Flying the Pacific in a PA32-300
 

Hi,

Myself and another pilot are flying a 1979 Piper Cherokee Six PA32-300 accross the Pacific. We have a 150USGAL ferry tank installed and interested to hear from anyone who has done it in this aircraft. We are keen to get comments as to how much we can overload the aircraft to remain within safe limits. The are 2 POB.

You plan to deliberately overload the aircraft? Weight and balance must be worked out using a vary flexible calculator, somewhat removed from reality.
My own experience of the PA32 is that it is intolerant enough already on weight/balance without pushing this to abuse.

The 3 most important items would be to have a raft, a battery operated GPS and a battery operated VHF... so that you can call for help if the engine goes on vacation. :eek:

From personal experience if you were considering taking off extremely heavy then I would give serious thought to loading up the nose locker with a substantial amount of weight. Ignore the 45kg limit placarded and fill it with weighty things (not sure what you might be able to find) untill it won't take any more.
The six will take a great load but try and keep the weight well forward. Also, find a nice long runway to leave from.
Good Luck.

Just an addition to my above post. I was looking through the NZCAA website for some thing entirely different but came upon something that may be of interest. CAA's around the world seem to quite often have many similarities in their legislation due to I guess ICAO standards. So, this may well be similar to legislation in Europe.
There is an Advisory Circular AC21.05:

Approval of modifications covering aircraft ferry fuel systems and overweight operation.

Essentially, it states that the MTOW published in the AFM can be increased by up to 10% without requiring any engineering modification. The aircraft must of course remain within the published weight and balance limits. I suspect this would require the placement of the ferry tank where the middle row of seats normal live.

website is....
http://www.caa.govt.nz/
go to Rules and more, then Advisory Circulars and there it is.

Alan I fly an Airbus A340 down around there, are you serious mate? What on earth made you wake up one morning and decide to do this?

Very handy website for Ocean Flying