TWIN COMMANDER FLEET BRIEFING

The Latest News & Events

Thinking about taking advantage of the special-price offer to convert your Honeywell TPE331-5 engines to Dash 10T configuration but still have hours left on your present engines? You can reserve a slot at a Twin Commander-authorized Dash 10T service center for later in the year, and then continue to fly hours off your Dash 5s.

"It's the best of both worlds," commented Twin Commander Aircraft President Matt Isley. "You get maximum value from your present engines while looking forward to enjoying the climb, cruise, and fuel efficiency performance of Dash 10T powerplants."

The special price for the complete two-engine conversion including removal of the engines from the aircraft, upgrading the turbine sections with Dash 10T components and other engine modifications inherent in the conversion, upgrading the airframe with new parts to accommodate the reworked engines and, finally, installation of the Dash 10T powerplants, is just $530,000 for 690A and B models. (Owners of Dash-5-powered 690C and D models should call for a price quote.) That is a full $100,000 discount–about 16 percent–off the normal price of the Dash 10T conversion for the A/B.

This offer is for a limited time only, so it's important to book the conversion soon with a deposit even if you don't want to upgrade the engines immediately.

This unprecedented, limited-time discount on the Dash 10T conversion is made possible by a collaborative effort from Twin Commander Aircraft, authorized Dash 10T installation service centers, Standard Aero, and Honeywell.

For more information, contact an authorized Dash 10T service center. For a list of qualifying service centers, visit http://www.twincommander.com/serviceCenters.html.

Twin Commander's authorized service centers report that they have begun filling end-of-year slots to perform the inspection required by Airworthiness Directive 2009-25-02.

The inspection is based on Service Bulletin 237, which applies to 690, 690A, and 690B Twin Commanders (with the exception of six serial-number specific aircraft). Affected aircraft must be inspected for corrosion between the upper wing skin panels and engine mount beam support straps. The inspection must be performed within the next 150 hours time in service beginning January 8, 2010, or by January 8, 2011, whichever comes first.

The inspection process involves removal of the upper engine nacelles to expose the engine mount beam support straps, and removal of the straps to inspect for corrosion on the exposed upper wing skins.

Due to the volume of aircraft in the fleet still requiring the inspection–some 200 aircraft worldwide–Twin Commander was able to fend off some steep material price increases this year on SB237 inspection and rework kits. In addition, many service centers have staffed up and have been offering guaranteed slots for folks that schedule ahead to beat the end-of-year rush for compliance.

Scheduling your SB237 inspection ahead of time ensures availability of resources at the service center and availability of parts from the factory. Owners are encouraged to take advantage of these factors and coordinate their inspection and other maintenance requirements with their service center to make sure hangar space is available.

Owners who have not yet scheduled the inspection with an authorized service center should consider doing so soon. Available slots are filling up, and failure to secure a slot and complete the inspection before the compliance date could affect the airworthiness of the aircraft.

Contact your authorized Twin Commander service center today to schedule your SB237 inspection.

Twin Commander Aircraft has several engineering efforts underway to improve parts availability and pricing. Among the current projects is one involving the nose gear bungee.

This heavy duty spring assembly is a critical component in that it lowers the nose landing gear in the event of a failure in the hydraulic system. When the stock of spare bungees needed replenishing, Twin Commander discovered that the original vendor had stopped manufacturing the part. A search ensured to identify a new source, but without success. Twin Commander then went back to the original vendor and negotiated an agreement in which the vendor will manufacture a 10-year supply of nose gear bungees.

Another nose gear component, the inner body and bushing assembly (p/n ES12394-501), has seen a significant reduction in price. This was made possible because Pam Brown, Twin Commander's parts buyer, located and qualified a new vendor to manufacture the assembly.

Also, Twin Commander has assured a steady supply of booster pumps that scavenge fuel from the bottom of the fuel tanks. The previous manufacturer of the pump would no longer certify the pumps as aircraft parts. Twin was able to find a new vendor that can supply a nearly identical pump.

"These are small but very important steps in meeting our total commitment to support the fleet," noted Twin Commander Aircraft President Matt Isley. "A small part can have a big impact on an owner when it is not available or inordinately expensive," he added. "Our job is to make sure it is available, and at a fair price, when it's needed."

As the exclusive pilot training partner of Twin Commander Aircraft, FlightSafety International (FSI) is asking for your feedback.

In an effort to better train Commander owner/operators, FlightSafety is considering the acquisition of WAAS-capable GPS units for the Twin Commander simulators at the Houston-based Twin Commander Learning Center. FSI would develop a specific WAAS flight training course.

