Good morning Piper Classique!
Well done for picking up the important point I was trying to make....and sent all the hounds barking down the wrong track (when in Rome, etc etc.) I think I need to start a new thread about the overhead join!
Power to weight ratio really matters, it is quite uncomfortable to watch an overloaded Cessna with two fat guys and too much baggage labouring into the air on a hot day! Excuse - it took off OK in January, didn't it?
How many people tell the truth when calculating weight and balance and when did they last step on the scales with all their clothing, wallet, mobile phone, etc etc etc?
Sure helps to have a nice big engine.
Speaking of flight manuals, I too was flying in my Piper Supercub with a friend, and my trusty flight manual in the luggage rear compartment; an assembly of A4 pages in an A4 brown envelope. To the satisfaction of the legal requirement, for quite a few years.
We decided to fly with the door and window open, nice hot day. There is nothing like flying with the doors open in a Supercub to give the true sensation of being aloft! Looking down in a well banked turn, you can look past the maingear right down to the ground, nothing in the way at all at all.
So couldn't resist throwing GOFER around a bit, nice steep turn one way, then the other, and suddenly the brown envelope gave way, the A4 flight manual rose up and my back seat passenger was snowed under by flying pages of important information; she managed to grab most of them, a couple went outside, two pages clung to the empennage, and five were lost forever over the countryside. Oops!
O dear. It was very very funny. I made an executive decision to stop messing around and returned to base....the manual, with the missing pages recopied, was securely wrapped and bound, and still rides around in the aeroplane as required by the Authorities. Where the dickens we are supposed to carry the flight manual for a glider, when the only baggage space available is required for a bottle of water (to drink) and a banana...far more use than a flight manual ... no way you could refer to it in flight anyway without compromising your lookout!