The Questair Venture has always looked ugly to me, but I had never met one face to face.  Today, I met two, that is, both, all of the flying Ventures, as ugly in the flesh as in the photographs.  But, having flown them, I'm reminded of a college roommate whom we teased mercilessly and groundlessly about being ugly, but who was capable enough to wind up with both an MBA and a PhD.  The Venture is comparably capable, and it flies extremely well, too.

And as far as performance goes, only a Top 40s disk jockey could come up with the words.  From the San Francisco Bay area, all of the West Coast, and inland past all of Idaho, Utah, and Arizona is within an easy three-hour flight.  Beat the airlines to the midwest if they make you change planes.  Oshkosh in one stop.  Mercy.  Climb better than 150 KIAS and 2000'/min at max gross weight.  Mercy.  Greensboro, North Carolina to Austin, Texas in just over four hours.

I caught up with the Venture team in Northern Michigan as they were on their way to Oshkosh.  As it turned out, I got to fly N62V, the prototype, and N27V, the kit prototype, the first from the left seat and the second from the right.  N62V has pretty much kept up with the changes that went into the kit.  The remaining differences include smaller engine cowl air intakes on the kit prototype and some minor but noticeable changes to the gearing and linkages of the ailerons and elevators.

As time was short, the plan was to fly to an airport with fuel, about 30 miles away.  I would fly down in the prototype, and fly back in the kit prototype.  This would give me an opportunity to compare the slightly different handling characteristics of the two planes.  During a brief examination on the ramp, several characteristics of the Venture were obvious.  One was that the Venture has tiny little wheels at the end of its landing gear.  The other is that the propeller has enormously fat, short blades, looking like something off of a P-3 or a Cessna Caravan.  However, there is precious little ground clearance, less than a foot, although enough to meet the FARs for factory built airplanes, and to allow some clearance with a flat strut and flat nosewheel.  Venture pilots, like all pilots,  would be well advised to choose their runways, taxi routes, and runup sites very carefully.

The Venture wing uses some very recent NASA technology.  From 60% semispan to the tip on each side, there is a leading edge cuff, adding some droop to the wing leading edge.  At the inboard end of the cuff, and again at about 40% semispan, there are vertical slots in the leading edge, each looking like somebody had taxied the Venture into an a bandsaw.  These slots generate vortices at higher angles of attack to retard the spreading of stalled airflow from root to tip.  The airfoil is the old tried and true NACA 23000 series, tapered from 17% thick at the root to 10% at the tip, with 3° of twist.  The ailerons droop as the gear extends, but there are no flaps.  The horizontal tail is conventional with a stabilizer and elevator, but is tapered and has a fairly high aspect ratio.

The landing gear is extended electrically, and there are actually two independent systems: one for the nose wheel, and one for everything else.  If you pull the correct circuit breaker, you can extend just the nosewheel for use as a speedbrake, but this seems to me like a dandy way to land with the mains retracted.  Better to use the all of the landing gear as a speedbrake, and the 170KIAS gear extension speed is high enough to really be useful.

Clambering aboard 62V started off with a high step onto the narrow chord wing, and then a perplexed moment of planning, which didn't help, followed by a clumsy session of stepping in and on various parts of the airframe, just like I did in the RV-4 before I got it figured out.  Once I was seated, it was obvious that somebody really had designed the airframe around the pilots, just like they said.  There was plenty of room, the view out front was quite good, and the whole instrument panel was readable-- none of this nonsense you see on some of the factory built airplanes, such as glare shields that chop off the top of the artificial horizon or instruments mounted so low in front of the pilot that you have parallax problems.

The day was mostly clear, a little hazy, about 80°, with humidity that only a Westerner would notice.  Taxiing out, I was looking for the greenhouse effect of the large canopy, and it is definitely there.  With the canopy hinged at the front and open five or so inches at the back, however, there was adequate ventilation.  After a brief runup, it was time to batten down the latches (seven of 'em) and launch.  If there had been a little more time, we would and should have adjusted the seat for headroom before launching.  I'm 5'10 standing, but 6'4 or so when seated, and I ran out of headroom.  The easiest fix was to fly with my head holding a 10° list to starboard, and that's what I did.  (Flying in the other Venture, with a lower seat, there was no headroom problem).

