WestWind Airlines

Wow, that is nice to hear.

 What you have laid out below looks fine to me, We also need to see how she operates high and hot (do you have you passport ready for a trip to La Paz Bolivia?) and cold weather (after a short hop to La Paz SLLP find someplace cold like Verkhoyansk, Siberia {I think the closest airport is Batagay UEBB}) I have not looked personally to see if FSX even has this airport, if not than either UEST or UEEE would also do.

 As far as climb profile I have found that I can climb at 4,000 fpm and 95% n1 up to FL250 at which point I take the climb down to 2,500 and climb out at Mach .80 to FL350. Finally I enter a cruise climb at 1,000 and accelerate to Mach .86 this gets me to FL450. At this point I have to pause usually until I get around 60% fuel before attempting to creep up to FL500 or above. I accelerate to Mach .88 then set the climb bug for 500 fpm and ever so slowly work my way on up. Above FL450 technically the top speed of the G550 goes from Mach .885 to Mach .85 so I accept this deceleration as I continue to climb. I have reached FL510 so it can be done and I usually request my climbs 1,000 feet at a time out of ATC. Without charts I really have no clue from flight to flight if in fact I am going to make altitude. (I need to pat an OAT on the airplane so we can start recording the temperature and weights in which the airplane will and will not climb to FL510).

 Thanks for all of the hard work and detective work on the autopilot. I think in the end we have a better overall autopilot for the airplane. Enjoy your trips to La Paz and Batagay. If you decide to pop into Adak, Alaska (PADK) on the way stop in and tell Sandy that Ken says hi. 

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-KenG

OK!! La Paz is one of my favorite airports. I tried to get a fully load B788 out of there once. No go even on that long runway. I can test the climb performance on the way down. Getting out of KROA will test the short field takeoff fully loaded scenario.

Since I am down south anyway, I think I will continue on the McMurdo. It doesn't get any colder than that. It will also tell us how the reverse thrust works as that will be the only thing that will get her stopped on ice.

I might stop in Pategonia for some crosswind landings although I don't have rudder pedals and I may not be able to test this very well.

I need some place close to the equator at sea level to get a good test on the range. Probably Singapore.

This sounds like a lot of fun. I'll get back to you.

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

G550 Test Flight Report. 16MAR08 (Flight 2)

Roanoke (KROA) - La Paz (SLLP)
RWW
7.1 hrs at mach .85 FL510
Parts conducted at 16x.

Short Field Takeoff from KROA. Procedure: N1 dial set to 100% Trim slightly more nose up than normal. LIne up at the departure end of the rwy, Press N1. Hold brakes until 95% of N1. Release brakes. She used about 5700 ft of the 5813 ft rwy. (elevation 1180). Takeoff was rwy 15, so we did not have the mountain to contend with, but there would have been no problem assuming a maximum angle of climb airspeed. Very satisfactory. This puts the sea level short field takeoff minimum at MTOW at about 6000 ft. with a little margin. Winds were minimal.

Climb to FL510. Climbed under ATC control to filed altitude FL390. Then to FL490 in 2000 ft increments and a 1000 fpm climb rate. She started struggle at FL465 and 1000 fpm climb. Decreased to 500 fpm. Climbed to FL490 and levelled off with angle-of-attack at .55, 212 KIAS, mach .85 and 90% fuel remaining. (I did not try to push beyond mach .85) This is very acceptable and very close to what I believe the actual performance should be.

Continue the Climb. At 59% fuel, I was able to climb at 500 fpm to FL510 with 200 KIAS and AOA of .45 at mach .85 after leveling off. I think I could climb another 1000 feet, but I will not attempt it. This is very acceptable.

Turbulence. There was a fair amount of turbulence on the climb out. KROA was reporting gusts to 14kts. At FL490, she is in smooth air and no side to side motion on the wings. I think this is OK and does not need adjustment. We should keep an eye on it though.

Fuel Flow Gauge. I havn't looked at it yet, but I realized the reason it is so small is that I resized the overhead panel so the bottom of it comes to about the top of engine gauges. That way I can have the overhead panel and the throttle quadrant open while I start the engines. This lets me work the fuel pumps while starting the engines. With the resizing it is too small to see, but in its orginal configuration it is fine.

Speed Brakes. OK

Estimated Range under these RWW conditions - 6000-6500 nm. This looks spot on, but I will test it further.

Spoiler Status Gauge. It would be nice to have one if we can find one.

Approach. Normal

ILS Performance: She was wandering just a little as she approached the rwy, but it was acceptable.

