Originally Posted by
20driver
Conventional wisdom is it is best to climb at Vy to 1000 feet. I don't buy into that in my case.
Case A - Climb at Vy. In my TB-20 this is very nose up with no view of the ground below. If you have a failure in the 3-5 seconds it will take to identify and act you are stalled or very close to it. It will take a very strong push over and leave you in a strange attitude trying to avoid a stall and looking where to go. Trying this with an instructor has always being pretty demanding.
Case B - Climb closer to Vx - I figure if the engine does fail I want to be in a better attitude to control the plane and I'm already looking where I'm going. At my local field I know which way I will turn. (In a high wing plane I would see this differently, but I fly a low wing) You are going down, There is little point in trying to restart, so control your airspeed and fly it into the ground under control is the best you can do.
In the scenario A by the time you have things under control you have probably lost any altitude you gained over case B and you are no doubt mentally saturated.
Interesting in all the real cases listed here of failures no one has mentioned one in a GA SEP on takeoff.
20driver
Vx (best angle of climb), is always slower than Vy (best rate of climb) so I have trouble following your logic as the higher speed of a Vy climb will produce a lower nose attitude yet still provide a high rate of climb and an acceptable angle. Climbing at Vx as you suggest produces the very nose high angle you want to avoid. I think a Vy climb to 1000 feet AGL represents a good compromise between angle, rate, nose attitude and down field position and is the SOP I use and teach to my students