The Mighty Howard II

Willy

Willy

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Staff member
Haven't flown Milton's Howard 500 in a while so I took off from the local airport here and flew down to Memphis. Enjoyed it so much that I decided to fly on to New Orleans with a few stops along the way. First up was Greenville Mississippi. Taxied up to the terminal and then back to the active and was off again to Jackson.
 
Landed at Jackson, did a quick turn around at the terminal and it was off to Baton Rouge (aka Red Stick). At Baton Rouge, I hung around a few minutes playing with the AM-FM/CD player, then made the short (in the Howard anyway) hop to New Orleans. All in all a very enjoyable flight.

For being several years old, Milton's Howard 500 is still one that I really enjoy flying.
 
Left New Orleans and headed north up to Shreveport, LA and then on to Texarkana AR. I've got on and off of many a Convair 600 at Texarkana. This is fun!

Pics are backwards
 
Willy said:
Landed at Jackson, did a quick turn around at the terminal and it was off to Baton Rouge (aka Red Stick). At Baton Rouge, I hung around a few minutes playing with the AM-FM/CD player, then made the short (in the Howard anyway) hop to New Orleans. All in all a very enjoyable flight.

For being several years old, Milton's Howard 500 is still one that I really enjoy flying.
Click to expand...

Actually seven years old ... holds up fairly well for its age but better things are coming. :)
 
A NEW Howard 500??

Just kidding!!:icon_lol:

I have always liked the Howard and it's been in service with my virtual vintage airline and vintage cargo airways outfits since day one. The Howard is a bit like the XA-38 Grizzly.... "What's not to like about that plane?" :applause:

BB686:USA-flag:
 
One of the things I like about the Howard 500 is that it's got speed and range in a classy package. And it's got the right combination of not being that difficult to fly, but still a bit of a challenge to me to get the most out of it. I've flown it around the world once but unlike a lot of the aircraft that I've done so with, it's not become boring. Anything that will be better, will have to really be something!
 
I'm big time Mighty Howard fan too! Proof...


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Decided to fly on up to Saint Louis by way of Little Rock. You know, I was raised just a few miles east of Texarkana but I sure don't remember any canyons like the one I flew over coming out of there on Millwood Lake. Deep rascal too.

I seem to be having an AI parking issue with St Louis - Lambert. Going to have to dig around under the scenery's hood and look into that.
 
As I don't do enough night flying, I decided to do a night flight to Dayton (KDAY) from St Louis. Turned out to be a good night for a flight. Although I did get a bit confused trying to find the active runway in Dayton. Then I got lost on the ground, but fortunately I found a DC-3 taxiing to the terminal so I followed it in to park.

Yep, I need more night flying practice...
 
As Flight 19 is taking a break today, I thought I'd get in more quality time with the Howard by leaving Dayton and flying on to Roanoke Virginia over the Appalachian mountains. On the way, I figured I'd play around the throttle, pitch, mixture and altitude to try and figure the settings that would give me the longest range in the Howard. Let's just say that things got very interesting when the engines died and I couldn't restart them at FL200. Stalled, went into a spin and finally got the engines restarted at 8000ft and pulled out of it. It sure was spinning around fast while losing a lot of altitude. After that, I quit playing with the knobs and levers and flew on into KROA.

I'll probably go for another flight later on.
 
Adjust the power for max bmep, then go lean one notch of bmep for best fuel economy.

Ensure map and rpms remain at proper settings.
 
Thanks Milton, I'm still sorting it out, but getting there.

Left Roanoke for Baltimore. Nice flight while I fiddled with the controls some more trying to sort out this long range thing. It was almost dark when I landed there. I've got something in mind that I'm going to need all the range I can get.

Pics are in reverse order...
 
Milton Shupe said:
Adjust the power for max bmep, then go lean one notch of bmep for best fuel economy.

Ensure map and rpms remain at proper settings.
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity, read up on how to fly the Howard by David Cummings.

Little piece from his article...

"We usually climb to about 9000 ft on short trips of 100 to 150 miles. If we go say 300 miles we go on up to about 15,000 to 16,000 ft. For long hauls of up to 1500 nm we play the winds aloft and like to go to about 20,000 - 22,000 ft. The cabin at these altitudes stays about 2500 ft if we don’t go above FL220, above that it begins to drop off to about 4500ft at FL250."

"As we level out we gain speed to indicate about 200 to 210 knots which gives us a 260 to 270 knots true. We lean back to auto lean then to peak on our BMEP and back another 2 to 12 drop below that. This gives us about 50 to 55 % power at 32.5" MAP and 2200 RPM. The adjusted fuel flows are now about 91gal/hr per engine. Our props settle down to a quiet 990 RPM and we usually switch tanks to the wings or rears and put on the tunes to enjoy the rest of the flight as the noise level comes down so much that we don’t have to have headsets."

Article link: http://www.flightsimonline.com/howard500/Howard500history.htm
 
Left Baltimore at dusk for Bermuda. Another night flight in the bag. Did some more playing with the controls to get a feel for them. I've got a long over water flight next and want to make sure I make it.
 
Willy, if you have AFSD, you can set the fuel air mixture perfectly at .0830 at any altitude for optimum performance.

But using the BMEP gauges to peak torque, then going lean a touch, you should be fine.

You can also watch the fuel flow gauges as you adjust that and see the impact.
 
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