Am I missing something there?
I think that might be the case.
Picture yourself down low over the runway when you need to go to the miss ... think, for instance, twin perhaps at 2.5-3.0 percent gross on the day. That's not much climb capability. How were you proposing to ensure that your bird misses the hard bits during the miss ?
What you need is a chart like this one from the Flight Manual for my twin
Looking at Capn Bloggs' fine graphic, I should have qualified my previous decrement figures to be relevant to 15 deg bank which is the typical figure for OEI turns.
1:24000 topos are generally good
.. but still far too coarse for detailed work. Best stuff I have found are the occasional very detailed charts down to 1:2000 - 1:5000. Wonderful detail for the ground. HOWEVER, the main problem is that one can't rely on any chart for tree heights and similar .. these it takes a walk in the park to have a looksee.
Sat derived elevations are useful, especially for areas where there are no published survey charts. but they only go so far. Ends up being a case of horses for courses .. if the hill/saddle/etc clearly is not too critical, ROM estimates for vegetation are fine .. if the clearance is critical, a theodolite or inclinometer, depending on the location with respect to the runway and Type, ends up being the only sensible way to cover one's delicate bits for the possible subsequent Enquiry.
still need at least a Day VFR flight inspection
.. often the reasonable cost solution for those intermediate accuracy problems but, again, not much good for critical situations .. although, invariably, great fun.
Can recall a wonderful day, many, many years ago, spent in a largish (and very noisy) four-engined turboprop machine running simulated OEI profiles from the runway head (and from a very low height) at a particular seaside aerodrome only because the Regulator's flight standards representative didn't understand much about what was what.
My mate, Bazza, was driving from the RHS and Dunc (the Regulator man) and I were in the jumpseats. As I recall Denis was in the LHS and beaming widely the whole time.
At one point during proceedings, Dunc observed "I don't really understand why we are doing this", Denis was beaming fondly, while Bazza was having an absolute ball. Me ?, well I was quite bemused as the whole exercise didn't really achieve much at all other than burning lots of kero, would have been far cheaper in an Aztruck or similar ... but it was absolutely great fun and must have annoyed the living daylights out of the locals until we all got bored and flew off back home.
.. I'm not sure if it's a case of all the fun having gone out of life in the present PC world .. or am I just becoming a boring old phart way past his use-by date ?
pilots seem quite confused about visual avoidance providing an "out."
A commonly seen fallacy. Works fine if you have one big hill and you can avoid it by a suitable margin and you are above all other terrain. However, any attempt to play tactical battlefield helicopters OEI in anger is a recipe for disaster - the gradients are too small for the human brain to figure on the fly and, when it comes to figuring differences between small quantities, the brain doesn't appear to have a good track record.