Questair test pilot Rich Gritter fed in the power slowly, and we started down the runway with obvious but not overly impressive acceleration, due to the small propeller disk.  Liftoff was at 68 KIAS, and the gear came up shortly thereafter.  The climbout was initially unimpressive in both speed and rate of climb, and it took a short while to see 1000'/min, and after another short while, 120 KIAS and "only" 2000'/min.  With full power left in, though, the Venture continued to accelerate, and soon we were at 130 KIAS and an impressive 2500'/min, and then a very impressive 2800'/min.  The Venture had just flown in from North Carolina in a bit under 3 hours, so we were a bit light on gas.  Aside from that, we had two guys aboard of just a bit above average size, plus baggage.

Leveling off at 4500', with high power setting of 26"x2500 RPM, we indicated 220 knots.  Using the 2% per thousand rule of thumb, our true airspeed was right around 240 knots.  Looking over my left shoulder, I could see the other Venture in a nice tight formation.  Visibility in flight was quite good over the nose, and over the shoulder on your own side.  Visibility out the far side of the cockpit was pretty much limited to straight abeam, although you could lean forward a bit to improve the view.  Flying hands off, Rich casually adjusted the three trim switches, the three power knobs, and the cockpit fresh air vent knob.

The other Venture broke off formation to make room for me to do some airwork.  As it left formation, I briefly saw it from exactly abeam.  The Venture profile is of course unmistakable, but I was not prepared for how very thick the propeller disk appeared.  At 200+ knots, the propeller is in high pitch, and from the side, the very fat, short propeller blades look like a doughnut towing a pear.

The Venture has its own version of side stick controllers, with the interesting characteristic that the sticklets (my term) slide in and out of the panel for pitch control, rather than pivoting at the base of the stick.  Flying the prototype Venture reminded me a lot of flying a Cessna 210, with firm pressures required, but rewarded with smooth response.  Characteristic of sidesticks, control pressure, not displacement, was required.  Rolling briskly from a 45° bank in one direction to a 45° bank in the other required a fair amount of wrist action, and I wished for a bit more forearm strength to do the maneuver easily.  At well over 200 knots, any amount of pitch error quickly translates into significant altitude error, and I was embarrassingly off altitude doing a 45° banked left 360 followed by a right 360.  The lack of a horizon didn't help any as I smoothly and gracefully meandered all over the sky.  Pitch pressures were compatible with the roll forces, maybe a bit more firm, but the Venture seemed to me to be much more of a Grand Touring machine than a sports machine.  My RV-4 seems happiest at high roll rates, but the Venture seems happiest rewarding an IFR touch on the sticklet, not an aerobatic touch.  Besides, you can't use two hands on the sticklet to help the roll rate.

Extending the gear resulted in some pitch excursions, requiring a moderate amount of stick force and some retrimming.  The Venture has a two speed trim for the elevator, and a one speed trim for rudder and aileron.  The kits will have elevator and aileron trim on the sticklet, there to be used.  And they will be used a lot.  I had no real problems with the trim systems, but this need for retrimming is a minor quirk that would become second nature fairly quickly.  I noticed later on in the flight that Rich knew, seemingly from habit, how long to hold the trim buttons on the ground to retrim from landing to takeoff settings.  The Venture protoype has a bit more than 1200 hours on it, so Rich certainly has had practice.

Stalls were next on the agenda.  Dirty, with no power, the Venture finally stalled at 58 KIAS, preceded by a buffet which felt like it must feel driving down railroad tracks.  Rich let me try, and I got the same result.  Recovery consisted of little more than easing off some of the back pressure, sort of an "Oh, my!" action, and the Venture was flying again.  Trying to abuse the airplane, I did the next stall with a half ball width of skid.  It took considerable rudder pressure to get that half ball width of skid, and, sure enough, a wing dropped when the stall finally broke.  Although the break was distinct, it was not quick, and the Venture dropped off on one wing in a slow and deliberate fashion.  Certainly nobody who can stall a Cessna 152 will be excited about stalls in the Venture.

Although the rudders are not needed clean, the airplane will wallow a bit with the gear and flaps down if the rudders are not used to coordinate the turns.  This coordination is fairly easy to do, however.

Some slow Dutch rolls, done clean at 130 KIAS, level, with about 11" of manifold pressure, were unexciting.  My first two or three attempts were acceptable, but the Venture, like many airplanes, would take a little bit of getting used to to really nail the maneuvers.  The rudder pedals are hinged about a vertical post between the pedals, rather than conventionally hinged about a horizontal axis.  It felt funny, but probably would not even be noticed after a very few hours.  I tried some high roll rate Dutch rolls, and they went a bit better.

