Beech Sierra Experience?

Pretty good day today.

Started out the day filling out my IFR Performance Profiles table. From there I headed west for some navigation and landing practice. Hit a string of airports for four T&G landings with surface winds ranging between 17 and 27 knots.

After that turned back to the barn and climbed to 9,500' MSL (no ADS-B Out yet). Pulled back power to 2300 RPM and leaned out to 75° ROP. With full throttle only providing 17.5" MP, fuel flow was a whopping 8 gph!!!!

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So what did I get for a TAS for that 8 gph?

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Who cannot enjoy 155mph (135Kts) TAS at 8 gph? :D
 
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Sounds like you are having a blast with your new airplane!

I think the Sierra is a great air frame and as far as I am concerned the Lycoming IO-360 is the best 4 cylinder aircraft engine ever made. It is just a great power plant.

I hope you have many hours of great flying in your new airplane!
 
smv said:
Mission: Complete!

Well, Step 1 anyway. Took first flight and positioned it closer to my home. Flew 1.5 on the Hobbs. Did one t-n-g along the way and greased it into a nice landing on a 3900x60 runway and had it stopped well before halfway down the runway.

Sitting in it the first time made me think of getting into a Big Rig. SOOOO ROOMY!!

Now comes the fun part. Figuring out all the configurations for the various IFR phases.

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Nice you found one with a 3 blade prop. Enjoy!

And how about a panel pic? :D
 
BrianNC said:
Nice you found one with a 3 blade prop. Enjoy!

And how about a panel pic? :D
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Not much to look at, although it does have three CDIs. :) Eventually the GX60 will be replaced with a GNX 375. Hopefully within a couple weeks.

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BrianNC said:
Looks like it has an STEC AP too. 20 or 30?
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It is a 30 but I am having problems with it... Goes through POST but then everything extinguishes, including the READY light. After that it does nothing until it is next power cycled then same thing again.
 
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Have owned the low life of the model a Sport 19A for 5 years now. Great airplanes! Flown the heck out of it and the only maintenance has been upgrades, oil changes and annuals.

"You should see how fast it will fly though an Annual"
 
Went for a nice flight last night. Continually found myself off-altitude because I was climbing. Even though I had it trimmed out for perfectly straight and level hands-off flight, I was subconsciously slightly pulling back on the yoke. I finally figured out that the sight picture in this thing is so much different (it is like sitting in one of those minivans with the windshsield waaayyy up in front of you...) that at night it appeared as if the nose was dropping even when it was not. Once I got that figures out everything went real well. Got in a couple hours of night cross-country and several full-stop landings.

Still having trouble with the S-Tec 30. Somehow I finally managed to get the Ready light to come on but now when I try to select modes, the ready light flashes seven times and the mode never illuiminates. It is supposed to be going in for a panel upgrade in a couple weeks so hopefully that will get fixed.
 
smv said:
This particular model was built in '71. The POH says it is a Sierra (A24R) and makes reference to both one-door and two-door models. Are you saying it is actually a Musketeer with the wrong documents, or that is is essentially a Musketeer for all practical purposes in all aspects except the name?
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When was that POH published? I had a 1959 K35 Bonanza, but the POH I had was published in 1975, in an updated format with much additional information compared to the original "owners manual". The 1975 edition also included the essentially-similar 1960 M35. So the POH you have is consistent with Beech practice.

The A24R was advertised as the "Musketeer Super R". In 1972 it was renamed B24R "Sierra 200", with the standard left-side door and interior refinements, including a lower instrument panel. The A24R had the IO-360-A1B engine, while the B24R had the IO-360-A2B with counter-weighted crank and relocated oil cooler. It was also in 1972 that the C23 Musketeer Custom was renamed Sundowner 180, with minimal changes.
 
Every time I see a thread on a Sierra all I can think of is this.

Tan Ciera! He’s fleeing the interview! :)

 
This airframe really responds well to VG's.
 
