Takeoff & initial climb best practices

[Fred as in Flintstone]

And here's another. 

They talk about the importance of pushing forward immediately with loss of power in a climb, and having that ingrained in your brain and muscle memory.

 

[Pilot boy]

18 hours ago, Bob - S50 said:

You might consider retracting the flaps based on speed rather than altitude.  I use 80 KIAS in our J.  At that speed in a very shallow climb, the lift from increasing speed just about perfectly offsets the loss of lift from flap retraction.  Your results may vary.

I'll incrementally try this.  One of my instructors had a horror story about a student pilot who retracted all flaps on a 172 on a go around when he asked for the first notch to be taken out....they barely cleared the ground...so I'm always a bit cautious.  Plus stall speed goes up significantly with any sort of bank with retracted flaps...I'll try 80 kias positive rate with lower altitude...carefully

[Andy95W]

8 minutes ago, Fred as in Flintstone said:

And here's another. 

They talk about the importance of pushing forward immediately with loss of power in a climb, and having that ingrained in your brain and muscle memory.

 

@Fred as in Flintstone- I think you'd be a good instructor, I really hope you're considering it.  You said in the thread you started that you're working on Commercial/Instrument.  You should definitely tell your current instructor about your new goal: CFI.  He/she can tailor your Commercial training so that you can transition straight into becoming an instructor.

[GeeBee]

2 hours ago, Fred as in Flintstone said:

There has been a push online at least to rectify this. Here are a couple of videos that I think point out what you are saying and how to fix it...

 

I know Dan Gryder personally, we flew at the same line and he lives not too far from me. He is a great instructor and what he is doing is great work. I had him put on a presentation at our local EAA. He is the one which advocates as I have on this board, get light in the seat when the engine fails. We lost a mutual friend, Leo Giles, who was a CFI-I and an ops spec instructor at our line out of KFFC. Sad to say, for Leo when the rubber band broke he failed to get light in the seat. Which is why I pointed out, about 80% of pilots actually pull back, not push. The things I have pointed out here and Dan tries to point out is how fast speed bleeds off and that is why I am advocate of potential energy and getting light in the seat to use it.

 

[tmo]

On 8/14/2020 at 4:19 PM, Ibra said:

as the seats slide backward on takeoff

That's what the 2x4 wedged behind the pilot seat of my Mooney is for ;-)

[Ibra]

1 hour ago, tmo said:

That's what the 2x4 wedged behind the pilot seat of my Mooney is for ;-)

Surely that helps with sliding seats not sure why training fleet did not come up with that brilliant idea?

I had two in C152 & C172, the risk of sliding seats goes along with heavy pilots near max WnB, GC near limits, pushing hard on right rudder in steep climb pull on the yoke on dodgy ASI reading ! luckily a wise instructor will hold to his life using something solid and will put his knees as back stop on the yoke while the student does the takeoff 

 

[Mooney-Shiner]

On 8/13/2020 at 1:35 PM, Pilot boy said:

A great way to simulate this is also Xplane.  You can easily set an engine failure at your home airport.   Fail it at 500 AGL, 800agl etc.  No guarantee it will fly like your real plane but it gives you some idea and is useful practice imo.

Totally irrelevant to the topic of climb, but Mooney add-on in Xplane is uncontrollable, especially on landing. On the climb, it wants to turn right. So it might set up bad habits

[tmo]

Which Mooney add-on? There are several.

[brndiar]

On 8/11/2020 at 8:19 PM, PT20J said:

This gets into an area of technique. One of my gripes with CFIs is that a lot of them have a favorite way of doing things and try to remake every pilot in that image. I only have two requirements for pilot technique when I work with an experienced pilot: 1) it has to be safe, and 2) the pilot should have a reason for using that technique. (The most common reason is that's what my first CFI taught me. That's OK, but as we gain experience, it is good to revisit why we do things from time to time).

So, here's what I do in my M20J which seems to work in all circumstances with minimum fuss:

I hold about 5 lbs back pressure during the takeoff run and let the airplane fly off releasing the pressure to attain a 10 degree initial pitch attitude. (Piston airplanes don't really have to be rotated -- that's a jet thing). 

As soon as I have a positive rate of climb, I retract the gear. (I see no reason to delay retracting the gear. On a short filed with obstructions, I'd want it up as soon as possible. I like to  use the same procedures consistently and so I use the same technique on all takeoffs. The possibility of an engine failure during the few seconds when a landing on the remaining runway would be successful seems so remote as to not require serious consideration).

Once clear of obstacles, I lower the nose to 7.5 deg (because there is a hash mark for that on the AI) retract the flaps and allow the airplane to accelerate through best rate to cruise climb.

Skip

Hi

Please, how much is 10 Degree according to artificial horizon?

Did i mark the bottom lines correctly (10,20,30 degrees) ?

thanks in advance,

m.

[Mooney-Shiner]

17 hours ago, tmo said:

Which Mooney add-on? There are several.

Carenado add on of M20J 201

[carusoam]

So I looked up attitude indicator displays...

The Cessna AI is a bit funky... (pic above)

Modern displays use lines for every 2.5°

5 degrees gets a medium sized line

10 degrees gets the largest line

The needle width also has some meaning as it is a method of cutting the angle in half... by being on the line or between the lines...

 

I looked up a G5 to see what they had to say... but the line technology seems to be a mechanical thing of the past....

Best regards,

-a-

https://sarasotaavionics.com/avionics/garmin-g5-stack

[carusoam]

@brndiar

I looked up my Cessna pilot training book to read about their attitude indicators....

there were several pics of climbing and descending turns...

