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Old 16th Jan 2015, 19:43
  #15 (permalink)  
tommoutrie
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
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Most CJ pilots climb in VS. Most CJ pilots are capable of monitoring the airspeed and adjusting the VS so that you stay at an appropriate speed for your weight/height/OAT. This accident happened because the pilot was a gimp and didn't monitor his airspeed. The incident could have been that he was climbing in FLC, the aircraft got too high to maintain the airspeed or went into an airmass with a significantly higher OAT and began to descend to maintain the speed and collided with other traffic - its got bog all to do with the mode he was climbing in and everything to do with basic piloting skills.

The CJ has straight wings and it doesn't climb at its cruise speed, its simply too draggy, and you sometimes accept fairly low climb rates to get to the cruise altitude you want. Once it gets there its quite happy and accelerates to its normal cruise speed reasonably easily - swept wing aircraft are much more prone to the "back of the drag curve" problem than a straight wing aircraft is. Being high in a CJ can be useful - you're slow so being "out of the way" can give you preferential routings, your fuel burn is substantially lower, and you're out of the weather which is a good plan in a little plane. But you need to monitor how you get there which this bloke didn't.
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