All the seats were sent over UPS except for the pilots seat. A plywood frame an bottom were made to hold a total of 3 fuel bladders manifolded together and plumbed in to the fuel system and vented through a plug panel in the vent window, and a nose locker tank. Trickiest part was fuel management. I'd pull from forward tanks until the trim wheel got to a certain point then I'd have to pull from the back bladder till I had to trim up to a certain point, then back. After a few hours I started to see if I could keep the plane in flying trim stricktly with fuel. You can do longitudinal pretty well, especially if you have a tank with a nice long aft arm, but not roll. I tried to keep the CG as aft as possible for economy. Plane held a total of 720 gallons, and still climbed out at 1500 fpm. The 56 TC was only made 2 years IIRC, 67 & 68. Good years for hotrods of all types. The main thing is it was the test bed for the Duke Engines (TIO-541). They were probably the worst engines Lycoming made and were the reason why one of the nicest flying small cabin piston twins never made it. I'd really love to get into that Rocket Engineering PT-6 conversion. You can have a nice turbine 300 knot twin turbine with 2 NEW engines and a sweet panel for less than 1.3m. Rock on, that's a lotto buy.
. However, one doesn't buy a 56 TC to cruise at 45% does one. That baby would smoke though.
