MY FIRST IMPRESSION of the eighteen-year-old TB 20 that I'm about to fly is of a lovely aircraft. The excellent condition totally belies its age, and is a credit to owner Clive Francis.
The airframe is basically of all-metal construction. Cabin roof and doors are of composite construction and sit in a recess in the load-bearing metal fuselage. The cabin looks square in cross-section, giving a very roomy impression, as befits the widest in its class.
The rear fuselage continues this square section, tapering uniformly to a point. The stabilator is mounted on top of the rear fuselage, aft of the rudder. The fin and rudder are tall and large, the rudder being aerodynamically balanced and having a cockpit-adjustable trim tab. The stabilator is huge, twelve feet in span, with a large trim/anti-servo tab in the centre.
The wings are a typically unconventional piece of French engineering. They have a one-piece, tip-to-tip milled aluminium spar with a marked dihedral of 6.5°. The middle third of the wing each side contains the ample fuel tanks; inboard are the wide-tracked main wheels which retract inwards to disappear neatly into their wells. The nosewheel retracts rearwards, leaving just a small area of tyre showing. The combined effect gives a very sleek look to the aircraft in flight.
The flaps are about two-thirds span leaving room for quite small ailerons. A small hatch behind and below the left-hand rear window gives access to a large luggage area behind the rear seats.
G-BPAS has recently had a cockpit overhaul, including Connolly hide seats, so I discover the smell and comfort of an old Jaguar. And the replacement engine has only flown four hours.
The walkround check is generally easy to carry out, but requires the usual crawling under wings to check the undercarriage and the fuel drains. Under the engine cowlings the nice new grey IO-540 Lycoming still has that distinct smell of oil and fresh paint.
Access to the cabin is via a stirrup, one on each side, aft of the wing trailing edges. From here you step onto the wing walkways and then climb in through the gull-wing doors. The ease of access via these doors is excellent, allowing both front- and rear-seat passengers to step into the body of the cabin. The front seats tilt forward for ease of access to the rear. The door sills are quite high but not inconveniently so. Access--and emergency egress--should always be this easy, although making an aircraft with gull-wing doors requires a lot more strengthening, and hence weight.
The instrument panel is so comprehensive it uses every bit of space on both sides of the cockpit. Apart from all the engine instruments, which includes a fuel-flow computer, the avionics fit comprises a Garmin GPS 150, KC 55a HSI slaved compass gyro, KNS 80 VOR/DME nav computer, dual comms, second nav/VOR, ADF, Stormscope, transponder, marker receiver, and autopilot with flight director coupled to the HSI and nav computer. The autopilot will even fly the ILS and glideslope for you. The fuel flow meter is coupled to the GPS for fuel planning, monitoring and diversion calculations.
My only gripe about the panel layout is that the tacho and manifold pressure gauges are on the right-hand side, directly in front of the passenger, albeit angled towards my side, with the pressure gauge hidden behind the yoke. I feel that they were difficult to read accurately (which may say as much about my eyesight as their position), and looking at them at all meant a major distraction from the job in hand. That apart, the panel is impressive by anyone's standards.
On the pilot's left is a vast array of contact-breakers. With an eye on the U.S. market the designers have tried to avoid language problems by using symbols instead of labels, but frankly these left me baffled.
The air-conditioning system, every bit as good as in an expensive car, is controlled by a system of levers unde