Short Final: Airspeed 156 KIAS, 201 TAS. This is about what it would have been on landing.

Landing. Normal.

Speed Brakes. Did not test. I keep forgetting they are there. Nice addition BTW.

Rollout: Normal. Did not use brakes only reverse thrust. No need for brakes. I had a 13000 ft rwy.

Taxi. Normal.

Shutdown. Normal

THE END

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

G550 Test Flight Report 17MAR08 (Flight 1)
La Paz (SLLP) - McMurdo Station (NZPG) MSFS southernmost airport.
4843 nm

Engine Start (13,313 ft): Normal

Taxi: Normal

Takeoff. 100% fuel and MTOW. Normal takeoff procedures. Flaps 8. Used almost all of the 13,000 ft rwy. Rotate at 145 KIAS. 10% pitch up on takeoff was not enough. Went to about 15% and she lifted off very begrudgingly. Gear up immediately. After takeoff, I went back to the 10% and she started sinking. I missed touching down again by about a foot. Very sluggish acceleration to 180 kts. Flaps up. Autopilot on and watch the rerun. This all seemed very normal to me at this elevation. I hate to think I have to use short field takeoff procedures for a 13000 ft rwy.

Climb out. Normal.

Climb to FL450 (filed altitude). Normal. See previous post.

Climb to FL510 at 6-% fuel. Normal

Speed Bug. This is probably not fixable, but I will mention it anyway. It has been like this all along. After changing over to mach hold mode on the autopilot, as you continue to climb, the max mach stays the same, but the KIAS continues to decrease until you get to coffin corner. So far so good. During the climb, the airspeed bug should change as the KIAS decreases giving an accurate readout of the target airspeed. It does not. I continually have to adjust the target by pressing the IAS/Mach mode button to get it to reset. I have seen this behavior on a lot of planes.

Fuel Consumption. The 4843 nm trip consumed 93% of the fuel on board. More testing is needed, but I am starting to think we might not have the range we need. I was below IFR reserves when I landed.

Handling on ice rwy. She landed long (these rwys are hard to spot and have no approaches) but with reverse thrust, she came to a stop with plenty of room to spare. Even after a dead stop using the reverse thrust, she still crept forward until I shut down the engines even though the brakes were applied. Brakes seem to do zero good here. Literally. This is all normal on the ice runways.

She is parked on the rwy. To taxi off the rwy is to go into the water.

Conclusion: Every aspect of the flight seemed normal except the fuel consumption..

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

Mike,

 Excellent testing. On the departure while the Take-off distance in about 6,000' we need to look at the BFL as well. Next take-off roll, load up to MTOW take the airplane up to V1 then abort the takeoff. Measure the runway used from break release to full stop. This will be the airplanes balanced field length and represent the shortest field it should operate out of. I still need to add the lettering to the autobreaks knob but the knob on the lower panel just below the PFD. If you click in once so that it points slightly down to the left should be the position for RTO (rejected take-off) and provide maximum breaking. Do not use reverses in computing BFL.

Airspeed bug. Yea its been bugging me too but nothing I can do about that. Its a gauge issue. However, I find that once I set a Mach number the airplane will maintain that airspeed regardless of what the bug indicates.

 
I should have expected the airplane to lumber out of La Paz. I think that anything over 10,000' is more than this bird can handle for take-off. Where it not for extraordinary airmanship looks like you would have bought the farm. (Maybe a little luck too.)

Take a well deserved break. Looks like everything is dialed in on this airplane and I just need to make the final preparations. I hope to release a public beta this weekend, thus if there are any other bugs that should allow me time to catch them before I package up the airplane and send it to Kim.

EDIT: I have also noticed slightly less than predicted range on a couple of my flight. I may cut fuel consumption by another 5 to 10% and see where that puts us. 

 

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-KenG

 

I like the idea of cutting fuel comsumption a bit. I still plan on doing the sea level takeoff in no weather conditions and see how far I get.

Any thoughts on how to measure the runway distance needed for BFL. I don't have a yardstick that big. So far it has just been a guess by looking at the instant replay of the takeoff. I saw a field somewhere recently that had 500 ft markings all the way along the runway, but I can't remember where it is. If there is a better way, let me know.

BTW, don't forget that La Paz was a MTOW takeoff, I think she can operate out of there safely with less than MTOW. Even doing short field technique would probably have given me a much needed edge. I don't know if flaps 20 would help or hurt. Thoughts?

