Turbine Pilot

An encore performance for an enduring design

If you're like most pilots, you sometimes find it difficult to keep track of Cessna's Citations. Since 1971, when the Citation line was born, there have been 12 different Citation designs — and that's not including specialized versions. If all goes according to plan, the thirteenth Citation, dubbed the "Bravo," will be certified on August 22. Intended as a replacement for the best-selling (638 deliveries) Citation II, the Bravo promises a lot more airplane than the parent design. Parked on the ramp, it may look like a II at first glance, but a closer examination reveals changes, big and small.

The chief improvements focus on the powerplants and the instrument panel. When production of the Citation II series ended in 1993, full-blown glass cockpits had yet to dawn on Cessna's low- end turbine aircraft, and the engines of choice were the venerable Pratt & Whitney JT15D-4s with 2,500-pound thrust ratings. The Bravo brings the II concept up to date, with a standard-issue Honeywell Primus 1000 avionics suite incorporating three 8-inch- by-7-inch cathode ray tube displays and Pratt & Whitney's new 2,750-pound-thrust PW530A, next-generation small turbofan engines.

The Primus 1000 is an integrated flight control system that includes dual flight directors and a fail-passive autopilot; it's the same system as that used in the Citation V Ultra and Lear 45. It's a scaled-down version of the Primus 2000, which is used in the new Falcon 900EX and will see duty in Cessna's Citation X and Bombardier's Global Express. With the exception of the Primus 2000's engine instruments and crew advisory system (EICAS), the 1000 has pretty much the same features. Airspeed, altitude, and vertical speed information is presented via vertical tapes on each pilot's primary flight display (PFD), while navigation and weather radar information can be shown on the multifunction display (MFD) — the central screen. V-speeds can be punched into the MFD as well; and once entered, they are displayed on the PFD's airspeed tape. Airspeed and altitude vectors are also depicted on the PFD's vertical tapes, which makes it easy for pilots to obtain airspeed and altitude "forecasts" for the next 10 seconds. This makes it possible to set power for speed and altitude changes. Just add or reduce power, adjust pitch, then check with the pink trend lines to see how the airplane will fare in 10 seconds.

The Primus 1000 works in tandem with the Bravo's AlliedSignal Global Wulfsberg GNS-XLS flight management system. With this unit, which is situated on the center console, aft of the thrust levers, you can program any number of tasks and answer any number of questions. Though the control panel's welter of buttons can — and does — inspire confusion, it helps to remember that the box serves to perform only a few main tasks. By calling up various "pages" on the MFD screen, you can enter and store routes of flight (up to 56 flight plans); call up SIDs, STARs, and airport information from the database; program advisories for climbs and descents; calculate fuel burns and fuel reserves; keep track of weight and balance; and check on all manner of navigation information. The GNS- XLS uses both GPS and vortac inputs, and the unit is IFR-certified for GPS nonprecision approaches. VLF/ Omega, though due to be phased out, is offered as an option.

Working with the GNS-XLS — or any flight management system, for that matter — turns out to be the most vexing part of flying the Bravo. It takes a great deal of button-pushing to make the thing do what you want, and instructors at FlightSafety International say that many students put in a lot of extra hours coming to grips with the subtleties of flight management system operation.

Recently, AOPA Pilot took the opportunity to fly Cessna's flight-test Bravo. Accompanying us was John Siemens, one of Cessna's engineering test pilots. A glance at our Bravo's elongated pitot mast, with its pitch- and yaw-sensing vanes, was a dead giveaway that this airplane was meant for testing, not the showroom. The airplane was still going through its paces in the flight test program, so its cockpit was decked out with test and recording information. It made for an interesting flying environment and more than a little insight into the world of certification flight testing.

As with other Citations, flying the Bravo is a fairly simple, straightforward proposition. That's been a major element in the Citation program's success. Engine start is accomplished with the push of a button, and it doesn't take long to complete the pre-takeoff checklist and prepare for takeoff.

In spite of our 13,435-pound weight (maximum takeoff weight is 14,300 pounds), the Bravo accelerated quickly down Wichita Mid- Continent Airport's Runway 19L. V1 (101 knots that day) came and went in a flash, rotation came at 109 knots, and soon we were climbing out at 200 knots and 3,000 fpm or so.

Ten minutes later we were level at 28,000 feet, tooling along in high-speed cruise, using an 89.9-percent N1 power setting and a fuel burn of approximately 1,100 pph. True airspeed was 407 knots. Though the Bravo will initially be certified to 43,000 feet, time constraints prevented us from going that high. Final performance figures have yet to be chiseled in stone, but Cessna feels confident that the Bravo will be able to take four passengers 1,605 nautical miles and still have NBAA IFR fuel reserves. VFR range is estimated at 1,900 nm.

Our performance at FL280 was a good illustration of the increased performance and efficiency of the Bravo's PW530As. In a II under the same conditions, true airspeed would have been about 380 knots, or almost 30 knots slower than the Bravo's, and fuel burn would have been up around 1,400 pph. More speed for less fuel was the whole idea behind the new Pratt turbofans, and several design and engineering tricks made these goals achievable.

First off, the new engines have higher bypass ratios than the earlier Pratts. Bypass ratio is a term used to compare the amounts of fan-fed and core-fed air passing through a turbofan engine. The fan section, with its large rotating blades, is located at the front of the engine and is visible during preflight. The fan section's job is to begin building thrust by accelerating air rearward. Some of this air goes around — or bypasses — the center core section of the engine (which includes the combustion chamber, or "hot section"). The rest goes into the core, where it's compressed, mixed with fuel, ignited, accelerated by turbine wheels, and sent aft as additional thrust.

