How did my takeoff comparison between the Embraer Tucano and the Pilatus PC-21 go? The best figures for the two real aircraft I could find online were:
Embraer Tucano (only figures I could find)
Takeoff 700 m (not specified to 50 ft but I presume)
Landing 600 m (ditto)
PC-21 (figures from Pilatus)
Take-off distance over 50 ft (15 m) obstacle at sea level 2,618 ft 798 m
Landing distance over 50 ft (15 m) obstacle at sea level 3,383 ft 1031 m
So how did I do in the sim?
Well, I wasn’t looking at fifty-foot obstacles, though on takeoff in one direction I was flying round rather than over some relatively short trees. I was flying out of Blair Atholl* (EGQI, ca. 510 ft above sea level) airfield, a private airstrip in the Highlands of Scotland I visit often, and in the past I’ve just barely managed to land and take off there in the PC-21. I tried both the Tucano and the PC-21 on its grass runway of 1566 ft length. Both were flown single-pilot-only, and both had about 645 lb of fuel on board (no external tanks on the PC-21).
Interestingly, the aircraft were well matched on takeoff. Both did make it into the air, but both had to be dragged off the ground at the very end of the runway.
I think this is due to a case of swings and roundabouts. At 1600 hp the PC-21 is more than twice as powerful as the Tucano, but its stubby little wings, presumably chosen to match its handling to the jet trainers with which it’s supposed to compete, do nothing for its stalling - and therefore takeoff - speed.
The Tucano can’t accelerate as quickly but with its much bigger wing it doesn’t need to - it too has reached its rather slower takeoff speed just at the end of the runway.
Landing is a different matter. Here the Tucano shines. That big wing makes an equally big difference to landing speed, and Surprise! The Tucano has a working thrust reverser. You can stop very short. Now the thrust reverser implementation doesn’t run to a working visual representation on the throttle, but if you have a button bound, you can use it.
In the PC-21, on the other hand, if your speed’s not pretty close to stalling speed by the time you’re approaching the threshhold, you should open the throttle, go round and try again. You can get landed and stopped with a little distance to spare if you do come in slow enough, but otherwise you’ll be off the end of the runway.
So the Tucano is the landing champion. But it’s not clear how much that matters if it can’t also get into the air again in a shorter distance than the opposition. Because of the matching takeoff distances, they are effectively limited to the same minimum length of runway.
In the air, of course, that honking great engine makes the PC-21 at least a hundred knots faster - probably more if you’re prepared to abuse the engine. That means a considerably greater radius of action within a simmer’s available playing time - not a trivial consideration. Probably why I’ll stick to the PC-21 with its superb - though perhaps slightly less superb than the Tucano’s - VR-friendly canopy as my frequent flyer. But I’ve got at least one more flight to do in the Tucano, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few more after that. And for the entertainment it’s already given me, I kind of feel I don’t have to worry about having had my money’s worth.
Incidentally, I was able to successfully achieve a successful cold and dark start in the Tucano by following the checklist. There is no checklist for shutting it down, and the gate on the throttle you should use doesn’t work on shutdown, but if you’ve followed the checklist you’ll know where both sets of main and auxiliary fuel pumps are, and you can cut the engine using those, turn off as many other switches as you can be bothered with, turn off the battery and you’re done.
A couple of other passing observations:
the canopy does open;
there’s a tiny switch to the upper left of the - well, I suppose it’s an inverted totaliser. Moving the switch up and down will set the fuel total, which will then count down as it’s burned off.
there’s a switch at the back of the left console that raises and lowers the seat height. We have of course other ways of adjusting our height, but it’s a touch I wasn’t expecting on a relatively cheap plane.
Getting rid of that annoying noise on loading a runway start would just be a matter of setting one switch, turning one knob, and balancing the fuel tanks in the Weights & Balance page. The more I’ve flown the Tucano the more I wish the developer would fix that. Well, we’ll see.
*Using custom scenery by SAC Designs, found on flighsim.to.