PA28 Take Off Performance

Here's a video of what appears to be cutting it very fine with regards to takeoff performance. There were 3 large grown ups on board. By the grace of god, this aircraft managed to takeoff safely. I recently witnessed the departure of a PA28 from Sandown Airfield which crashed & killed 4 people due to overweight for length of runway... I thought that I was about the witness the whole thing happen again today at Compton Abbas.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• Compton
• abbas
• pa28
• takeoff
• peformance
• egha

[thinguk56]

@thinguk56 That's Vx, not V2...Vx is the speed for max gain of height in min distance, Vy is max rate of climb; 63 and 79 knots respectively for the 28. Well a 161 28.

[thinguk56]

@dublinmanc He's got flaps 25 which is standard soft field setting. There's no 'V2' on light a/c.

[thinguk56]

Looked like a perfectly normal take off and climb to me at Vx.

[stillcannotfly]

It would be nice to say that the pilot calculated the take off distance required and knew exactly when he could become airborne. This could be the fact because it looked like he had one stage of flap (not two for short field take off) but when he eventually took off the climb rate seemed reasonable ie above V2 min (if that applies to a single engine plane) and perhaps he was accelerating in ground effect to increase his safety margins. It was tight but controlled.

[dublinmanc]

It does not appear to have been a shortfield takeoff, perhaps the pilot was trying to get in as much airspeed as possible on full power before rotating and before inital climb after V2, given the runway surface conditions and wind conditions on the active runway - I would expect that he would have been aware of the TORA to him - also he may not have been using takeoff flaps & instead using back pressure on the stick before applying full power before V1

[Shardith]

Holy smokes. I don't think there was any runway left.