Think he just made an emergency shutdown by pulling the condition levers and some residual fuel must have caught fire.

You mean the tail pipe fire generator switches? I presume they close fuel valves that feed the engines.

On my plane, the condition lever cut off shuts off fuel FIRST, then feathers the prop, which happened here, so the CL was definitely pulled. There was a lot of fuel after flame out and it went boom!

Strange.

Mike C.

You mean the tail pipe fire generator switches? I presume they close fuel valves that feed the engines.

On my plane, the condition lever cut off shuts off fuel FIRST, then feathers the prop, which happened here, so the CL was definitely pulled. There was a lot of fuel after flame out and it went boom!

Strange.

Mike C.

Manual reading aside, I have found 441 maintenance surprisingly reasonable. 340 is constantly in the shop. 441 has predictable scheduled maintenance and is in a different league performance-wise, traits it probably shares with the other 331 airplanes. The only reason not to buy one is the market knows how desirable they are, making them expensive to buy. If you fly much under 100 hours a year, I’d look into a commander or MU2 from a capex perspective, or better yet find a partner and get a 441.

Commander is really simple; 150 hour or 12 months whichever comes first. It’s not like a jet with 120 pages of CAMP to track. We use a 4 page spreadsheet.

The flames are not surprising from feathering and then shutting off the switches dumping the fuel via EPA. Should have just shut them off normally.

My MU2 was a one page status sheet.

But that's not really "better". My Jet has abut 60 pages, but we track everything and that makes it very easy to know status of SB, AD, part overhaul, replacements, etc. For example, every flap track roller has a line in the track report. That just isn't the norm for turboprops.

The fact the Commander has 4 pages of status just means you aren't tracking things to the same detail as the jet, not that there aren't hugely fewer things to track.

Mike C.

Ah, so they hit the condition lever, that shuts off fuel (but leaves it in the lines), flame out, then they did the normal shutdown which triggered the EPA kit and dumps the fuel in the lines into the hot engine, and then it went boom.

Pretty large fire ball for that sequence.

Going for feather means the engines pool down a lot faster making egress safer. If one does that, then probably a bad idea to blow the EPA kit, just leave it alone.

Mike C.

I didn’t say it was “better” did I? I said it was simple. And it’s far simpler in terms of required time and life limited component tracking and maintenance than your average jet, that is a fact. I trust a professional to inspect and use judgement to replace flap rollers or whatever “non tracked” items when needed. You lobby against factory style maintenance from the factory shops because you can do it better and save money. It’s ok, I get it.