I am with Leafie on this, and I bet the majority of schools that do teach leaning on the ground do it wrong as well.
Leaning below 2000', heck if I am anything but climbing, or chasing someone down
I am running LOP. Now doing a lot of basic training area stuff and such full rich may be the go, but the secret here is to know what is appropriate. (there is a course for this, Sydney 8-10 Nov
).
As for climb fuel, sure this may not matter on a short local 1500' sortie, I agree, but what we want to have taught is good practises, so that when it does matter, they remember to do it, and how to do it.
airwolf,
As an example, I have just run a quick 1hr 40 min flight, that I do often. Planned fuel for today's winds is 78L with a Variable of 12 and a fixed of 32L.
If I used the airwolf school method as you were shown, for this plan at A080 we add 4 minutes of cruise, That would be 2.9L + 72L = 74.9L. My figures are based on me leaning in the climb to a target EGT method, and compared to your typical flying school method, the burn would be 80-81L so the actual amount of difference may not be serious, and an error of 5-6L might not run you out of course, but it is a bit sloppy in terms of planning. In the absence of known climb data, it is better than nothing of course.
Diversions....SARTIMES
Ohh dear, what else is not taught? The problem is we do not know what we don't know.