First 402 Flight

here he comes around the patch well folks time has come to do the thing the thing i have been longing for ever since i became a loader boy it's time to go fly an air tractor not gonna lie to ya a little nervous right now shaking a little bit but uh it's gonna be all right i do know how to fly airplanes i just uh just need to get that first landing out of the way everything will be fine so anyways so the deal is my boss took the 402 up with 300 gallons of water in it and he's gonna go put it through its paces and do a couple landings with it and he's going to come back here he's going to debrief with me and we're going to kind of talk about everything that he found with the airplane we're going to get you know if there's any specific quirks about it that i need to know you know obviously this is a it's kind of a big flight i mean i know i've never ran a turbine engine outside of the simulator before so i have an idea how it's going to react but at the same time you know this isn't the sim uh my boss has got a lot of skin in the game and that airplane i've got my own self to take care of so you know it's it's a flight you got to take your time and and do it right and listen to every piece of advice you possibly can and just go out there and remember that you know how to fly the thing so he's going to come back we're going to debrief and then i think i'm gonna hop into the airplane and i guess you'll see us there also i just thought i'd throw this little tidbit in there anything you guys see in my videos is not instructional i'm a commercially rated pilot i have a part 137 endorsement to fly the restricted class air tractor do not go out and attempt anything you see me doing i'm a trained rookie professional but uh you know this isn't instructional don't go do anything dumb just enjoy the video if you want to be an egg pilot go get a loading job okay i'm in the 402 a little bit of the runway here we go [Music] [Music] devil's lake traffic air tractor 352 bravo alpha has taken runway at 31 for a northbound departure double lake [Music] okay here we go [Music] all right we are are we going for airspeed we're doing all right so that's the little trim in here pulling my pants back my sword's gonna rise a little is [Applause] all right so i'm at about 2500 feet here got the air tractor out north and down a little ways obviously i'm kind of in blue country right now but uh i'm just gonna turn around the airplane a little bit here a couple times it's not steep turns or anything but just trying to get a feel for how it is and it is a little bit more happy than the test now that's for sure so i've got my torque setting at about a thousand and drop pulled back to about 1800 and we're keeping about 120 miles an hour and this thing will really turn up turn on a dime up here it's uh this thing this thing turns pretty sharp i don't know about those swap track returns everybody it's always bitching about but i'm sure i'll find out when i start spraying but i mean i am not put any back pressure on this thing and it is just whipping around the turn everything's looking alright i got a tower tower right there to my right and a windmill so i'm probably gonna start working my way back north of here keeping this thing coordinated is a little different from the cessna because it doesn't actually stay coordinated pretty well but this is definitely going to take some practice and from getting used to right here i'm going to try and do uh i'm trying to do a steep turn to the left here because i always take the easy side first right so i'm at about 2600 and i'm definitely fine you can almost get the edge of the light bar on the horizon there it needs to be about where it doesn't want to climb yeah and i pull past it there's my heading a little bit more right rudder on the edge of the center super cheap so i ended up [Applause] and right on my speed going to the right so again a little bit of initial climb at the beginning but maintaining a little better this time a little more right rudder i should say probably get my foot off the left rudder and i'm descending still good but definitely super light on the controls super super light here and of course now i'm i'm empty granted this isn't how it's gonna spray but this is uh it's light on the controls i like it that was lake traffic air tractor 532 bravo tango is uh inbound for landing runway 3-1 all right it's only about 3 100 feet here so i'm going to start getting this core slowed down a little bit alfalfa i'm going to push the prop to 2 000 right now that was like traffic air tractor 532 bravo alpha is two miles north of the fields gonna cross midfield make a right turn in the left down one for runway 3-1 double play so you guys just heard me get my tail number right for the first time third time's a charm i had bravo tank go in there and i had 352 bravo alpha finally got the 532 bravo alpha anyways just a sign that you know the nerves are really high i was pretty nervous about the landing not that i'm incapable of landing um i definitely landed on a harder airstrip last year than this i got you know 6 000 feet to play with here so but anyways still nervous so kind of like i've talked about before i didn't want to do too much talking um during the flight i did a little bit more during the maneuvers just because obviously not a lot of stuff to hit it at 3 500 feet when i came in to land i definitely wanted to keep it quiet and uh and focus up that was like traffic air tractor uh making 352 nicer and a lot downwards three one double quake and there we are again getting it wrong but the nerves definitely getting the better of me it's something that i've always had a problem with first flights and new airplanes just they just stress me out and you know for any of you guys out there that are transitioning i can tell you that if you've flown a tailwheel airplane before you can fly an air tractor it's just the size and the speed that's intimidating the turbine engine at first but um you get that first one out of the way and it's not so bad okay years down here i am trying to trying to calm myself down i know i'm nervous i mean i i i knew i was going to be nervous the entire time before this flight and and just saying gears down there i was just trying to calm myself down a little bit i wasn't letting the nerves hinder my ability to fly at all i guess think straight and coherent sentences were were thrown out the window but flying i i didn't let go at least i didn't think so there were there were a few things i did do wrong here and you're gonna see i'm gonna i'm gonna let them happen here and and point them out and talk about them afterwards yeah i mean gotta know i had you gotta know how you're gonna react and like i said i knew i was gonna be nervous and it's just constantly reminding yourself every time you're a little nervous about something that okay you know this is this is probably gonna be this airplane is probably easier to land in the champ that i got my tail wheel endorsement in it's just a matter of of getting that first one down and going oh yeah okay so nobody reinvented the wheel here it's a tailwheel airplane that was like traffic air tractor three five two five three two bravo alpha's final three one double blake so i'm on final here one thing i'd like to point out right now that i'm doing wrong is my aim point is the end of the runway and if i could do this over again uh just for a safety thing i i would have definitely