And a steep turn with the dot just above the horizon...
 

Not a single mention of how many degrees those lines actually are... bank angles and heading were given references...

Attitude was all about being above or below the horizon...

 

Any climbing attitude in a C152 is only a transitory kind of thing... climbing at 5° of attitude probably last only a few seconds... 

They probably couldn’t get a picture of it when it happened...

 

Similar to the EGT gauge with lines, and no numbers....

There is some meaning to them, just not a lot...

Best regards,

-a-

[PT20J]

7 hours ago, brndiar said:

Hi

Please, how much is 10 Degree according to artificial horizon?

Did i mark the bottom lines correctly (10,20,30 degrees) ?

thanks in advance,

m.

Older style AIs don't have pitch marks (the horizontal lines in the black ground area are not meant to be pitch references and are not equally spaced). In this case, attitude is referred to as "bar widths" above or below the horizon. According to the FAA Instrument Flying Handbook, p5-19, "The width of the wings of the symbolic aircraft and the dot in the center represent a pitch change of approximately 2 degrees."

Skip

[carusoam]

Skip, you nailed it!

Looks like a lot of early instrument panels were adorned to look like precision instruments...

But, had the accuracy to only keep the sunny side up.

My 90s CPC training book was equally vague... full of useless technical details that sound important, but didn’t really describe how things actually work...  

With practice, the reference artwork could be useful... but describing things on MS would get interesting... ‘I used 1.5 bar widths of attitude for that....’  

Best regards,

-a-

[Ibra]

11 hours ago, brndiar said:

Please, how much is 10 Degree according to artificial horizon?

Did i mark the bottom lines correctly (10,20,30 degrees) ?

I would never claim being able to fly 10deg climb on that AI, unless...

https://tenor.com/view/inverted-gif-11017395
 

Edited August 26, 2020 by Ibra

[tmo]

7 hours ago, ukrsindicat@yahoo.com said:

Carenado add on of M20J 201

Ah. I have the Alabeo M20R and I find it reasonably similar to my K. But maybe it's just me being ham-fisted and all. I wish the AFM one worked under Linux...

[Fry]

On 8/13/2020 at 10:47 PM, carusoam said:

All it takes is sitting through the presentation of an MSer’s experience of his stall spin on departure... where his plane and passenger end up parked in a garage attached to a house in the neighborhood...

The pilot credentials... pro, and military.... highly skilled, highly trained.... (He posted pics around here somewhere, worth digging up)

Its not always the engine...

Its not always the plane...

Its not always the human...

And the conditions were VFR too..

If he recognized that he couldn’t fly his plane at Vx and clear the obstructions ahead... he wouldn’t have a presentation to give... 

Do you have a link? I would like to see this presentation. Thanks!

[carusoam]

On 8/26/2020 at 6:59 AM, Fry said:

Do you have a link? I would like to see this presentation. Thanks!

Fry,

I should have this memorized....

Lets see if I can find it...

-a-

This is the thread as it unfolded...  the pilot gave a presentation at Mooney Summit in the following Months...

 

[Fry]

Anthony, thanks. I just looked into that thread.

The guy saying that "as a newly minted Mooney pilot, you had no business going into W35", quoting a 2167ft runway at sea level, would be surprised to hear I went to my home base, a 1967ft runway at 997ft MSL, directly after purchasing the aircraft, my first Mooney.

And I am not a topgun alumni, nowhere near that, just a simple PPL...

(well, my home base does not have trees at the end, and I was nowhere near MTOM, and I have a J, so somewhat more power. Later, I did take off at MTOM from that runway. Procedures and performance as by the POH. No special tricks or skills involved.)

It's always entertaining talking about runway lengths with you guys overseas :-)

[carusoam]

Much of our performance is what we get used to...

Some MSers live in a hangar home On 5k’ of runway...

Others live next to a grass strip...
 

Some MSers can quote performance from the POH, including some key points of their performance charts...

Others haven’t cracked that book open in years...

My home drome is 4K+’ long, near SL... extra comfy to get in and out...

My second favorite drome... 2,300’, near SL... with some trees at either end... (K5B6 Cape Cod)

The only thing scary... would be engine failure...

We have had two MS accidents that didn’t use the whole runway, with elevated DAs...

Our training covers these details... but something gets lost by the time we are sitting left seat... 
 

Hence the conversations we have about various aspects of safety...

 

My goal... not to lose an MSer to silly aviation errors...   
 

Silly = Stuff we should know about...

Best regards,

-a-

[bradp]

On 8/14/2020 at 4:30 PM, GeeBee said:

I know Dan Gryder personally, we flew at the same line and he lives not too far from me. He is a great instructor and what he is doing is great work. I had him put on a presentation at our local EAA. He is the one which advocates as I have on this board, get light in the seat when the engine fails. We lost a mutual friend, Leo Giles, who was a CFI-I and an ops spec instructor at our line out of KFFC. Sad to say, for Leo when the rubber band broke he failed to get light in the seat. Which is why I pointed out, about 80% of pilots actually pull back, not push. The things I have pointed out here and Dan tries to point out is how fast speed bleeds off and that is why I am advocate of potential energy and getting light in the seat to use it.

 

Just did my (B)FR.  I had watched Dan’s videos before hand. Instructor was surprised that they  got light in the seat.  Thanks Dan. 

[bradp]

Personally when my wheels leave the ground and I have established a climb, gear is coming up. I’m not using the runway anymore. It’s not useable to me :-)