64 SA Flyer MagazineCharter
Text: SaraLima
There’s an old aviation
axiom that says, “The
only time you can
have too much fuel
is when you’re on
fire.” At the outset, I
want to confirm that
I subscribe totally to
that saying, except
when I’m flying a
Cessna 310.E
VERY now and again, an
aircraft manufacturer comes
up with a design champion:
an aircraft that is so
gorgeous you have shameful
thoughts simply by looking at
it. My ‘design champ’ is still
the knuckle-bitingly beautiful
Cessna model 310N – the model with the
long side windows, raked fin and seductive
upswept tip tanks.
But fill those tip tanks with Avgas,
and sexy as they were, they gave the
C310 some rather peculiar handling
characteristics. The first was, I believe,
called ‘roll inertia’ in the aeronautics
handbook.
Without insulting the multi-hour pilot
readers, I would like to take a moment
to explain this to some lesser-qualified
aviators. ‘Roll inertia’ means that you feed
in some bank on the yoke and nothing
happens. So you throw in a fistful more
aileron and, bingo, suddenly she rolls,
and keeps rolling until you catch it with a
big handful of opposite aileron, normally
around 10 to 15 degrees beyond where you
wanted the bank to be. This is no problem
for experienced C310 pilots, simply begin
with a touch more aileron than you think
you need, then feed the opposite aileron
about 15 degrees before your intendedbank angle. Of course, this effect lessens
as the tanks drain down, but you learn.
The second effect of full tip tanks is
‘Dutch roll’. I’m not going to explain this in
detail (that’s why we have Google) other
than to say it’s a rather unsettling small roll
and yaw movement while in straight and
level flight. It’s sort of like watching a sailor
walk on dry land. And, sad to say, my sexy
darling was a ‘Dutch roller’.
It’s this Dutch roll which led to my ‘never
again’ moment.
As the junior pilot in our fledgling
airline, I usually ended up with the charter
flights, mainly because I was always at
the airfield at 06h00 (Bravo of course),
sober and eager. This unusual behaviour
netted me quite a few much-wanted hours.
On one such day, my charter was to fly
four passengers to Skukuza, then solo to
Nelspruit to collect two other passengers to
transport back to Rand. And joy of joys, my
ride for the day was our C310N.
It was a chilly June morning at Rand,
and our takeoff was scheduled for 06h30
(Zulu this time). Having met the pax in the
lounge, and seen that they were all were
small guys with about three cameras each
slung around their necks, who also did a
lot of bowing at ‘Pilot San’, I had no qualms
about filling the tanks, including the tip
tanks. The weight and balance worked, sothe round trip would be comfortably within
the range of the C310 – and it would save
time in Nelspruit.
Loading the pax took longer than I
wanted, but I should have expected that,
with at least a dozen cameras between
them, a ‘photo-op’ with ‘Pilot San’ was
in the offing. I absolutely hate having my
picture taken, and I’m glad I never saw the
pics, because my smile must have looked
very strained by the time photo number 36
was finally clicked.
Finally, with pax loaded, I was back in
my comfort zone at the pointy end. Runway
35 was in use, and it was the normal up,
over the golf course, gear up and a right-
hand turn-out, keeping low to stay under
the jets’ approach line. Near Springs I
throttled the sexy thing up to climb while still
hand flying her. The early Cessna autopilots
were a bit temperamental and, with full
tanks on the C310, often misunderstood
the inertia roll as pilot induced resistance.
This would normally cause the autopilot to
declare a management dispute, down tools
and go home, sometimes with unexpected
and often scary results.
So, I did the easy thing and hand flew
her. But after reaching cruise altitude, as
the speed built up, the Dutch roll started.
This was no big deal for me, I would let it
build for a while, then catch it and set upFULL TANKS
MAKE ME SICK
C310N might be sexy,
but it has two flaws.