Anyone else having a difficult time keeping the nose down immediately after take-off? What’s the trick… and after watching nearly every cockpit video I can find online, I can’t seem to find an actual 35A that goes into the nose-high pitch that doesn’t settle back onto the ground until I’m almost stopped…
The ONLY way I can somewhat tame this problem is by giving her a ton of nose-down trim and fly short final with the yoke all the way into my gut; which makes for an approach that resembles a high frequency wave.
A little confused about your question because I think you misasked about take off vs landing because you asked about takeoff but then the rest of the post was about final and landing.
But as the other commenter said the CG is kind of finky plus if you did mean on takeoff she’s a bit of a rocket ship on takeoff so if you’re light and you don’t want to climb out at 4000 fpm you have to pull some power pretty much as soon as you’ve put the gear up.
Also are you talking about the view or the actual AOA, because yeah on landing your view looks pretty nose high, scooting the camera position up a little helps a lot.
You need to fly it into the ground. The noise wheel will not settle down without pushing the controls forward. It also flies like a fighter jet. This means you will have to control the approach more with the throttle. Pitching up can easily stal the plane. Actually once trimmed out, you land without any pitch input. Just the throttles for hight and left/right aleron for alignment to centerline.
Trim is always fully down when loading the Learjet, don’t understand if this is a bug or intentionally.
OK not the best wording
What I meant is, it seems to be so tail heavy once on the ground that you really need to force the nose down. Maybe we need to deploy the spoilers right after touchdown?
Except for crosswind correction I find it difficult using the rudder to correct on final due to that swinging motion when releasing the peddal too fast. Just small left-right banks.
No, your wording was just fine, and commonly used. I just thought it sounded funny…
I’m going to assume you mean “nose” as opposed to “noise” (since you’ve typed it twice now…)… Music producer? causing your finger to slip?
I don’t have the plane and I’m not a jet guy, so I can’t say how to fly the Learjet, but your process sounds good to me… For instance, Navy folk always tell you to fly the plane into/onto the deck, just plop it right there, no flare, when doing carrier landings (prop or jet, doesn’t matter). Navy folk like to laugh at the lazy Air Force folk who just kind of amble their planes down when they feel like it onto their 1 or 2 mile long runways.
Thanks for the tips… I’ll double check my cg, although there’s not much i can do about it other than just adjusting it in the weight and balance section right before landing… Not very realistic but at least it’ll possibly rule out a variable.
You can strategically pick where the creepy motionless virtual passengers are or aren’t. I mean you wouldn’t imagine it but in a lot of ways the bizjet experience is kinda less luxurious than flying first class as far as the part when you’re in the plane, at least on like a Lear 35 I think it’s safe to say a G700 is better all around(the luxury is the time savings from going straight to where you want to go when you want to go, plus not needing to be in the airport with the icky regular people). But if it’s putting the CG out of range the pilot’s primary responsibility is safety I bet if they need to they tell people where to or not to sit if it’s going to put the plane out of the CG range.
Weird comparison: G700 to a legacy 35A! IRL, one who can afford the kind of luxury a G700 surrounds one in (or even contemporary first class commercial air travel) is unlikely to be one who even knows what a LearJet is/was back in the day or has ever been reduced to traveling in one?
I’ve rode on several Learjet 45 series flights and I’ll take that over airlines any day. I’m just a pleb that happens to work at a charter company though, so it’s not really an option for me!
Interesting about the nose not wanting to stay down. Two questions: 1 where is your pitch trim at in landing and 2 what is your payload?
Business jets tend to be light in the nose because of the rear mounted engines, but Learjets aren’t the worst (that title goes to Citation Excel/XLS in my experiences). On the contrary though, we actually have to carry ballast in the baggage and seat heavier pax at the rear when our Lears are heavily loaded. Mind you, these are Learjet 45 series, not 35. I could see if you were lightly loaded it could be causing an issue. I’d try seating you pax at the front of the cabin (I know the couch looks comfy though). Also check your trim on landing. If you’ve been dialing in bags of trim on final to keep the nose up, it may not want to come down so willingly.
