An interesting discussion with lots of good advice. I routinely tow gliders* out of a 2800’ grass strip at 3700’ ASL.
The highest density altitude I have experienced, on a 34° day, was slightly over 7000’. The point of my post is to mention, for the benefit of those who think Compton Abbas is a high-altitude airport (
), that you can read about hot and high takeoffs for ever, but until you’ve actually experienced one, you can never appreciate the magnitude of the performance reduction.
* For hot days, we have a graph of maximum takeoff mass vs. temperature, which is level until 21° and then slopes downward quite rapidly.
Concerning the comments about setting max power, I used to fly a 182 towplane and although I never did any proper tests, I am fairly sure that maximum static thrust was obtained about 200 rpm lower than max fine pitch.