Agreed with Pace. Almost all sticky situations in single engine operations can be gotten out of immediately by reducing good engine, but this is rarely taught. Fixation on blue line is the norm.
But basically in take off scenario airplanes fall into two categories: those who's Vmca is close to stall speed and those who's Vmca is above stall speed.
In the former type, an engine failure at rotation is manageable in practice. Just lower the nose, clean it up swiftly and continue. My Commander falls into this type with a 67kts Vmca which is close to its stall speed depending on flap setting. I regularly roll her up to close to blue line before I rotate anyway, just to have a little more margin.
In the latter type, you're looking at a stickier situation unless you can very quickly transfer to a higher forward speed (ie get nose over) to get rudder authority. Unless you have enough altitude to be able to reduce good engine, which is not normally the case at takeoff, of course. There is another remedy; Don't rotate at V1, continue up above blue line before you rotate if you have rwy to do so. Might wear a bit more on your gear and tires, but could get you into a safer zone. The Aerostar falls into this later category. It has a 'dead mans zone' between V1 and blue line (can't remember exactly the number now as I don't have POH yet) where you wouldn't want the engine to fail. Blue and red line are also pretty close.
All I can say about the 520 is that she'll climb about 3-500fpm if one engine is caged and feathered at low altitudes. Once you trim out the yaw, she can fly all day like this. Climb with it uncaged, its about 1-300fpm. With it unfeathered and with gear out it's pretty much nil. There is no requirement of twins that have a stall speed below 61kts to demonstrate any climb performance at all in the FAR's.
Maybe a soft field technique would be beneficial to use for the higher Vmca types? You'd rotate as normal, but then keep aircraft in ground effect until blue line in case something would happen, but once you've reached that speed you pull back and climb away?
Last edited by AdamFrisch; 31st May 2013 at 20:17.