Originally Posted by FlyingForFun
What I would want to know is why was the speed you observed lower than that in the manual? Was it because of a mis-reading ASI? Mis-reading RPM guage? Aircraft overweight? General wear+tear on the aircraft causing a gradual degradation in its performance over its short service life?
How well do you know this aircraft? Does it normally fly at this speed, or did it slow down just for this flight?
I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to the question. The fuel consumption may well have increased by quite some margin when you increased your speed (do all new C172s have a fuel flow guage? Those I've flown all do) but you had plenty of fuel to cover this increase.
FFF
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I was quite familiar with the plane and the gauges were all read properly. Everything else was "normal" (weight etc.). The plane had fuel flow gauges.
Typically, I select a power setting and altitude from the table, so there's no one speed i usually get on my cross country flights.
My friends were quite passionate about their opinion that it was wrong to do this (we spent about an hour arguing it...I'm sure u can just imagine 3 pilots arguing on the phone). What do u think? Was I indeed wrong? Is there any reason i should NOT have taken this action?