been on it since 2016. program is for under 200 hrs. /year.
Great dispatch reliability. RVSM is used more for weather avoidance and flight comfort than cruising high for max range. Most of my flights are North-South.

Who provides that program, Textron or someone else? This matters a lot for how the regulations are applied.

My copy of the 441 MM (rev 16) does not have the red annotations in your excerpt. They do not look like they came from Textron.

Mike C.

Bacon had it when I looked into it. We decided against it only because we were considering putting the airplane on a 135 certificate and we met all of the requirements.... until a recent Honeywell SB put an end to those thoughts anyways...

For a 331 guy, the fact that the computers have control of the fuel flow is interesting and somewhat unique to the 441. I was told by engine shop guys many years ago about the failure modes and it stuck with me. That never stopped me from doing post overhaul flight checks in a couple while they play with all the parameters with a magic box plugged in. And in no way am I current on the plane.

Cessna got it mostly right with the 441, it’s a hell of a plane, and I wish Beech did as well with their installation of the 331.

Some light reading;

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/in ... 200300458/

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... Append.pdf

https://www.baaa-acro.com/crash/crash-c ... i-lakeland

I didn't even realize FSI still offered 441 training until a couple days ago. I'm schedule for Simcom for recurrent in two weeks...

They just moved the sim to Wichita. I haven't been to the new location yet. It's a real cockpit, visuals and flight model are laughable which is fine. Procedures trainer is all I am looking for.

Which SB Jason and how onerous is it?

The mechanical FCU on most TPE331 airplanes can have various failures mode. My former MU2 had "fail high" FCUs, which meant if the metal spline broke, the FCU failed to high power, about 130% torque. This is preferred since this is safer, IMO.

The FAA issued an AD requiring all FCUs to be modified to "fail low". This mod used a plastic Vespel spline. When that fails, the engine goes to low power, potentially under flight idle.

Due to a high failure rate of "fail low" FCUs, mostly due to the plastic spline, the FAA allowed an AMOC of inspecting the older metal spline fail high FCUs every 1000 hours. This is what I did on my MU2. I recommend anyone who has fail high FCUs keep them.

The 441 was not among the affect models for this AD, however, because it had the fuel computer and thus not the same design. So it avoided all this shenanigans. The implication is that the -8, -10N engine setup is less susceptible to this issue.

Any FCU, mechanical or electronic, can cause the wrong power on the engine and you have to deal with it. A sim is basically the only place you can truly practice this. The Simcom sim had both fail high and fail low options (at least, for the MU2).

I'm ambivalent about the 441 having a fuel computer. It is nice to take care of some things, but it is also added complexity. I never really had trouble with my mechanical FCU on the MU2 despite the fact it had no automatic anything and you had to set power by a lookup table. Sounds annoying, but really it wasn't. My Citation has basically the same thing, set takeoff power by adjusting N1 based on altitude and temperature. No big deal.

Mike C.

Here's an advantage to a Commander:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/wyDOkpiUn9c[/youtube]

Happened yesterday in Australia. Easy fix, most likely.

Didn't realize what you were talking about until the nose, and only the nose, hit asphalt.

Plenty of MU2s have been on their nose, the short body in particular, including my former one.

No prop or engine damage.

A 441 on its nose will get the props. The 441 has hydraulic gear similar to the Citation system which has been very reliable. I can't recall the last time I heard of a Citation or 441 landing gear up for mechanical reasons.

What the heck was that fire at engine shutdown all about? That was pretty serious looking! Surely that's not normal, is it?

Mike C.

Think he just made an emergency shutdown by pulling the condition levers and some residual fuel must have caught fire.

Who provides that program, Textron or someone else? This matters a lot for how the regulations are applied.

My copy of the 441 MM (rev 16) does not have the red annotations in your excerpt. They do not look like they came from Textron.

Mike C.

Which SB Jason and how onerous is it?