Polishing the Skills
Peter Janssen’s confidence in his Beechcraft B55 Baron was not shaken, but it was stirred. Sure in his belief that the aircraft would climb easily on one engine, he was not perturbed when the instructor dropped gear and flap, then failed one of the big Continentals. What happened next cemented in Janssen’s mind the value of pilot proficiency courses.
“We had a nose-up attitude and we’re dropping 800 fpm!”, he recalled years later. “So we retracted the flaps and the rate of descent was arrested. Then with the gear up we were back to a rate of climb again.
“What I learnt was that with the gear and flap out and on one engine, you may as well be in a single-engined aircraft. I had been so confident in the Baron’s ability to climb on one engine, but doing a BPPP woke me up to the fact that it doesn’t on take-off with flaps and gear extended.”
It’s a story told many times over; the aircraft might be a Bonanza rather than a Baron, and the experience might be a stall rather than an engine failure on take-off. What is consistent with every yarn is that the pilot learned more about their own aircraft after attending a Beechcraft Pilot Proficiency Program (BPPP).
Pilot Proficiency Programs–whether they be Beechcraft, Piper, Victa, Mooney or any other breed