The flying is going well. It flies very nicely with very few surprises. It has brakes like no other airplane I have ever piloted. Absolutely fantastic stopping power.

However, all that is only great when I can actually get the engine started.

Initially it would start relatively easily when cold (5 or 10 seconds of cranking, at most) but be a REAL pain to start when hot (so much so that a battery charger was eventually pressed into service). Lately it has been getting harder to start even when cold.

I have tried all the POH techniques for Hot or Flooded start and a technique similar to a flooded start conveyed to me by a trusted mechanic. Even that is not really working well anymore...

Really gotta get this figured out soon.
 
Please join the Beechcraft Aero Club (http://www.beechaeroclub.org). Hard Starting topics have numerous threads and there are really experienced guys on there that will give you great advice. All the Service and Parts Manuals are archived as well. It does cost $50/yr. but it is the best deal in aviation if you fly that type.
 
Caramon13 said:
Hershey wing Cherokees are the same way. Carry power right to the flare and chop. Do it before and you get issues.
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Same way..... What?

I owned and flew my Hershey Bar Cherokee 140/180 for more than 1000 hours. As well as several other Cherokees over the years, 140's, 180's, Archers, Warriors. Your "Carry power to the flare and chop, before you get issues."" statement is simply NOT true.

The Cherokees are all very honest, and easy to fly, and land. Doesn't matter if equipped with older hershey bar wings, or newer taper wings. Poor piloting skills can certainly produce poor landings, but even poor pilots can easily learn to land the Cherokees successfully without power. Or, with power if you prefer, although there is no need, or reason. I don't understand your bashing? And, they're easy to land on the mains too, (like they should be landed), despite many of them having a tendency to be a little nose heavy when loaded.
 
Art Rose said:
And, they're easy to land on the mains too, (like they should be landed), despite many of them having a tendency to be a little nose heavy when loaded.
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This has not been a problem as yet. I do find myself trimming all the way to the full Nose Up stop on approach (and also know what that means should a go-around be necessary) but smooth and consistent landings in a variety of conditions (dead calm to 17kt direct crosswinds to straight down the pipe at 30G36) have not been difficult to maintain.
 
Cruzinchris said:
Please join the Beechcraft Aero Club (http://www.beechaeroclub.org). Hard Starting topics have numerous threads and there are really experienced guys on there that will give you great advice. All the Service and Parts Manuals are archived as well. It does cost $50/yr. but it is the best deal in aviation if you fly that type.
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Thank you. I did register and looked around a bit but it would seem there is no "Try Before You Buy" option (not even a "Read Only" version) and the only thing I seem to have access to is somekine old email archive and new member intros. Gonna have to give out a few more hours of dual before I can drop 500 dimes on this one. :)
 
Hard to start. ? Plugs been cleaned, changed last 1-200 hours?
Are you leaning her on the ground, taxi, etc.. ?

I shut off my engine at 1200 RPMs and I don't touch the throttle typically when I start it back up I don't touch the throttle she fires right up in the same rpm range.
Just a couple things to think about.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 
Art Rose said:
Same way..... What?

I owned and flew my Hershey Bar Cherokee 140/180 for more than 1000 hours. As well as several other Cherokees over the years, 140's, 180's, Archers, Warriors. Your "Carry power to the flare and chop, before you get issues."" statement is simply NOT true.

The Cherokees are all very honest, and easy to fly, and land. Doesn't matter if equipped with older hershey bar wings, or newer taper wings. Poor piloting skills can certainly produce poor landings, but even poor pilots can easily learn to land the Cherokees successfully without power. Or, with power if you prefer, although there is no need, or reason. I don't understand your bashing? And, they're easy to land on the mains too, (like they should be landed), despite many of them having a tendency to be a little nose heavy when loaded.
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From the POH, and who doesn't ever shoot for short and/or slow landings?

Normally the best technique for short and slow landings is to use full flap and enough power to maintain the desired airspeed and approach flight path. Mixture should be full rich, fuel on the fullest tank, carburetor heat off, and electric fuel pump on. Reduce the speed during the flareout and contact the ground close to the stalling speed (50 to 60 MPH).

