![]() We flew the airplane at 2500 rpm and wide-open throttle, yielding 24.5 inches manifold pressure. Velocity says the V-Twin will fly 185 KTAS at 75% power. The side stick makes entry and egress effortless. That comes from the knowledge that should an engine expire along the way, the other engine will allow a landing at the point of the pilot’s choosing rather than whatever is available within the glide radius of the airplane. The noise level is low, the fuel tanks are large, and another factor in comfort is peace of mind. This means that the seats sit erect for maximum comfort on long traverses. They are designed to be cross-country cruisers. These factors combine to make an airplane that is comfortably quiet.Ĭomfortable is a word that accurately describes all of the Velocity aircraft. The composite fuselage is an excellent acoustic insulator, and the smooth shape of the fuselage parts the air with minimal disturbance. The noise that they do make is carried away with the wind. The occupants share the fuselage with the engine in the single-engine variants, but the engines on the V-Twin ride out on the wings, outside, and behind, the cabin. The result is an airplane with much more pleasant handling than the single-engine stablemates.Īlso remarkable in the V-twin was the absence of noise. The central-mounted vertical stabilizer on the V-Twin is sized to accommodate up to 230-hp engines, so the airplane is very stable in yaw, and the rudder response is proportional and well harmonized. These control surfaces have little effect on yaw initially, and the result is a large dead band in the rudder authority. The rudders on the tipsails of the single-engine airplanes deflect outward only, and only on one tip at a time. What was noticeably different from the XLT-5 handling was the rudder. The little bit of noise the full feathering MT composite propellers create converting horsepower into thrust is left in the wind behind the airplane. ![]() With mags and the prop feathering checked, all that remained to do was fly. On the prototype, a single boost pump fed both engines, but most likely builders will install a boost pump for each engine on subsequent aircraft. Both engines are fed from a single fuel system made up of two 48-gallon tanks in the wingroots and a 5-gallon header tank. Just like the singles, set the elevator one finger width below trail for two in the cabin and two fingers below trail for four. The pitch trim is a spring system, and the elevator on the canard is in plain sight. Soon we were at the end of the runway and it was time to close the big gull-wing doors, runup and go fly. The second engine makes taxiing much more pleasant and precludes the need to drag a brake in all but the strongest crosswinds. Taxiing is accomplished with differential power, and brakes when needed. The two IO-320 Lycomings light up easily, and the composite MT propellers make little noise at idle power.
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