Sennadog,
Good lad...I wasn't trying to lecture you however many pilots do try really dumb things and I was a little worried you might head off into the veld and attempt something too far beyond your experience...stretching yourself is a good thing, provided it's incremental
Steep strips are not hard of themselves Senna, 10 or so 'circuits' at Kamalai and you would, probably, have it (reasonably) down pat. The slope gives you a fair bit of leeway for little 'imperfections' in technique as long as you don't end up low...that can be a killer....windsheer can make them a little more sporting but on a calm morning they are just good fun. Kanobea is flat but the terrain(and strong winds at certain times of the year) was the killer...from memory there were 4 wrecks at Kanobea one of which was a Tubine Porter.
Can't work out why spotting Stoke was so hard...look in the middle of most peeps piccies and you see the subject
.
Aerobatic Flyer,
That little spot looks like a hoot.
The rule of thumb we used for steep strips in PNG was, < 5% Vref, 5 to 10% Vref + 5kts, > 10% Vref + 10kts...power stayed on till you were in the landing attitude, came off a bit for touchdown then straight back on again to get you to the top.
17% average is as steep as I've ever experienced but the steeper the better as far as I'm concerned. At 25% 250m is probably the equivalent of 750m+ flat...except you couldn't stop from more than about 15kts on takeoff on that slope
Final approach was always flown exactly as you would to any flat runway, ie 3%, except you obviously must 'look' very high going into a steep runway. We had a bunch in PNG where the first 60 or 90 meters was down at 5% followed by 17 to 20% up for the final 300 meters giving an overall gradient of about 13 or 15%, which was how gradients were calculated there, average between each end.
Clearly you had to 'look' low going into these but as soon as you crossed the threshold you would look high, touchdown on the downslope and POWER up the hill...usually through a big muddy hole at the bottom....just all sorts of fun
Chuck.
PS Here's a piccy of short finals at Kanobea( elev 4000') taken by Pinky the Pilot from the RHS of an Islander, presumably taken while he was on area famil before being checked in there himself. It's taken from just past the closer ridgeline...looks innocuous enough until you try it when there is 15kts of quartering tailwind from the left...power would often go from takeoff pwr to idle to takeoff pwr and back to idle again in 30 seconds of final approach. Bad enough in an Islander with instant throttle response but far more sporting in a -200 Otter with PT6-20s that had 8 seconds of spool up time between stabilised idle and any meaningfull thrust
That lends new meaning to anticipation...some days you gave it away on right base and flew home because there just wasn't enough travel in the throttles
Takeoff was a hoot in those conditions as well
Kanobea Approach