Next, it was time for some crash and go's.  Rich demonstrated the first one, and his instructions for my landings were to shoot for 85 KIAS on final.  Less than 80 is no good, and 90 or more will result in a bit of skipping on the landing.  Power for landing is about 10 to 10.5", which tracked the VASI nicely, but this little bit of power is definitely required.  Rich's landing was spoiled by a bit of thermal lift off the runway, and we floated a bit, and  touched down smoothly enough to make a private pilot proud, but distinctly enough to embarass a demo pilot.  Forward visibility remained adequate during the less than full flare, and the nose wheel touched fairly immediately after the mains.  Rich added power for the touch and go.  We broke ground on the go around with the manifold pressure gauge passing through 19" (!), and we eventually used all of 23" on the climb after the gear was up.  Mindful of the moderate but unceasing acceleration we saw on the first takeoff, I was watching the power carefully to see how Rich handled it.

My turn came next for a touch and go, and I put the gear down at 130 KIAS, about even with the numbers.  In honor of our higher speed, I was a bit wide on downwind, far enough to be outside the traffic pattern at almost any airport except Palo Alto.  Power was pulled back to 10", and the Venture slowly decelerated and started down as we turned base and final.  Just a touch low on final, I added an extra half inch, up to 11", correcting the glide path nicely.  My speed was 91 KIAS, a touch fast, but things felt okay, and I didn't yet have a good feel for the electric trim, so I left things alone.  There was a little bit of a crosswind,  and my Dutch roll practice clean somehow didn't translate all that well to landing in the 5 mph crosswind.  I wound up wobbling a bit, but after pulling power to idle over the threshold, I did touch down on centerline, but a bit down the runway. The narrow gear and the full span flaperons let you lower a wing for crosswind correction well below landing speed, perhaps contributing to a funny feel on the ground.  The quaint steering doesn't help the uninitiated, either.

The Venture rudder/brake/nosewheel steering system is unique in more than just the vertical pivot axis.  Above the rudder pedals are the hydraulic pedals, which actuate both the nosewheel steering and the corresponding main wheel brake.  This means that a single hydraulic problem can deprive you of both steering and braking to one side, and should mean more brake wear than a plane with conventional nosewheel steering.  It also means that when you need steering on the ground, you get it from the hydraulic pedals, not from the rudder pedals.  Even though I knew what to expect, and have many happy hours in nose draggers with free castering nosewheels, I wound up a bit on the downwind side of the wide enough runway.  Adding power for a touch and go resulted in the same sort of controlled pattern, using much less than full power, and I don't think we exceeded 130 KIAS downwind before extending the gear again.  The abolition of the 156 KIAS speed limit in ATAs will come just in time for Venture pilots.

The second landing was much like the first, with a decent touchdown, followed fairly quickly but not abruptly by the nosewheel touching down.  Rich told me to get on the brakes to control the rollout, but I was a bit cautious and slow, and he took over and hauled the speed down in no time.  Taxiing back in, the Venture seemed quite reasonable to taxi on the ground.  With practice, a Venture pilot could repeatedly and easily use 2500' runways, but that 85 KIAS approach speed, the same as a Cessna 310's, commands some respect.

Rich says that the Venture has been landed in a 25 knot direct crosswind, and there is no doubt that the aircraft can be flown better than I did in my two landings.  Power to fly level in the pattern with the gear down is 16", quite high compared to the other power settings.

While Rich fueled up 62V, I hopped into 27V for the 30-mile flight back.  With a lower seat, there was more of a feeling of sitting deep inside the airplane.  Visibility out was still good enough, and it was a lot more pleasant (and easier) to fly with my head vertical.  On takeoff, there was again this moderate but interminable acceleration: 120 KIAS, 1000'/min;  140 KIAS, 1400'/min; 150 KIAS, 1400'/min; and finally 155 KIAS, 2000'/min.  The performance was a bit less than the other plane because we had a full load of fuel.

The kit prototype had a slightly different control setup and was even nicer to fly than the prototype.  The roll forces are enough lighter to make a noticable difference in high-roll-rate maneuvers, and the pitch forces are just a bit nicer too.  While 62V reminded me of a Cessna 210, 27V reminded me of how I would like a 210 to fly.

27V also had the Vision Microsystem digital engine gauges, and pilot Don Godwin told me that they were set up for the Lycoming IO-540, rather than the 280 HP Continental IO-550-G of the Venture.  Don says that some people like the gauges, and some don't.  I'm in the latter category, preferring a nice manifold pressure needle with immediate response to a much lower resolution, hard to read digital semi-needle with a digital display updated about once a second.  I'd love to have the digital readout in addition to a plain old needle, but I miss the analog needle a lot more than I appreciate the digitality.