Note on the section that says reduce speed during flareout, which is as I said. Chopping power before flare, fine, sure, go ahead. Many Hershey bar cherokee accidents have been caused by chopping power too soon, which results in overflare and in some cases the landing punctures the fuel tanks which are RIGHT under the gear. You do what you want, but I had always landed short and greased my landings by carrying some power to flare.
 
Caramon13 said:
Mixture should be full rich, fuel on the fullest tank, carburetor heat off, and electric fuel pump on.
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While I agree with the other points, the POH is very specifcally dead set against using the boost pump during landing...

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Robert Helmick said:
Hard to start. ? Plugs been cleaned, changed last 1-200 hours?
Are you leaning her on the ground, taxi, etc.. ?
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Funny you should mention sparkplugs. I thought about pulling the plugs and looking at them today but I did not have my tools with me. It only has 31 Tach hours since the last annual (half of which I have put on in the last couple weeks) but until I started flying it recently, it has been parked since November. It is coming due for annual again soon.

I am leaning it during taxi but learned today that I could be leaning it a LOT more than I have been. At one point I had the throttle at 1000 RPM and the mixture pulled back to about 1 inch from full cutoff and the engine was still running fine. That seems a bit off to me, but it might be just fine...?

Robert Helmick said:
I shut off my engine at 1200 RPMs and I don't touch the throttle typically when I start it back up I don't touch the throttle she fires right up in the same rpm range.
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I tried something similar but using 1000 RPM. It did not work for me.

What usually ends up working is flooding it until fuel drips out the bottom then, with the mixture at cutoff and throttle about half way in, spinning it until it starts to fire... IF the battery lasts long enough...
 
Awesome, great looking plane and glad to see that performance/fuel burn, it's one of the planes I'm considering as a first purchase later this year.
 
Caramon13 said:
From the POH, and who doesn't ever shoot for short and/or slow landings?

Normally the best technique for short and slow landings is to use full flap and enough power to maintain the desired airspeed and approach flight path. Mixture should be full rich, fuel on the fullest tank, carburetor heat off, and electric fuel pump on. Reduce the speed during the flareout and contact the ground close to the stalling speed (50 to 60 MPH).

Note on the section that says reduce speed during flareout, which is as I said. Chopping power before flare, fine, sure, go ahead. Many Hershey bar cherokee accidents have been caused by chopping power too soon, which results in overflare and in some cases the landing punctures the fuel tanks which are RIGHT under the gear. You do what you want, but I had always landed short and greased my landings by carrying some power to flare.
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I know I should let this go, but I'll make one last reply...... then I quit.....

In my original reply I was offering first hand advice from vast experience actually flying and owning Cherokees. If you choose to ignore it, and quote from a book, that's up to you. When you learn to (really) fly, and become fully familiar with an aircraft, you should have the ability to handle the machine in nearly any flight configuration, attitude, condition, or whatever. That would include the ability to successfully land the aircraft clean, not clean, with power, deadstick, or from any other flight condition. If you don't have the ability to successfully land a Cherokee deadstick, on it's mains, in any flight configuration, you need practice, and you need to stop offering bad advice. By the way....

The gear attach points for the fixed gear Cherokee's are NOT right under the fuel tanks. They are inboard and aft. Hard landings do have a tendency to create skin cranks in the upper wing skin inboard from the tanks. (dirty little secret) Especially on the pilots side, and not so much on the door side because that skin is doubled for the wing walk.
 
Art Rose said:
I know I should let this go, but I'll make one last reply...... then I quit.....

In my original reply I was offering first hand advice from vast experience actually flying and owning Cherokees. If you choose to ignore it, and quote from a book, that's up to you. When you learn to (really) fly, and become fully familiar with an aircraft, you should have the ability to handle the machine in nearly any flight configuration, attitude, condition, or whatever. That would include the ability to successfully land the aircraft clean, not clean, with power, deadstick, or from any other flight condition. If you don't have the ability to successfully land a Cherokee deadstick, on it's mains, in any flight configuration, you need practice, and you need to stop offering bad advice. By the way....