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

G550 Test Flight Report 17MAR08 (Flight 2)
Preliminary Testing of BFL
NASA Shuttle Landing Facility

AutoBrakes. The autobrake RTO setting works well. No issues

Auto Throttle. The autothrottle does not disengage when you either deselect n1 or turn the autothrottle arming switch off. You have to manually adjust the throttle to zero so that the aircraft sneses a change in throttle setting. So the procedure is a two step process.

1. Disengage the autothrottle arming switch
2. Adjust throttle to zero

Distance to stop. I could not determine a good way to measure it using the runway markings at the NASA facility. I think maybe I can count the centerline stripes and come up with a good estimate that way, but I am going to have to do a little math to come up with the length of each stripe.

I will continue to work on this.

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

John J Schumacher:

I just decided to try the GSV5 in FSX and then I saw this post. Let me know if I can help. I think I will tweak on it this week.

John, I am not sure I understand what you mean. As far as I am concerned, you are more than welcome to help. Ken needs to make that call.

As far as I know, we don't have a Gulfstream of any kind available for FSX until this gets released. Ken is ready to release the Beta version I think (see his post a few back). We have pretty much got it the way we want it. It is going to be one sweet plane.

If you are referring to the GSV in FS9, in my opinion, it lacks a lot and I would not waste my time trying to port that to FSX as this one will be available any day if I understand Ken's intentions and it is head and shoulders above the FS9 version.

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

John,

  I would greatly apperciate your years of FDE and panel experience looking over this aircraft.

http://cid-839fbc8d9e9023fb.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public?uc=2

It is a spanned zip file so you will need WinZip 11 in order to open the file. Both the .zip and the .z01 need to be in the same location when you download and just double click the .zip.

Little history on this airplane. It is the Lider Designs G550 from FS9 that I have completely reworked for FSX.

In the .air file is the following information: Record: 0002 Description TEXT 0x2    Model By: Peter Brun, Original FDE by Scott Campbell. FS2004 Update for Westwind VA by John J Schumacher 09/2004

So it looks like your hands have been on this airplane once before. I don't recall painting the Lider Designs GVSP in 2004 so I don't have a clue how your .air file was attached to this airplane. Regardless this is what I have done:

When I opened the FDE with airwrench I noticed that the Cg was well forward of 25% LEMAC. I also noticed that the tail was off in space well behind the airplane and some other things were just weird. I think as people have been trying to make this airplane better over the years some wacky things happened. When I rest everything back to specifications I still had a cg outside of 25% LEMAC and an airplane that wanted to tail stand. Thus I took the club to this airplane and kept wacking until it decided to cooperate.

Here is what I think the issue is, the Lider Design airplane, although it claims to be a G500 is most likely still a G450 model. The FDE that I worked on is of course 100% from detailed information that I had on the G550. Thus aerodynamically the airplane should now behave as a G550 but you will continue to have some issue with the visual representation in FSX. i.e. the landing gear is behind the visual representation of the actual landing gear. I had to cheat on the trim effectiveness making the scaler 3.65 so the airplane will takeoff with about 8 degrees trim. Despite all of the work that I have done with the FDE this airplane is still nose heavy.

Finally I have not cleaned up the .air file. Basically according to the SDK FSX will ignore keys in the .air file if another key in the aircraft.cfg overwrites its value. So there are still lots of additional information in the .air file that is no longer needed. 

 

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-KenG

G550 Test Flight Report 17MAR08 (Flight 3)
La Paz (SLLP)
13,313 feet msl
13,100 ft runway

1. Aborted takeoff at V1 with 30% fuel. Short field takeoff. Used about 9000 feet as best I can tell. Used only the autobrakes to stop.

2. Aborted takeoff at V1 with 100% fuel. Short field takeoff. Used about 12,900 feet. Used autobrake plus speedbrake.

3. Demonstrated takeoff at MTOW (+250). Rotated at Vr (145). 10-12 degrees nose up. I tried to nail 10 degrees, but overshot a little. Lifted off on about the last few feet of the rwy.

[edit] 4. Demonstrated takeoff with V1 cut w 10%. fuel, accleerate to Vr, then establish V2 and climb. This is about all she will do at this altitude. I could go back and figure the takeoff weight, but I don't think there is much point to it.

Question. What am I looking for at V2? It seems like I am pretty well committed to the takeoff at V2.

Notes:

Short field takeoff means brakes on and n1 at 95% before releasing the brakes. Flaps 8.

