Originally Posted by
Capn Bloggs
There was never any intention to be accurate. I was merely making the point that just because you did over 5% at some stage and then you do less, it's not the average that counts, it's a minimum of 5% at any point on the SID.
OK, I hadn't appreciated that accuracy wasn't intended to be part of your response.
But even your revised statement isn't necessarily true - your instantaneous climb gradient at any point can be less than 5% and still won't result in you hitting anything solid
provided that your flightpath is above the 5% line at every point.
So, for example, if you were minded to maintain 10% to 3000' and then flew the last 1000' at 2%, you would at every point be higher than the 5% average to 4000'.
Or, as President put it more succinctly
You can therefore climb more than 5 pct and then less as long as you don't penetrate the surface