The gear attach points for the fixed gear Cherokee's are NOT right under the fuel tanks. They are inboard and aft. Hard landings do have a tendency to create skin cranks in the upper wing skin inboard from the tanks. (dirty little secret) Especially on the pilots side, and not so much on the door side because that skin is doubled for the wing walk.
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I also owned a Cherokee and I put close to 200 hours on it in a year, so yes I speak from experience too. And that quote came from the POH, which yes, is A book, but it's THE book for the aircraft. If you choose to ignore the POH, go right ahead. I also never said I couldn't land it deadstick. I did a lot of power off landings to practice managing energy and emergency procedures.

Having transitioned from a Cessna where you can chop power mid field and still basically glide down the entire runway, it was a bit of a change to carry power to the flare to really grease it on. Again, you don't HAVE to, but I did and it wasn't wrong. It's never bad advice to follow the POH..by the way...

But I digress, this is about Sierra's not Cherokees.
 
Caramon13 said:
Did not apply to the aircraft I flew, but I'm sure it applies to wherever you got that from.
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This is from where it came. The serial number of this particular airplane falls squarely in the middle of the range covered by this document:

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...and to put that note in context:

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As to your hot-start difficulties, yes, it can seem like a real pain. But, the procedure listed in your checklist "should" do the trick. Do not run the boost pump, throttle open a bit, mixture at cutoff. While cranking, slowly advance mixture till engine fires. At that point, it may take some fast hand work to get the right combo of throttle and mixture to keep it running. That's the procedure that injected Lycomings prefer for hot starts. (The flood it-then use flooded start procedure works for Continentals).
Though, another thought comes to mind. Does your Sierra use the Bendix "shower of sparks" ignition? I can't recall if the IO-360 has this, or the simple impulse-coupling magnetos? At any rate, if it does use the shower of sparks, you may have a bad starter-vibrator. One symptom of this, (a faulty starter vibrator), even with cold start, does the engine fire up only when you release the switch back to the "both" position?
 
I did NOT need to monkey around with the spark plugs at all...

After consulting with a mechanic at my localish aerodrome and experimenting a little bit, I think I finally came upon a solution that works every time. Amazingly enough it is NOTHING like what the POH says to do.

I first started it and let it warm up enough to put the oil temp deep into the green. I shut it down by leaving the throttle at 1000 RPM and pulling the mixture to idle cutoff.

I then let it cook for 10 minutes (to simulate a quick fuel stop).

Using the technique below, it fired right up within 5-10 seconds of cranking.

I did this three times in a row and it never failed to start. Typically it would have taken between 45 minutes and TWO HOURS to get it restarted under those conditions using the POH technique.

Hot Start Technique for this particular Sierra:
1. Push throttle full foward and leave it there for at least three minutes (for hot starts 2 & 3 I did this right after turning off the master switch on the previous shutdown).
2. Make sure mixture is at FULL IDLE CUTOFF.
3. Master ON.
4. Fuel Pump ON for at least a full slow count of 10 then OFF.
- I do not have a fuel pressure guage, only a fuel flow guage so by leaving the mixture closed and runing the fuel pump, I ensure that fuel system pressure is building but not flooding the engine.
5. Mixture FULL FORWARD for a few seconds (at this point the fuel flow guage jumps a bit then settles back to zero.
6. Mixture to IDLE CUTOFF.
7. Throttle to ¼ OPEN
8. Start cranking and be ready to smoothly advance the mixture and reduce the throttle when it fires.

The mixture on this airplane can be pulled back on the ground until little more than ¾ inch remains to be pulled before the engine starts to stumble. Because of this, I have likely been running it too rich on the ground. Although it has never failed a mag check during runup, the plugs may have been a bit sooted up...

Regardless of all that, I am pretty sure I have the hot start technique for this particular Sierra down pat.

:)
 
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