After we landed, the rest of the factory contingent reloaded, and I stood on the ramp and watched them depart.  The Venture gear retraction is quite interesting, as the main gear extends still further down until the landing gear legs seem to touch, and then the whole assembly folds aft.  It will surely be envied by pilots of older Cessna 210s.

After the Gang of Four headed across Lake Michigan toward Oshkosh in the pair of Ventures, I had a moment to reflect on the aircraft, the tradeoffs that were made in the aircraft design, and the results.

Perhaps the most obvious questions have to do with pilot skills required.  The Venture responds very well to deliberate, smooth control inputs, but its 85 KIAS approach speed is 11 knots more than I used to fly full flap approaches in the Cessna 210.  I think that anybody capable of flying a Cessna 210 well could fly a Venture well.  As far as checking out in the plane goes, I flew my RV-4 with a total checkout of about 10 minutes from the back seat, with no rudder pedals or engine controls, and was comfortable on the first flight.  I would not want to do that with the Venture because of the tremendous potential for overcontrolling the power and getting too much speed (which I certainly would have done without the demo flight), and because of the slightly unusual ground handling characteristics.  Count on learning to fly the Venture as being comparable to checking out in a Cessna 210, maybe a bit easier, in terms of time required and traits to be learned.

The plane is obviously very fast, and handles well for IFR.  At its high cruising speed, it is easy to get a lot of altitude excursion very quickly.  This will require more attention to hand flying, which is made possible by superior cockpit management.  With your left hand on the sticklet, an instrument panel fully in view, and a wide console down the middle, the Venture will surely be a pleasant place for IFR.  The ride in some light turbulence was very good, with no yawing at all.  Based upon that very limited exposure, I judged it superior to the Malibu, the plane that much of the Venture team helped develop.

One limitation on the plane may be icing conditions: certainly nobody would fly one into known icing conditions, but we all know that IFR planes get a touch of ice every now and again.  I'm told that the prototype picked up about 1/4" with no ill effects, but I would hope that an icing program of some sort would be accomplished.  I'm also told that sharper-nosed, thinner airfoils (measured in inches, not in per cent) accumulate ice faster and are more susceptible to that accumulated ice.  The Venture's wings are thin, and the tail surfaces are extremely thin.  Worse, it seems that the leading edge slots would ice over, degrading the excellent stall characteristics during the landing flare or during a turn to final.

The Venture has not yet been spun, and this probably should be done for completeness, but I'm fairly confident of the plane without a spin program.  My stall with a lot of rudder force was very benign, and no pilot of Venture skills should ever come near that corner of the flight envelope.

Just like the canopy on the RV-4, the Venture canopy is a massive solar collector and I would paint a roof on it.  The nominal tinting on the canopy is not up to the job when faced with determined sunshine and warm temperatures, but cooler temperatures at altitude are quickly reached.

Considering the Venture's heavy reliance on electric trim, I would put some redundancy into the trim system, including at least a set of backup trim switches.

The baggage area has a reasonable volume behind the seats, but not extravagant.  The space is about two feet deep (fore and aft) and comes from the top of the fuselage down to a shelf about even with the pilots' shoulder blades.  You should be able to carry a reasonable volume of soft luggage, but you won't carry racing bicycles, for example.  The landing gear occupies the space under the baggage area, limiting room for expansion.  CG range limits you to 90 pounds of baggage with 400 pounds of people, or 120 pounds with 340 pound of people.

Fuel capacity is 56 gallons, standard, with only a half gallon unusable.  This is good for something over four hours at altitude.  You can build the plane with a capacity of up to 85 gallons of fuel, if you are willing to accept the higher stalling speed and lower G loads of a higher gross weight.  Some sample loadings on the spreadsheet indicate that it would be quite hard to get out of the CG envelope, even at higher weights.  If you want to take advantage of the excellent performance at altitude, you would probably want oxygen, especially at night, and should figure this in to the weight and balance.

I'm told that the Venture can be rolled, but I'm not sure why anybody would want to.  The ailerons are really nice for IFR, but by acro standards are a bit heavy, and the roll rate is otherwise good but only so-so for acro ships.  Some of the Venture's competitors are more acro-capable, but their handling is much less desirable for normal operations, let alone for IFR.

The Venture is pretty much as advertised, a very, very fast, comfortable cross-country machine which is suitable for IFR.  I would be delighted to trade my flying RV-4 for a Venture kit, even though many people would say that the Venture is, well, ugly.  But as the Rumpled Horse said to the Velveteen Rabbit, "You canít  be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

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