but surely climbing at best rate would give you the best chance of clearing the trees wouldn't it?
quite so.
I probably didn't express myself as well as I would have liked to in the previous post ... one of the problems with throwing in throw away lines, I guess.
I can recall Jack Macdonald holding Bob Eastgate's Mustang down at Essendon on several occasions until the last 500ft or so of the runway .. magic stuff, very relevant to military operations in a hot zone, and great to watch (if you had someone standing in front of you then you couldn't see much of it at all).
For the real world likes of the rest of us in C172s and similar stuff ... height is the way to go.