To ensure that FlightSafety makes a good decision for the benefit of Commander pilots, they would like to hear from Commander owner/operators about their preferences and their level of enthusiasm for such an upgrade to the Commander training syllabus.

Please take two minutes to answer five brief survey questions. Your feedback is invaluable to Twin Commander and FlightSafety in our continued effort to provide the finest aircraft ownership experience anywhere.
TAKE THE SURVEY NOW

As reported in last month's Twin Commander eLetter, the 10th Twin Commander University will take place April 28-30, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Resort & Spa in Bonita Springs, Florida. Over the coming months we'll be talking about the seminars and activities that will be featured at the popular biennial conference of Twin Commander owners and operators, representatives from authorized Twin Commander service centers, and Twin Commander Aircraft LLC staff.

We've added a special University button to the left-hand panel on the Twin Commander website (www.twincommander.com) that, for the moment, takes you to a story about the University that appears in the current Flight Levels magazine. Soon, the button will connect to several pages worth of information about the University, including a registration form.

You can reserve your accommodations at the Hyatt Regency Coconut point now. Call 888-421-1442 (you can also call the resort directly at 239-444-1234 and ask for reservations), or go to https://resweb.passkey.com/Resweb.do?mode=welcome_ei_new&eventID=2574077 for online booking. Be sure to mention that you will be attending the Twin Commander University to get the special University rate.

The Summer 2010 issue of Twin Commander's own Flight Levels magazine has been published and is available for reading at www.flightlevelsonline.com. (The Summer and Winter editions of Flight Levels are published online, while the Spring and Fall issues are online and distributed in print form.)

The new Summer issue features commentary from Twin Commander Aircraft President Matt Isley and technical insight from Customer Service Manager Geoffrey Pence, as well as Honeywell Pilot Advisor Helmuth Eggeling's in-depth description of how to preflight a TPE331 engine.

Rob Louviaux, Aircraft Maintenance Manager at Executive Aircraft Services, offers insider's advice on troubleshooting problems (hint: stick to the basics). Twin Commander design engineer Alan Wright explains how he and other staffers keep on top of parts issues, and long-time structural engineer Fred Gatz is recognized for his work on Twin Commanders with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The issue also has a story about Legacy Aviation's fifth anniversary party, and several Commander operators are profiled including Airborne Support, Inc. in Houma, Louisiana; Maria Plunket in Renton, Washington; and Brad Goldman in Arlington, Washington.

Goldman has been fighting fires for most of his adult life. It's his passion, and for the past nearly 30 years his job, too–he's with the Snohomish County Fire District 7 in Washington State north of Seattle. Some 25 years ago he learned to fly, and it, too, became a passion. Which explains Goldman's summer job: fighting fires from the air.

Goldman owns and operates Gold Aero, Inc., based in Arlington, Washington. His two-airplane fleet–a Cessna 205 and Twin Commander 500S Shrike–function as aerial supervision aircraft over large wildland fires. An air attack supervisor in the airplane controls the airspace over the fire, and makes tactical decisions on what type of aerial resources are needed to support the ground crews battling the blaze. Air attack aircraft serve a critical function in the high-stakes effort to contain raging, fast-moving wildfires.

Goldman founded the business 11 years ago with the 205. A few years later he heard that his primary customer, the U.S. Forest Service, was going to require that its contractors fly only multiengine aircraft, so he began to research the options. A high wing is an obvious attribute given the need for good all-around visibility on an air attack aircraft. That narrowed the choices down to the centerline-thrust Cessna 337 Skymaster; the Partenavia, a fixed-gear piston twin built in Italy; and Twin Commanders.

He asked air attack supervisors for their preferences. "Most said that their first choice is a Twin Commander," Goldman said."The only thing I knew about Twin Commanders was that Bob Hoover flew one. So I started learning about them."

That effort lasted two years, and eventually led him to San Jose, California, where he found the second-to-last Shrike Commander that Rockwell built.

For more on this and other Twin Commander stories, go to www.flightlevelsonline.com.

The 63rd Annual NBAA Meeting and Convention will take place October 19-21 at the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta, and Twin Commander Aircraft will be there.

Representatives from Twin Commander Aircraft LLC and several authorized service centers including Aero Air, Aerocentro De Servicios CA., Eagle Creek Aviation Services, Executive Aircraft Maintenance, Legacy Aviation Services, Naples Jet Center, and Standard Aero, will be in booth 2519 on the convention floor.

The NBAA Convention is the largest annual gathering of business aviation vendors and operators in the world. In addition to the exhibits, the convention will feature more than 100 education sessions at the convention center, and a static display of aircraft at Dekalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) northeast of the city.

For more information see NBAA.org and contact Matt Isley at Twin Commander Aircraft at misley@twincommander.com.

