A and C

All perfectly correct but 250-300 ft/ min feels like not very much when you are practicing with one engine back at zero thrust............when you have to go around for real with an engine shut down it feels lie it is taking forever to climb !

A37575

Some jet transports can only manage 400 ft per minute rate of climb with an engine failure at V1 at take off performance limited by maximum second segment weight limitations. So the PA44 is not that bad after all in a single engine go-around providing the flaps and landing gear are promptly retracted after full throttle on the live engine. And the zero thrust setting on the `dead` engine is correctly set.

Zero thrust on light twins is not always easy to set because it varies and any variance from the correct setting at the time could either give you an optimistic rate of climb or no climb at all. Few POH state the combination of RPM and manifold pressure setting for zero thrust which means it is a matter of guesswork - such as "my instructor told me'

Big Pistons Forever

This is a very good point and IMO most of the time the "training zero thrust" power setting is actually more than zero thrust thus giving the student a false confidence the actual ability of the aircraft to climb after a real engine failure.

Tinstaafl

To add to the over-performance problem giving unrealistic performance expectations: how often is multi engine flying training at MTOW? In my experience, not too often. And if the training is in ISA- conditions, how often is a zero thrust setting used that gives ISA+ performance? ISA-10 is rather different to ISA+20.

Finding an accurate zero thrust setting for a particular IAS & density altitude is easy. It just takes a bit of time in the air. Shut down an engine, trim to hands-off at the required speed and then restart without changing the trim. Once the engine is running set its power setting so that the aircraft is once again flying hands-off with the unchanged trim settings.