Performance related anecdote from a former pilot

[MediumRareBaku]

I've been trawling the internet in search of information on the YS-11 in order to make more meaningful and helpful bug reports that will hopefully propel this add-on towards a greater level of completeness and accuracy. I've turned up very little, so far, but I found this interesting anecdote regarding performance on PPRuNe from an ex-Piedmont YS-11 pilot that aligns with some feedback I've seen here and on the MSFS forums regarding performance, particularly after takeoff:

Quote

I also remember that the airplane's performance was marginal. Most takeoffs were with water. Only on a very cold winter morning with light loads would the skipper elect to do a dry takeoff.

Initial climb rates (after the water was shut off and climb power (14,200 RPM and fuel trimmed to 770 degrees)...hot summer day, max gross weight, both engines...was maybe 500 to 600 fpm. I asked a captain what the climb rate would be if we lost one...He smiled and said, 'Less than 500 fpm.'

So, we did little cruising at 15,000 feet or so. If it was a cold winter day, light loads, long flight, then, maybe, we'd go to the low to mid teens.

I hope this is useful to the devs.

[Alexair]

That's what I thought, the Inibuild YS-11 perfomances are too optimistic. As I said on another post, 2200 to 2500 ft/min in the climb at max gross weight is way too high. Thanks for bringing that up.

[Eddie]

Hi there,

Thank you for the feedback. Have forwarded this to the team 🙂

 

[wf971]

This is really a shame, as the YS-11's performance seems way better than it ought to be. We routinely zoom through FL200. I thought perhaps adding maximum Wear/Tear parasite drag could help us negate all this horsepower. Unfortunately it amounted to nothing. Neither does the fuel filter bleed air heating system; which supposedly (going by the NTSB's report into Reeve Aleutian flight no. 69) saps about 4% of thrust from the engine. How much really? you might ask -- but enough, anyway, that Reeve and other operators practised having this system turned off for landings in the event of go-arounds/pull-ups. So marginal was the performance that this system -- its influence great or not -- was deemed worthy of help by way of being turned off.

This era and technology of aviation really hangs on by a thread in Asobo's 'ecosystem' of aircraft. It would take so little improvement (in the fuel metering system, in the performance calculations/LUTs, etc etc as mentioned here on the forum) to have this aircraft stand as a formidable example among its peers. Some of these systems are "behind the scenes" in SOME aircraft experiences, sure, but here they amount to so much that they can't well be left out or given only an economic amount of development time.

Please!

You can try yourself by giving the aircraft above MTOW -- full payload -- and it won't actually touch climb performance.

Edited 16 hours ago by wf971