used the numbers or the the thousand foot markers instead just to give myself a little bit more room so you can definitely see one of the the big thing i did wrong was not enough crosswind correction not enough i needed way more right rudder more left aileron once i applied that and you know it was a bouncy landing and i self-critique myself as soon as we get off the ground here but you know that it's hard on the first one just you're trying to gauge that height you know your whole depth perception has changed that cessna is a lot shorter than this 402 was and you feel like you're sitting 10 feet off the ground one thing i also did really wrong is i was i was really nervous about striking the prop i don't know why but i just felt like i was gonna get way up on the nose and and wreck something but i never got close okay well that was not pretty but [Laughter] oh god all right let's get that a little bit more dialed in here probably could use a little bit more correction software correction too that looks like traffic air tractor five three two parallel left downwards three one double click so you can hear now i've i've moved on from being nervous about landing the airplane now i'm worried about i should say i'm worried i'm determined to figure out how to do it right again not a pretty first landing but uh one me and the airplane both walked away from so nothing to complain about there here we come again my hand points the end of the runway this is a this is a bad habit on a 6300 foot runway i guess it's just what i was used to from flying off that farm strip i did last year um should have gave myself more room but we made it work every single time i kept plenty of power to it um you know that's a big thing when moving into these turbines and i i made this mistake later on in the season two on one landing but keeping that little bit of uh ng keep that engine spooled up just in case you got to go around so not not much better on the wind correction not much better on the touchdown um and again worried about striking the prop i don't know where this worry came from but it's hard to see in the video i am landing tail low i'm definitely landing way on the back side of the tires for a wheel landing didn't need to be doing that i mean once i started flying this plane every day and landing 15 times a day i was landing right on the dead center of the wheels all the time i wasn't coming close to wrecking the prop the landings were way better but anyways that's that's what they were on the first day and and it's the first day i can't i can't be too hard on myself i guess but it's like i said you know my boss has got a lot of money in this airplane and i i don't want to be wearing tires out and bouncing every single day so i'm fast forwarding here to my fifth landing five total didn't miss too much on the third and fourth ones just for the sake of not having an hour long video i left those two landings out along with a few other maneuvers that i did too just so you weren't along for an hour long video i've learned from my experience thus far that people don't stick around that long to watch videos for longer than about 20 minutes so so here i am coming in on final approach for the fifth landing last one of the day nerves have definitely calmed down a lot by now i think you're going to see this landing is definitely a lot better than the first two once again with some pretty poor crosswind correction i definitely got used to it as the season went on i mean it just it takes some practice to get used to the inputs you need to put in my objective with showing you guys this video was not to show off the fact that i'm flying a 402 i'm i'm proud that i've made it to this point but that wasn't uh my objective i hope you guys saw the nerves the the emotion that goes into this first flight in the turbine i wish i could have recorded my first time in the cessna but i can tell you that would have ended in disaster i was definitely more prepared for this flight than i was my first flight the cessna but you know you work so hard and you work so long i remember my first loading job before i had ever even practiced spraying it just it feels like there's this monkey on your back like am i ever gonna get this seat is this actually gonna work out for me i was loading in south dakota and i was five hours away from home for four months out of the year and it was just like is this gonna pay off i'm i'm risking a lot i had a girlfriend at the time who's now my fiance and i was risking that relationship i can tell you guys that when you make this first flight and you come in here you taxi in on the last landing and you pull the prop back it's like wow okay that monkey's off your shoulders you've got it i mean and that's only the beginning of a whole new chapter of learning and i can tell you it's an exciting one i love flying in the 402 this year this one this airplane has a dash 11 on it so it's 550 shaft horsepower and it's a little underpowered when you're full on a hot day but it's a joy of a plane to fly it's a happy airplane like i've had some people describe to me 402 is a happy airplane and i i think you guys saw my reaction when i was doing my steep turns that it it definitely i mean it it performs it's it's a fun airplane to fly it turns tight you know i also did a few other maneuvers that weren't on video i did some rectangular course i did some slow flight i did some field passes at altitude i didn't get down on the deck like i said just too much to show and it would have taken an hour here guys it's time to watch all of it and it wasn't all all useful i i just really wanted to to get across you know like i said the nerves the emotion of of that first flight and and really you know this is a big check big check mark off my list of things to do i can't thank my employer enough for giving me the opportunity that he gave me uh taking the time to taking more time than he needed to do to teach me answered every single question that i had and and that's one thing one piece of advice that i could give you guys is just ask as many questions as you possibly can sometimes i overdo it i probably stress the people out around me when i'm getting ready for these first flights all that said folks who survived their maiden voyage the in five through two bravo alpha they turn each other like i said when i started on the landings you know how to fly a tale of aircraft you've you've practiced you've done a thousand landings in a table airplane and it's just all remembering those those principles that you you learned starting out and everything will go great from there so thank you guys so much for watching this video if you like it give it a thumbs up share it with somebody that's interested in ag aviation share with somebody that's interested in aviation or agriculture you know to the farmers out there i i really like uh for you guys to see things from from our side of the story and uh you know hopefully i can do some things in the future to hear from you as well so thinking i got a got a little announcement coming up down the road here i'm gonna let this video hang out for about a week or so and and talk about a few other things what i'm gonna do with the channel but uh until then thanks a lot everybody take care god bless

Channel: Valley Ag Pilot

Views: 40,713

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Id: wOhh0NWSL1k

Length: 22min 52sec (1372 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020