V1 132 KIAS

Vr 145 KIAS

V2 158 KIAS

Personal note. I had always thought if you got it right to the nearest 5 kts, you were doing good. At this altitude, it takes a lot more time to accellerate to 135 instead of 132. It could easily mean the difference in stopping on the runway and not.

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

Mike Gibbs:

G550 Test Flight Report 17MAR08 (Flight 3)
La Paz (SLLP)
13,313 feet msl
13,100 ft runway

1. Aborted takeoff at V1 with 30% fuel. Short field takeoff. Used about 9000 feet as best I can tell. Used only the autobrakes to stop.

2. Aborted takeoff at V1 with 100% fuel. Short field takeoff. Used about 12,900 feet. Used autobrake plus speedbrake.

3. Demonstrated takeoff at MTOW (+250). Rotated at Vr (145). 10-12 degrees nose up. I tried to nail 10 degrees, but overshot a little. Lifted off on about the last few feet of the rwy.

Should have mentioned to test someplace closer to sea level.. But it is good to know.

V2 is your take-off Safety Speed. After an engine failure after V1 you continue to accelerate to Vr, rotate and accelerate to V2. You will then climb at V2 IAW manufactures instructions. For the King Air you climb at V2 until a minimum of 400' AGL or Circling minimums. Once at this height you lower the nose accelerate again to V50 and continue with enroute climb as necessary. V2 will get you up and away from the airport environment at the lowest possible speed and best angle of climb for single engine operations. There is a note in the King Air manual that accelerating to V50 may require a slight loss of altitude if the aircraft is near MTOW and at high density altitude. We also have safe single engine speed charts allowing us to chart 1st, 2nd, and 3rd segment climbs. Thus we know for each segment if we will continue to climb or not. I don't know how the pure FMS guys do this, I assume that the FMS will tell them if they will not have positive climb throughout the take-off profile. Since the G550 is a pure FMS airplane there is not much information.

Maybe Kim can tell us how he figures this out in the Challenger.

 

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-KenG

John J Schumacher:

Ken,

I just reworked the file from the download section. I took out all the unused parameters. 

I also made a panel from a Lear with the GSV VC.

I will email it to you and you guys can test it.

You can then put all your tweaks back in if you wish. 

Thanks John,

 I'll take a peek at what you have done. I didn't spend too much time with the VC cockpit as I only use it for landing, but I am sure that thoes who spend much more time in the VC will greatly apperciate you taking some time in that area.

 
 

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-KenG

John,

Do you know of a way to get the PDF in W key view rather than the Cessna gauges?

Ken,

I will do sea level testing as well, but I wanted to see how she did at El Alto. I was mainly just playing. I am not multi-engine rated, so I am just going on what you guys tell me and what I read. If we need to be able to loose an engine at V1 and continue the takeoff, rotate at Vr and Climb at V2, then I don't think she will do that with full fuel at El Alto. I would like to see what she is capable of at that altitude, so I am going to continue to play with it.

Ken, when you release the beta version for testing, will you make it available to all WW pilots at that time?

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

W key-------------------------------- 

Window07=Mini Panel

[Window07]
Background_color=0,0,0
size_mm=1024,374
position=6
visible=1
ident=MINIPANEL
child_3d=1
no_luminous=1

gauge00=Lear_45_XML!PFD,  0,0
gauge01=Lear_45_XML!eicas,  757,0

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John, thanks on the W key panel. Regarding the VC, I will let Ken do that. I am already out of my pay grade in all this. Regarding the zipped files, unless I am mistaken, you will need to download the evaluation version of winzip. I believe it is version 11. Ken and I had a long discussion about this but I will let him give you the details as to why he needs to use it.

Ken, I believe these are the corrections needed for your model. I left some comment lines in so you could see some of the changes I made. I am not a panel guy. I just changed the window number and changed the gauges to be consistent with your cockpit. Then I played around with the spacing a bit. I wouldn't mind if they were smaller. About the same size as they are in the cockpit, but I don't know how to do that.

Window06=Mini Panel

//--------------------------------------------------------
[Window06]
Background_color=0,0,0
size_mm=1024,374
position=6
visible=1
ident=MINIPANEL
child_3d=1
no_luminous=1

//gauge00=Lear_45_XML!PFD,  0,0
//gauge24=B737_800!pfd, 0,0
gauge00=B737_800!pfd, 0,110

//gauge01=Lear_45_XML!eicas,  757,0
//gauge21=Airbus_A321!ecams, 757,0
gauge01=Airbus_A321!ecams, 757,100

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver