RCU Forums - Turbine CD certification

Well I stayed away from this post for the main reason as ones like this get touchy.

Here are my views regarding TCD sign offs. I look at a few things when I come to sign you off for your waiver.

1) Does the pilot have any DF experience?

2) What type of aircraft does the pilot currently fly and what has he flown?

3) What is the history of the planes he has flown, are they still around?

4) What is the modelers building experience?

Now don't think you have to have a considerable amount of experience in all of these categories for me to sign you off, that is not the case. I have had some exception pilots come to me for a sign off and they have only assembled ARF's! Maybe they don't build and have a substantial bank account, we have a fair amount of that here in So. California, so I deal with that. Just because you owned a serious complex 85" wingspan warbird doens't mean you could fly it if it crashed on its first flight. Of course it wasn't the pilots fault when the aileron linkage broke he had put in. Are you starting to see my point here?

Turbine aircraft are complex inside and out. They catch fire when they crash if the engine is running, 98% of the time. When a turbine doesn't burn when it hits the dirt, that is becasue the engine was shut down prior to the impact. Understand these aren't laws, but routine evaluations. Large gas powered aircraft can burn as well, but they don't on the average. Lets face it, the turbine powered aircraft is a controlled fire waiting to hit some dead grass. Maintain control and no fire, don't maintain control and you get a fire.

Wing loading is a big player here. Speed is not. The speed thing is relevant, the extreme wing loading is not. Here are a couple of figures for everyone who wants to do the basic math. I fly a BVM Mig-15 for one of my birds. This is one of the sweetest flying jets out there, most everyone who has flown one will attest to it. (this is not a plug for BVM guys so don't take it as one)

Wing area on the Mig is under 1000 square inches. I believe it is around 970 squares, give or take. The bird is 23 pounds 4 ounces dry! Takeoff weight goes up to around 28.5 pounds full of fuel. You do the math on the wing loading. Ok guys the math isn't hard and it gives me a wing loading on take off of 67.65 ounces to the square foot. Your average prop model is around 23 ounces to the sqaure foot.

So try this on one of those sunny days at the flying field. Add a bunch of balast until you get around a 60 ounce per sqaure foot wing loading and fly the plane. (You will need a bigger engine I can assure you). If the plane comes back alive you are one step closer to a flying a turbine. You still need to get used to no prop blast over the flight controls and a three second delay on throttle, but at least the flight performance will be closer during takeoff and landing.

If I had it my way everyone would be flying a turbine and would be able to handle it. And unfortunately not everyone will take the safer/sensible approach to turbine flight. If they did, we wouldn't have this waiver issue to deal with. But because most of us are ego driven (like it or not)(we are human) we need these rules to help us maintain things in this lawyer infested country we call home (the good ole' USA).

The main point is go to the rallies and talk with jet poiltos. They will try everything to help you suceed, if they don't point them out and I think a few of us will take them out back and light a fire in thier backside, P-160'ed of course, or even an Olympus wouldn't be bad either. These damned jets are different, period!! I hate to see anyone loose time and money in this hobby. we are here to have fun. When the smoke clears and you are about 200+ flights into the turbine experience, you will look back and say, man them there TCD's had a pretty good point. Dave Ried said it here first. Listen and learn, please for your sucess as well as others.

John Redman
Team BVM, Jet Cat USA, Shultze Chargers