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TB10 short field takeoff

Graham wrote:

The POH would normally be the first port of call, but it is silent on the matter.

That’s a clue that the aircraft manufacturer does not encourage this that type of operation. Though you can develop your own technique, if you come to grief doing it, your insurer could ask you to show how your operation complied with flight manual procedures.

Graham wrote:

will now climb away happily at significantly less than 80kts. The book gives best angle as 65kts and best rate as 78kts.

As I mentioned earlier, though it will be possible to climb away at a slower speed, once you have cleared the obstacle, 78 knots should be the slowest speed you climb at. Any slower, and an EFATO could be irrecoverable. Go up high, plan your own safe “hard deck” and practice – this is part airplane capability and part pilot skill. But know that once you’ve practiced well, and satisfied yourself as you your awesome skill during practice, during the real thing, you will still not do as well, as you recognize the engine failure with surprise, then wonder if you can get it running again while you don’t lower the nose fast enough. To understand this whole concept better, research the “avoid curve” for a helicopter. it’s the same thing, and indeed the helicopter does better that an airplane, as the helicopter can store energy during a glide as both forward airspeed, and rotor RPM (and needs less space to land), where an airplane can only store energy as airspeed – so you have to have it to begin with.

Getting off the surface with the stall warning peeping is fine, just stay in ground effect until you have accelerated and stored some energy to be safe during your climb away.

Graham wrote:

stall warner (which sounds a good margin before the actual stall)

By certification requirements, the stall warning must have sounded 5 knots before the actual stall in that configuration, and must not be sounding faster than 10 knots faster than stall in that configuration. This should be confirmed at altitude from time to time as a maintenance activity. In the old days, this was one of my jobs, test flying and resetting the stall warning speeds when STOL kits were installed on various Cessnas.

Home runway, in central Ontario, Canada, Canada

Pilot_DAR wrote:

Any slower, and an EFATO could be irrecoverable. Go up high, plan your own safe “hard deck” and practice – this is part airplane capability and part pilot skill. But know that once you’ve practiced well, and satisfied yourself as you your awesome skill during practice, during the real thing, you will still not do as well, as you recognize the engine failure with surprise, then wonder if you can get it running again while you don’t lower the nose fast enough.

Theoretically, you can always recover from an EFATO and steep climb with a hard push on the stick if you have done it zillions of times (say those who used to cable breaks in gliding, aeros takeoff or unusual attitudes in something solid), still all that training is worthless if you did not plan to it before takeoff (one of my instructors did to me on a powered airplane, like everybody I just pulled on the stick until stall warning come up) or not mentally ready to accept hitting the obstacle ahead,

The difficult bit is to notice gradual or partial power failures or decrease in performance while on Vx attitude while on level flight I get a better appreciation (+most of power checks are done on power settings that is barely sufficient to do any climb at Vy)

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Glenforsa was mentioned. Not short, usually not soft. Usually short grass. But a low turn on take-off at one end to avoid climbing over the hill.
That turn can be downwind to the wind blowing through from the west, with a loss of airspeed due to inertia. I like a good speed margin.

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

Ibra wrote:

Theoretically, you can always recover from an EFATO and steep climb with a hard push on the stick if you have done it zillions of times

Yes, you can (and must) get the nose down. But, can you accelerate during a steep glide enough in a small amount of altitude to have the speed you need at the bottom to arrest your rate of descent, and flare for a safe landing? It’s not as easy as you think, practice at altitude! Sailplanes don’t count, as they have very different gliding characteristics to power off power planes. Draggy planes like floatplanes are much worse. I have had situations where sustained full nose down was required to prevent a stall, but the airspeed was decaying as the nose was going down, and I was loosing altitude (I was flight testing, so up high, and had it to lose).

For all of the type training I have done, I have insisted that power off landings be conducted from Vy, to a touchdown (no go arounds at 100 feet). Most commonly, the candidate pilot gets the first few wrong, and intervention is required. Practice this at altitude first. Comments based upon actual practice welcomed…..

Home runway, in central Ontario, Canada, Canada

Pilot_DAR wrote:

Sailplanes don’t count, as they have very different gliding characteristics to power off power planes

And also a cable break is a lot more sudden and obvious – they tend to go with a loud BANG, and you know on a winch launch the first thing you do on hearing a loud bang from the bottom of the aircraft is stick forward and pull the cable release. A partial engine failure can result in a loss of airspeed while wondering ‘what do I do now’ which becomes insufficient energy when it stops altogether.