Disclaimer, I haven’t flown the Learjet 35 in MSFS but a handful of times a looong time ago.
Edit: One other thought, do you have fuel in the trunk tank still while landing? If memory serves, in the 35 you fill the Tips, then wings, then trunk and burn in reverse order of that. I’d make sure you aren’t landing with no fuel in the tips and wings and a full trunk tank.
My point was really about that actually riding in a Lear 35 with terrible climate control, no where to make warm food and a compost crapper if you’re lucky is really actually less luxurious at face value than flying first class but it’s still the more luxurious experience because you don’t need to deal with the airport or the connections or the airline having sold your seat twice hoping one or you would miss the flight except no one did etc.
Only brought up the G700 because my point about being less luxurious at face value only applies to the smallest modern or older bizjets where it’s jet powered and leather covered but comes with many of the GA plane drawbacks and not bigger more modern stuff that are just your own mini ultra lux airliner and clearly the more luxurious experience in every possible way
This is a good tip, pretty much as soon as you’ve emptied the tips and gone to the mains you wanna flip that transfer switch for the rear tank. Engines always feed from the mains and the various aux tanks refill the mains. If you were to empty the tips and mostly the mains without keeping the mains full from the rear tank your CG will be a nightmare not just a little out of range
All good! You don’t need to qualify your comments, just light hearted banter here
There are definitely downsides to mid-sized cabin business jets. I can’t even come close to standing up in anything smaller than a Challenger. And granted I’ve never ever made use of an aircraft lav, whilst inflight or otherwise, I know very well that it’s tight quarters. At least the Lears have an integral blue juice tank (although the Lear macerator system is a nightmare) but some smaller jets have the awful honey pot pull-out lavs, which I think is what you might be referring too. Plus, in a small jet, if the Mexican food you had for lunch doesn’t agree with you, everyone including the crew is going to know about it!
Heh yeah one of my buddies used to fly bizjets and has a fantastically embarrassing story about nature calling on a completely mandatory and very smelly basis in one of the smaller jets where there’s not a proper lavatory. Unclear if you’re a pilot or just involved in the business somehow but you know charters too, he could tell if the passengers were frequently flying privately and know how it sometimes is on a smaller plane or if flying on a private jet was a very special thing for them. This fell into the later and one of the pilots crouch walking back mid flight to take a stinky dump with his head poking over a shower curtain probably wasn’t quite the luxurious experience they were imagining.
I don’t fly but I’ve sure heard some stories from our pilots over the years. Some of it is probably not suitable for this forum (a select portion is definitely not lol). These days I work on the administrative side of maintenance handling data for our CASS program and other applications.
I think the best part of flying private though is leaving when you want, from the airport you want and it’s discreet. It’s also nice and comfy riding in private jet so long as you’re not trying to move around too much. But again, to you your point, some of amenities are closer to camper (caravan outside the US?) than airplane, just with a nice shiny wood vernier on it. But it’s all got to be small and light weight so I guess there’s really only so much you can do.
I really need to update and fly the Lear 35 again soon. I’m still just too hooked on the Duke. Business jets were always a big favorite of mine even before I ended up working in the business.
100%. Between flying charter and going to a major the same buddy was like air chauffeur for some ridiculously wealthy family with a few Gulfstreams and a PC12 because the jets couldn’t land near their mountain chalet or where they kept their yacht because why would you just land your private jet nearby and take a ferry or an hour car ride like one of the poors when you could just buy a PC12 and have your 5 pilots trained for that too(last part is tongue in cheek sarcasm they treated him very well and were nice enough to let him show me the planes) and THAT is luxury even if the planes weren’t luxurious inside though they were that too. Anyone in your family can fly directly anywhere on their schedule when they want to go. And yes one of the Gulfstreams was a 700 that can literally bring you as directly as possible to anywhere it can land on the globe.
Yeah though, not that I don’t like the Lear 35, but bizjets are fun and it’s kind of a shame there’s nothing else in that class nicely done at least that I’m aware of for MSFS, except for the vision and Honda on the very small and very modern end of things
I guess that’s one way to land… 
