Question for instructors
Hi,
I'd like to have a debate settled. Some time ago, I was on a pretty short (~80nm) VFR cross country flight in a 2003 172. I had full tanks and the weather was perfect VFR. I saw that my TAS came up about 7kts slower than the speed i had used in my calculations, even though the power was set correctly and the OAT was corrected for. I got that speed from the cruise tables in the manual, of course. I increased power a bit and gained 3 or 4kts. I was happy with this and continued the flight with the new power setting.
When I mentioned that to a couple of my friends last night, they were adamant that I should not have increased the power. They claim I should simply have continued the flight at the lower TAS, and that the move was poor judgement.
What dou u guys think?