Gliders are also a lot more “floaty” – get a high sink rate going in a heavy powered aircraft and there might be no recovery. A skydive place my wife used to skydive at lost a C182 with all hands when the pilot decided to do a completely unnecessary Vx takeoff and the engine blew a cylinder off shortly after getting airborne. According to pilot-rated eyewitnesses, he never actually stalled – he just had insufficient energy to arrest the descent at the end.

Andreas IOM

Pilot_DAR wrote:

QuoteSailplanes don’t count, as they have very different gliding characteristics to power off power planes.

Actually the whole discussion applies to sailplanes equally well. If a sailplane suffers a cable break close to the ground, while in a steep nose-up attitude and at low airspeed, the occupants will be just as dead. That’s why the winch launch procedure is carefully designed so that wherever, whenever the cable breaks (and it will, eventually), you always have either the kinetic energy or the potential energy to recover.

Here’s how it works. Once the winch starts pulling you keep the stick more or less neutral and let the aircraft get off the ground on its own. You then remain in ground effect while the aircraft accelerates to a fairly high speed, and then you gradually pull the nose up. This will eventually reduce the speed while getting an ever-higher nose-up attitude. And only by the time you reach 50 meters or so (150 feet) are you fully established in the launch. Sounds complicated, but in reality the whole process takes maybe three seconds and given enough practice, it’s a very smooth maneuver.

At any time throughout the procedure you can now suffer a cable break. If it happens below 100 meters (300 feet) you stuff the nose down, pull full airbrakes and land straight ahead. Above 100 meters you have enough height to fly a tight but full circuit.

Last Edited by BackPacker at 12 Feb 17:21

BackPacker wrote:

Actually the whole discussion applies to sailplanes equally well. If a sailplane suffers a cable break close to the ground, while in a steep nose-up attitude and at low airspeed, the occupants will be just as dead.

I have witnessed that watching a K13, steep 45 degrees cable break, stick fully forward and 45degrees nose down then a hard landing even with 30 degrees nose up, it did not feel “controllable” at any point in time, so yes unless you have enough height/speed you will get stuck between flying in reduced G and hitting the ground or stalling in 1G and hitting the ground, this is why I prefer smooth Vy climbs after enough rolling along the runway, for the same reasons pulling hard on the stick and flying slowly on winch cables does not give you the highest launch….

The occupant walked away from it, probably as a wooden sailplane tend “to float” well in the air at zero speed (ground effect? or Archimedes force?) better than aeroplanes and the wooden glider was “ok”, one instructor at the scene ironically commented: if you feel life is tough, think about a club K13s !

Last Edited by Ibra at 12 Feb 17:51
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

BackPacker wrote:

That’s why the winch launch procedure is carefully designed so that wherever, whenever the cable breaks (and it will, eventually), you always have either the kinetic energy or the potential energy to recover.

Which is why sailplanes don’t count! Sailplane pilots are smart enough to avoid a Vx climb! If you aren’t in that ugly corner of the avoid curve, a sudden propulsion loss will not catch you out with insufficient energy to safely flare at the bottom of your glide. Some foolish power plane pilots think that because they practiced forced approaches umpteen years ago under very agreeable circumstances, and never had to actually land, now they can hang the plane off the prop without considering the very different conditions they have created for themselves. Hence the discussion….

Home runway, in central Ontario, Canada, Canada

Pilot_DAR wrote:

a sudden propulsion loss will not catch you out with insufficient energy to safely flare at the bottom of your glide.

I would not qualify what happens when the engine quits as “glide”, one is flying because he is continuously unloading the wing and taking a huge Rate of Rate of Decent (basically -2000ft/min for each second), once you pull the stick you will stall

I guess, this is completely different from flaring after PFL practices or recovering winch cable breaks but can be simulated high in the air, the fastest way to recover from that attitude without taking zero or too much negative Gs (as far as I remember from some unorthodox instructors I had in the past) was to bank the wing while unloading the stick, let the nose drop and opposite bank before the nose crosses the horizon, not sure how much of that applies to an EFATO or a winch cable breaks close to the ground on glider/aeroplane with their typical roll rates, you need probably 90deg/sec to get that manoeuvre right and you don’t get that easily on a aircraft with slow stall speeds…

Last Edited by Ibra at 12 Feb 18:58
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

“to recover from that attitude without taking zero or too much negative Gs (as far as I remember from some unorthodox instructors I had in the past) was to bank the wing while unloading the stick, let the nose drop and opposite bank before the nose crosses the horizon,”
Done with no thrust, and low speed? Not letting the nose drop below the horizon? Would there be much negative G at low speed?
Bank and let nose drop after climb to reduce speed, and levelling wings after a low G,180 turn, with height loss is good for a tight turn in a valley.
But after power loss in a steep, slow, climb with little height?

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom
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