Hello again Joel
With regard to the safety brief, I've always done this with passengers in the aircraft, but before startup. I save the captain's brief until after the power checks.
Yes safety brief before start-ensure pax can actually undo the belt latch-it was my suggestion in 1981 to the CAA, through my flight ops inspector, that changed the public transport briefings in that the action of the release had to demonstrated. I had noticed that at the end of flights as an air taxi pilot that most pax could not undo the release easlily as they were expecting them to be like car belts.
Landing back on the runway is an interesting prospect. That's certainly one part of the brief I'm guilty of repeating parrot-fashion. I'm not sure that in the event of an EFATO, I'd be able to accurately determine whether I had enough runway ahead to land.
It is an interesting exercise to do some perf calcs on your runways to see where you become airbourne and where you would end up if you landed back from say 50-100 feet.
I wouldn't favour flying into a housing estate in favour of a field 15 degrees further on, but where do you draw the line? In the book "The Killing Zone", the author advises heading into trees under controlled flight rather than attempting to turn too far and risking a stall / spin. I'm sure that judgement improves with experience, but chances of engine failure through mismanagement are higher with lack of experience!
You cannot learn to fly by numbers alone-the course has to encourage a development of your judgement not just figures based on folk lore.
Thanks for your comments, I'm still a new PPL and learning all the time
I am an old ALTP and learning all the time too!
By the way I forgot the crosswind situation on EFATO-imagine a 20 kt wind from the left or right-how would that effect your chosen field?