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Joined: Sat Aug 20, 2005 3:09 am
Posts: 3158
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First of all BPf.....my comments with regard to flying at Vx after a short field comment were not directed at you, and, I assume from your response, do not apply. I enjoy your posts, and learn quite a bit from them, as I am hoping to instruct again, when, or maybe if, I ever retire and can still pass a medical and crawl into a plane...There is always the danger, I fear, of thinking my way is the only right way, and your posts sometimes offer a completely different perspective, which gets one to thinking..
Edited: comment removed as an AvCanada member's felt it was an insult and I hurt their feelings. 
Where does that leave a pilot with no body of experience to draw on ? My philosophy of instructing, is to teach them the tools so they can hopefully safely get the experience afterwards. Which is why I focus on things like judging runway length from the air , and remembering to consider field elevation and temperature...The truth is, once people get a license they very very soon quit calculating runway take off distances, or thinking about density altitude formally so it is important that somewhere in the back of their brain they remember they are important. How many PPLs, or even CPS bother doing a weight and balance, fuel plan, use checklists etc, after flying a small plane for a few hours unless someone is forcing them to... For example, I dont ever recall a checklist in any beaver I ever flew, though I suspect if you dug through the old cardboard box in the back that has the grease rags and oil cans, maybe there was one there to make TC happy. That is the reality.
I was fortunate that when I was an instructor there were all sorts of little fields to work out of, and we had the blessing of the FTU , and no fear of the wrath of TC for doing so..It is one of the few things about the good old days that really was good..more oopsies, but the acceptance of some risk at that level, I thought made safer pilots in the long run...I have always wanted to do a comparision between the reduction in FTU accidents and accidents of pilots under a 1000 hours to see if there was a reverse correlation.
Even big runways have markers, marking on the runway, lights etc., so one can fly over and at least get an idea of what 1200 feet (as an example) looks like..Unfortunately many short strips are also narrow so that will skew the perception, but it should give them an idea...Canada is also blessed with the CFS which gives runway length and details..I sometimes think Canadian pilots dont appreciate what a great little book that is, but I dont expect there is to many of us left that remember looking at the side or back of a map to find that little airport diagram.
The problem I have with using numbers in small planes goes something like this.....I have used a "safe" factor of 2x the POH figure...(based on what I am not sure)..I then look at the CFS and the runway length exceeds that requirement, so off I go...And when I arrive over the airport, I notice that there is a big old hole about 1/3 of the way down...in 21st century piloting I would do the "safe" thing and simply divert. And then I would go back to the company and be mad because the CP got mad and said old guy did it...I would then hate the old guy as he was doing something unsafe....and would never realize that the problem was me just using numbers, and that the CP and old guy actually were able to fly over the airport, make a perfectly acceptable decision, that resulted in a safe landing and departure...I would have learned nothing.. And the chances are the next time I would feel "pressured" and attempt something that truely was not safe because I had never learned properly.. and that is not directed at you BPF....just my observations over the recent years.
As to what I use when working short field.. If the strip is long enough to have a plan B ( as opposed to once you have brake release it is fly or crash) I use whatever is available to have a fixed point I simply can determine easily rather than some indefinite point such as 1/3 of the runway. If the ASI is not alive, or is not at 40kts, for example, power off and get on the brakes..Picking the point is a bit of an art, as the faster you go, the more space needed to stop, or at least slow down some before you go off into the pasture. If the runway ends at an 800 cliff, the point is much more conservative then if you are simply going to run into a cow pasture. But we are speaking here of really unnecessary places for a PPL to be getting themselves into, and maybe the factoring of the POH is a good starting point to get experience. As long as the foundation for learning is there, so the picking of a point and determining things like how much runway does it typically take to get airborne after the ASI starts moving are good things to learn, and they can be learned on a big old paved runway without any scenarios.
Understanding when to use the technique is also a major issue, and that makes a bit of a problem is you start using POH+ figures as requiring a short field technique. That may be safe enough for training, but not so much in the future.
Use that length of runway for training, but short field is a short field...
One of the things I notice is that pilots,when being checked out on a real short field will horse the poor old plane into the air with 400 feet of runway remaining. It is rather a too common thing, that seems to result from the fact that no instructor ever told them that if there are no obstacle in front of them they can continue the takeoff roll to a higher speed...and yes yes...I know all about pulling off and flying in ground effect...but that technique has some different considerations. |
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Last edited by trey kule on Sun May 06, 2012 9:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
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let me come to the defense of those who posted.