The Twin Commander Community Forum (www.flightlevelsonline.com/phpBB/) has hosted some good discussions among Commander owners and enthusiasts on topics ranging from travel destinations to the cost of complying with Service Bulletin 237.

We thought we’d prime the pump–pique your interest in checking out the Forum–by publishing an interesting comment that appeared in one of the Forum discussions. In this case it was on the relative merits of the turbine conversion of the Beech Duke verses Twin Commanders.

"I flew a Duke for years and had our company trade up (way up) to a Commander -10T. There is no comparison here. The magnesium tail of the Duke is weak, cabin is cramped, range is limited, and runway performance is vaguely comparable to the F-104. Parts are getting expensive and hard to find and nobody wants to support this airplane. The Turbine conversion improves reliability, but I told the president of our company that I would buy the gas if he let us do the maintenance.

"With the Commander we saved a pile and gained leagues of safety, performance and something the Duke never will have: utility."

This is the second in a series of articles by Dr. Keith Thomassen on how to get the most out of your Garmin GPS Navigators.

Many pilots think of a flight plan as a list of waypoints that you follow, in order, from the first one to the last one. That’s how you create a plan. But in fact what you are doing is creating a sequence of flight legs that you follow one after another, with the GPS automatically sequencing at the end of each leg to the next one. This way of looking at the plan helps you understand procedures, which are a "canned set of legs" that represent that procedure. The only kind of leg you can enter in a plan is a TF leg (Track to Fix). It is described by the course, distance, and ending waypoint (this description does not include the starting waypoint). The Chelton and GNS480 also let you create HM legs, holds at any waypoint of your choosing, with a manual termination (and further choices of inbound course, time, or distance, and direction of turns).

So why is it important to think "flight legs" instead of a sequence of waypoints? GPS devices are designed to automatically sequence to the next leg if possible. However, on some legs that’s not possible and sequencing is "suspended". The SUSP light comes on, and you must push the SUSP (or OBS ) button at the right time to restore sequencing and make the next leg "active". The active leg is the one colored magenta, and your cross track distance from that leg (or extensions on both ends) is what the unit feeds to the CDI or HSI, so your autopilot can track it (it may instead create roll commands for those who have GPSS autopilots (or converters). The 430/530s don’t send signals to autopilots on heading legs (only the Chelton and G1000 do that), so in general you need to know which of the 23 legs can be flown by the autopilot, and how (from analog CDI signals or digital roll commands--or both).

Procedures are added using a variety of legs; the ARINC 424 standards describe all 23 of them. Only legs from that list can be used to represent a procedure. For example, a common first leg of a departure or missed approach might be a VA leg (heading to an altitude). You fly the particular HDG until reaching a specified baro altitude (sequencing is automatic). Following that you may get a VI leg (heading to an intercept) to the next course (sequencing will be suspended on this leg). After the intercept, the next leg is often a CF leg (course to fix).

Some GPS units cannot create all 23 legs, so their procedures (departures, arrivals, or missed approaches) may be incomplete. The 430/530 is one such GPS. Their WAAS upgrade made some improvement by adding curved legs (which includes arcs, procedure turns, and holds). Roll commands (but not NAV commands) are generated for those legs. Among the many legs the 430/530 does not create is the VM "vector leg" (heading to a manual termination) often found at the end of an arrival. Without it your last arrival leg is erroneous (it goes to the airport). The original G1000 had the same shortcomings, but later software versions create all 23 legs (as do the Chelton and GNS480).

You can make any flight leg "active", at any time. Simply identify the leg in the flight plan (put a on it cursor) and push the D-> button twice. Or, with the cursor on it, chose

"Activate Leg" in the menu. There are reasons to do this (that’s another story) when procedures are added, but here is an example depicted above. We are cleared to KSNS via the flight plan shown on the 530. The first (active) leg to MQO is displayed on the G600. We’re given a heading of 330° after takeoff from KSBP, entered on the PFD with the HDG bug, and told to intercept the airway between MQO and PRB. We put MQO in the flight plan to have a leg from there to PRB. Now, before takeoff, we want to "Activate" that leg, shown in the pictures here. Put the cursor on the second leg (ending at PRB), push D-> once to initiate, and again to choose to "Activate". Then push ENT to make it active (leg is now in magenta).

It’s essential to know how to identify a specific leg in your flight plan (with a cursor). The trick is to find the line displaying the end of that leg (a waypoint, altitude, intercept, arc, or manual termination). Then, the action you take will be for that leg.

Screen shots here are from the G600 simulator, a free download from Garmin {https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=6427}

In future newsletters, I’ll include selected questions and answers from readers, on all the Garmin Navigators. Please send your questions to thomassen@avionicswest.com.