Un-necessary steep climbouts
 

While having lunch at an airport restaurant with pilot friends yesterday, we watched the planes come and go. A Zenith 601 took off, and with lots of room at this mid sized airport, pulled sharply skyward for reasons not associated with any need to clear an obstacle. As he stagger up through about a hundred feet, the engine missed. He sharply lowered the nose, it returned to life, and he continued away from a settling departure.

What a needless risk he took, and it nearly ended his day. It is very likely that from his place in the sky, a glide landing would not have been possible. Though this aircraft type would have less than the normal pilot information, it will adhere to the laws of physics as any other aircraft - and more so, with a more thick airfoil wing, and not so much inertia.

In general, a airplane climbed at a slower than best rate plus airspeed probably cannot be glided to a safe landing from less than a few hundred feet up. When your climb speed is slower than your required glide speed, it's going to take quite a lot of that precious altitude to stuff the nose down and accelerate to glide speed, just to get into the glide, before you have the speed you'll need to flare and arrest the descent - you may have reached the ground already.

Most planes really cannot safely depart at these extreme angles safely, so why do it if there is no obstacle to clear? Yesterday's pilot got a clear warning, I hope he learned.....

Just as bad are the low time non aerobatic wannabe airshow guys (and it always guys :hmm:) who do a low pass and then a steep pull up in their low powered trainers.

I once watched an instructor in a C 152 (with a student on board :ugh:) do one with an attempt to curve off the top and land on the cross runway. The aircraft ran out of energy at about 400 feet just as he cranked in a bunch of bank with the nose still well high. I could see the wings wobble as the aircraft entered a stall, but the instructor was just fast enough to get the nose down before a tragedy happened.

Respect your aircraft and your limits......

I unfortunately did not have to ask who the instructor was, he allready had a big rep as reckless and unprofessional.

To you instructors out their, don't be that guy :=

..seems to me that it is satisfying after takeoff to climb out at max power....if you have power to spare! Except they have these daft rules in the Uk of the overhead join! so just when my Supercub 150 is reaching circuit height when halfway along the runway heading, I remember that o dear me, there may be some numptie doing the overhead join and we will meet and make a mess on the runway....So nose down and behave, Mary! and sure enough, the other guy tools across just overhead. But it is so nice to have that grand power to weight ratio that the takeoff vertical performance (without a gider on tow behind you) resembles the flight path of a large military helicopter....

Another exercise, doing a beatup of the launchpoint in a low performance K8 glider, now that is rather fun, because on pulling out of the dive, you run out of energy quite soon and must recover and land....

I felt quite comfortable doing it because I had practiced the maneuver at 1,200 feet, after the winch launch, and knew exactly when the dear old K8 would need to stagger over the top and head for mother earth. What keeps this sort of foolery relatively safe, is of course no engine to stop, only the same dive, pull up and over of a tidy chandelle.

One has to be comfortable doing these maneuvers; in order to deal with launch failures, and other problems. So much more freedom flying gliders, and in the gliding environment. Makes you feel sad for the rest, flying power and pretending to be airliners and having to talk on radio to advise others of your intentions.....

I have moved the posts about overhead joins to the new "circuit procedures" thread, so that discussion may continue, and this discussion about aerodynamics and gravity may continue here as was.....

Whats more scary is the number of SE pilots who climb out over a built up area with nowhere to go in the event of an engine failure.

Yes, hundreds every day in the Los Angeles basin! Mostly they get away with it, including piperboy84 and I in March. One who recently didn't was Harrison Ford.

With a powerful aircraft and a strong headwind and backtracking you can avoid it, but otherwise there's a few seconds with nowhere much to go after every take-off from 23 at Cambridge.

You mean someone doing a perfectly valid join met a numpty who cared little about circuit procedures and couldn't control their aircraft to adhere to those procedures.

I happened upon this Youtube video:



Although it is an interesting video for showing how the Cesssna holds up, I find it interesting as to how the plane crashed. obviously, the intended touchdown did not include a flare, or other attempt to arrest the descent rate. Thus, the plane dug in and flipped over - really bad, in the scheme of things. If an attempt were made to arrest the descent rate at touchdown, it might have been much better. The more parallel to earth at arrival, the better.

So to get that parallel "arrival", a flare is good. As the topic of this thread suggests, getting your aircraft into a place in the sky, and at a speed, from which entering a good glide is possible, so you will be able to flare, is vital. I would rather arrive to one foot off the surface, with some energy left, so I can flare. A slow, steep climb out, followed by an engine failure, could prevent this....

There seems to be a predilection for doing this among those that fly Ultra light aircraft. It's not a good idea on any aircraft except in circumstances that require it. To make it worse these aircraft have no energy and and many are very draggy and any forward motion disappears pretty quickly when the noise up front goes quiet.

I don't know why they do it.

Sadly I fear not.

I'm inclined to think the numptie might be in the Super Cub.