Kermie,
First, I am not familiar with the NZ manuals for light aircraft so my Australian biased comments may not be entirely appropriate in your neck of the woods. However my understanding is that NZ is even more aligned with the US way of doing things than the Australian scene is rapidly becoming ....
GAMA is the US umbrella manufacturer's group. The document you refer to as the manufacturer's AFM is probably titled the Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH). Parts of the POH are FAA approved and you can take the information with a bit of confidence. Any pages which aren't labelled FAA approved .. aren't ... be wary ... the marketing people get to have a finger in the manual.
You are missing the main point of the discussion. If the FAA pages recommend the higher speed and the landing distance tables indicate that they are based on the higher speed, then I don't have a problem.. if not, check what speed the tables are based on ... do check if the tables are raw data or factored .. that can give a chap a nasty surprise if you get it wrong also .....
This is the problem in Australia since CASA tossed out the old Australian flight manuals. In years gone by the AFM went quite a way to protecting the pilot from his/her lack of certification knowledge ... not so now ... you either know the basis of the numbers ... or you run the risk of getting bitten ... and I suspect that the same situation prevails in NZ.
The concern is not when you are operating at Auckland (got to know that place well a year or two ago) or some other place with lots of runway ... rather when the newish pilot heads off to the bush with his/her newish licence ... and then tries to land into a short bush strip using the techniques which worked OK for the long runways .... but often don't for the short strip surrounded with nasty bits and pieces ...
Last edited by john_tullamarine; 13th May 2002 at 06:06.