Killer Shark,
Peace, brother ...
I think that the use of flex thrust has been with us for so long now that it sits reasonably well with the pilot fraternity; although I have a significant concern with the degree to which the thought process seems to have become monkey see, monkey do.
I can recall in the early days of flex ops, Wal Stack at Qantas gave his 707 pilots the carrot of a minimum 1000ft ASD pad .. seemed to quieten any dissent. I suspect that that sort of luxury probably is not the rule .... Then again, early in the piece, one crew observed that the FE pushed the throttles forward to set climb thrust .. so the procedure was amended to make the flex thrust limit not less than climb thrust.
So far as trying to maintain the best margins by using rated, rather than reduced thrust, for takeoff is, I suggest, a spurious logic. Why would we not then leave most of the payload behind ? .. that would increase the performance a whole heap more ... and as for aerodromes any higher than sea level ... and OAT above ISA - 20 .. well !!
The more important considerations are
(a) the boss needs to make a dollar or we are talking about aero club flying.
(b) the relevant limit performance cases are only reference situations ... if there is a sensible case for doing so, use rated thrust, offload some payload ... but be prepared to account for your actions at the Monday morning coffee session in the Chief Pilot's office ..
yxcapt,
Love to hear of your experiences in due course.
The nature of the normal aircraft response is that the serious problems don't really arise unless you are down in the vicinity of Vmca; then the immediate prime concern is controlling bank so that the aircraft doesn't slip into the dead engine... and, of course, it is all shake, rattle, and roll ...
One problem some of the guys experience is the new task of having to co-ordinate rudder and aileron inputs, rather than rudder with only a minor aileron balance for higher speed failures. I have found the best way to get around this problem is to emphasise
(a) control yaw-induced roll aggressively.
(b) the downgoing control horn is on the same side as the appropriate rudder
(c) have an initial guess as to the required rudder input, apply it, and lock the rudders
(d) final adjustment of control input magnitude is an iterative process .. if the rudder inputs are constrained to be step rather than a continuous modulation, then the roller coaster ride is avoided.
All good fun, the guys almost always have a ball, and the stick and rudder polish transfers quite impressively to the routine V1 failure case. Most of the guys are quite surprised at the handling sensitivity with CG ..
[ 06 February 2002: Message edited by: john_tullamarine ]</p>