The Bravo's PW530s have a bypass ratio of 3.6:1, meaning that the ratio of fan air to core air is better than three to one. The Citation II's JT15Ds' bypass ratio is 2.5:1. This makes the new- generation engines vastly more fuel efficient, because their fans make more thrust. Any time you can squeeze more work out of the fan and cut back on the fuel going into the core's hot section, the better the fuel specifics.

However, there's never a free ride. Higher bypass ratios are nice, but by themselves they can't carry the day when it comes to fuel economy at altitude. Fans make plenty of thrust at takeoff, where high air density helps their blades to be their most efficient. But up high, say in the low 30s, where the Bravo is fastest, the thinner air makes an ordinary fan's output lower. Now the hot, fuel- fed core air makes more thrust — at the cost of higher fuel flows. The Bravo's PW530s solve this problem by using newly designed airfoils in their fans, which let them create more thrust at high altitudes. A new "cookie cutter" exhaust mixing apparatus also helps to blend the engines' cold (fan) and hot (core) air outputs for optimum thrust levels at altitude.

Airwork showed that the Bravo requires fairly heavy aileron pressures to effect anything more than shallow bank angles, and that the stall break can be sharp. Cessna says that there's enough buffeting to warn of an impending stall, but you get the feeling that the unwary could be startled indeed at a stall's abruptness. There's no stick-shaker or -pusher arrangement, but the Bravo does come with an angle of attack (AOA) indicator and a glareshield-mounted fast/slow indicator. Slow-airspeed awareness cues are also presented on the PFD's airspeed tape. As the airplane slows, the tape switches from white, to amber, to red to alert the pilot of an impending stall.

We programmed the GNS-XLS for the VOR/GPS-A approach to the Independence (Kansas) Municipal Airport and started on down to the 3,100-foot initial approach altitude. The GNS-XLS was used for vertical guidance on a three-degree descent angle. The descent itself had to be performed manually, using pitch trim or control wheel inputs, because the GNS-XLS is not yet capable of performing autopilot-coupled VNAV functions. For that, you have to link the Bravo's VOR/DME or ILS receivers to the autopilot. At the Madge intersection (9.4 nm from the missed approach point) the airplane was slowed to 200 knots and the first, 15-degree notch of flaps was selected, followed by extension of the landing gear. By the time the final approach fix slid by, we were slowed to 180 knots — a feat that called for a power reduction to some 50 percent N1.

The airport soon appeared beneath a scattered undercast, and we circled to the left to land on Independence's Runway 17. The approach and landing turned out to be fairly uneventful — again, thanks to Citation good manners. After turning final, 40 degrees of flaps was selected and the speed was slowed to a VREF of 115 knots. Another way to fly the approach is to aim for an AOA of 0.6 units, a value identified by a small white reference mark on the AOA gauge. The only distraction during the approach was a very minor one: A small amount of retrimming was required after selection of full flaps. In the Bravo's bigger brother, the V Ultra, there is an automatic retrimming feature when large flap deflections are selected.

Bravo touchdowns (no pun intended) were a breeze because of trailing-link main landing gear — another improvement over the old Citation II. (This new main gear geometry also smooths out the ride during taxi). The standard-issue thrust reversers help slow the beast after the nosewheel hits the pavement, the only caveat here being to stow them before decelerating too much and risking foreign object ingestion into the engines. The minimum speed for thrust reverser stowage had yet to be determined in the Bravo's test program when we flew it, so we stuck to a conservative 60 knots.

Is flying a Bravo the same as flying a Citation II? Yes and no. As yet another small Cessna jet, the Bravo has the same essence in its control feel — but it's a tad more ponderous, and definitely more powerful. In a word, there's more of a "big jet" feel. In this regard, Cessna appears to have succeeded in parlaying the old II into a more modern iteration, while still preserving most of the Citation line's traditional attributes.

That includes the airplane's basic structure. For example, the Bravo's wing and external dimensions are the same as those of a II, and the cabin is also virtually the same size. However, the Bravo brings with it some extra, nice-to-have touches as standard equipment. A composite-construction air-stair door replaces the old, small ladder-style entry steps; there's a belted potty-plus- seven-seat interior; and passengers have more headroom, thanks to the overhead light and air controls' being moved to the center of the headliner.

In Cessna's niche-happy world-view, where everybody needs a jet and there's a jet for everybody, the company sees the $4.395 million Bravo as filling a gap between the Spartan CitationJet (about $3.2 million) and the more upscale Citation V Ultra (about $5.6 to $5.8 million). The company thinks that operators of large turboprops (translation: Beech King Air B200) and other small jets — the Lear 31A, to be more specific — are prime targets for the Bravo lure. Cessna cites the Bravo's anticipated low maintenance costs (1.3 maintenance hours per flight hour, versus a large turboprop's average of 2.4 maintenance hours per flight hour) as one big draw. Others include an operations cost-per-mile guarantee in the sales contract, and generous warranties — five years on the airframe, three years or 1,500 hours on the engines (which have 4,000-hour TBOs and 2,000-hour hot section inspections), and two years on the avionics.

Of course, if the Bravo isn't quite up to your standards, you could wait around for Cessna to fill two more niches with its upcoming Citation X and Excel. The X promises 0.92 Mach speed and ocean-hopping range; the Excel uses PW545 engines and bolts a big cabin to a pair of Citation V wings for luxo, 2,000-nm cruising.

All of this too rich for your blood? Then get in line for a 172, 182, or 206. Shucks, Cessna's even building piston singles these days. What next?