Lostpianoplayer - over & out
Bookworm, re getting airborne w a questionable engine, I guess my point was just that the same thing could happen in STOL operations, where you have to make a quick decision about taking it airborne with a POSSIBLY malfunctioning engine, but as you're rapidly accelerating on a short field, a true short field, you have a millsecond to cut power and brake, and possibly still go through the fence at the end. OR get airborne with a problem that could get a lot worse, very fast. I'm not saying this is a good thing, just that the phemenonon exists, and people nonetheless operate STOL in singles. I can see how it could be more of an issue in a twin, at least in part cos you have more coumns & rows in the decision matrix.
Re the choice of machine, BPF, thank you, and yes, you're right - a turbo Skymaster WOULD be a good strip machine. But the 340 fills other needs/desires I have, very well, and I have other aircraft to use for the short strip role. I've always been prepared to base the 340 at the local airport (runway 5000 +), but have been trying to get a thorough understanding of WHY, not really WHETHER I shouldn't base it at my own (shared) private airstrip, which, at 2500 feet long, is not a short strip for many machines. (The 1600 feet referred to in my first post, incidentally, was published takeoff for a 340 at full gross, not the length of the airstrip.) My instructor & flying mentor, with whom I have been flying for 12 years, and I didn't have a clear consensus on the VMC issue, and I decided to ask here to advance our own knowledge. We'll be discussing this issue over dinner some time, and he was a little hazy on some aspects of VMC himself, despite having telephone number hours in all sorts of different aircraft. I'm not, and was never, looking for ammo with which to veto his advice - just to find out more, and UNDERSTAND the situation. Especially as I was told when training, that the first thing you do to stop a VMC roll was to cut power - which would obviously improve the situation to some degree. The question is how much. It sounds like some are of the opinion that a VMC roll, once started, is unstoppable, and I hear ya. I'm not sure I agree (yet), but will take this issue further. I'll certainly do my best to see if the good folks at Flight Safety will demonstrate it all to me, and have no doubt that they'll be happy to do so. So yeah, thanks for the suggestion of a more suitable machine, but that's not really what it's about. It'll be a long runway for me & the 340, for the forseeable future.
Re dismay, drowning men, glasses of water, etc, well, whatever. A lot of what I wrote was taken out of context or misunderstood, interpreted in its worst light, or whatever. Partly my fault for pasting over a question from a different forum, and mixing up practical questions like question (1) (what is the shortest reasonable/possible/SAFE takeoff, ***which by definition means ABOVE VMC***) with theoretical questions like question (2). IF (IF!!!!) you took off slow, and had a failure, then why wouldn't retarding the assymetric power stop the roll/yaw.) I'll make sure that if I venture over here again I'll keep the questions very simple, don't confuse the thread with multiple questions, and make sure that I make the caveats, context & exceptions clear. BTW, Guppy, the whole POINT of "taken out of context" is that one IS, indeed, "quoted". But quoted without the context, as you'll see on the news every day, can totally distort the meaning. One aspect of this thread which I find very interesting, is that written language is so limited, and can be easily misunderstood, either in tone or in substance. You could consider my two first questions, for instance, and pretend just for a moment that the person who wrote it has no intention of taking off subVMC, or anywhere near it, unless he can be satisfied that a VMC roll can be stopped by retarding the other one. And he doesn't understand, at that stage, why it CAN'T be stopped by retarding the power on the good engine. Maybe the questions might be seen in a different light then, rather than their author 'planning to do something really dangerous', 'condemning safety' and so on. (Only do this if you find linguistics enlightening, and don't actually get off on having unncessary arguments, which of course, some people do!) I don't care about my aviation reputation amongst a few anonymous computer users - I just think the aggressive tone obscures what is often very helpful substantive information and opinions. And I find it fascinating how easily information can be & is misinterpreted or twisted. It demonstrates, for instance, the limitations of flight manuals, per se, without clarification & further training - or the reason that angry emails to, say, your employer tend to backfire. Effective communication relies heavily on context, clarification & feedback. Anyway. I think we're well beyond the 80/20 on this thread, and this time I really am gonna sign off, unless something takes an interesting turn. Feel free to PM me if you want to take things further - and thanks, really, to the people who have PM'd me about the questions I asked at the beginning, with what has been a helpful boatload of information, and also to everyone who's contributed to my understanding of this issue. Particularly those who provided real world 340 data even if they may have misunderstood the point of my questions, and my intentions. Fly safe, and cheers.
Last edited by lostpianoplayer; 16th May 2008 at 04:53.
Reason: typo