Trees... (uh oh)

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mcarlini

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mcarlini
Long story short, I was flying for the first time with my license. I had a buddy with me and we flew to a nearby airport (Prospect, OR 64S) in the middle of a flat forest.

I flew to the 4,000ft runway just fine, touched it and goed it, and did my best to maintain best rate of climb. As we were climbing out, I noticed it was not happening fast. Trees at the other end (the 50-ft obstacles they train you for during flight training... they do exist) came fast and before I knew it, it was time to fly over them. I made it fine, but looking down, the tops were way too close for comfort.

When I knew there was no more risk of collision, I looked over to see that my mixture was still set for a 3,000ft cruise. My jaw dropped. Luckily for me, the airport's elevation was about 2,500 msl, so I did not make too much of a difference.

Remember the GUMPS check anytime you are descending to land: Gas, Undercarriage, Mixture, Power, Safety.

I'm just glad that it was a relatively cool day and that the airplane was not full on fuel. Lesson learned!!!:hairraise:
 
Don't just jump on the first obvious explanation and think that you have the full explanation. The mixture setting may not be enough to explain the experience.
 
Your mixture was probably set for a better power setting at that mixture than if it were full rich. Remember - full rich is the "dummy" procedure. It's the safest catch all, but not necessarily the best.

I would check for another explanation. Mixture is not the problem here.
 
Welcome to high density altitude fight, happening at a strip near you. If you think your take-off was bad, you should have seem me from WV62 last OCtober. Then runway was 3K feet, but it could have been a lot longer and not made a difference. The aircraft did not want to climb that day.
 
Could it be you forgot to check that the carb heat was off once you were on the go? That would also explain an underpowered performance.

Touch and Go requires more concentration than Stop and Go or Full Stop. I've heard that some flight schools require a CFI onboard in order to do touch and goes.
 
Ditto what others have said... I doubt a mixture setting for 3000' would be enough to cause a huge performance hit. Heck, if anything, you were probably making better power with that mixture setting than 'full rich' - since 'full rich' is usually a tad bit 'too' rich.

Think of anything else you may have missed - carb heat, flaps, etc.

Or, since this was your first experience with the proverbial '50 ft obstacle', the trees that seemed 'too close for comfort' may not have been 'that' close after all (unless you were picking up leaves in the landing gear ;)). I used to think that I was 'really' close to the tree-tops at a few local strips until I flew with a cropduster that really was getting close. I don't get as close as he does, but now I see that the trees can get a LOT bigger in the window and still not hit them.
 
I took off with the mag switch set to "Right" or "Left" once and realized we were not climbing as well as we should. I had nothing but flat fields all around and decided to turn crosswind and return to the field. After I got to 1500' AGL (for margin) I looked at the switch and DUH!, pit it to "Both". Problem solved. New checklist item after the runup. "Mags to Both".
 
The mixture setting may have played a role. When you advanced the mixture (if you did) did the engine develop more power as indicated by an increase in RPM or MP and/or an improved climb rate? Another consideration is density altitude. What was the actual temp? At 2500' the temp on a standard day would be close to 10 degrees Celsius / 50 Degrees F. It is probably a worthwhile exercise to calculate the density altitude and then calculate the aircraft t/o distance and climb performance based on that data.
 
One time doing a touch and go in a 152 I flipped the flap switch up as usual, but the flaps failed to retract. That made coming off a 4000+ foot runway much more interesting than I thought it would be.
 
Similar thing happened to me last year at a 2200 ft field. I leaned for ground operation and later took off. At take off, it seemed a bit under powered and climbed slowly. I looked around inside and noticed the mixture was out about 2 inches. So, I pushed it in and got a rush of extra power and back to normal climb.
 
All's well that ends well, in your recent experience. Imagine coming in on a right crosswind, runway 2100'. All is in order. Oh! Land a bit long. Full power, carb heat forward, flaps up a bit, yoke back, departure -- fine. Whoops -- see photo.
(Upon rotation it seemed the wind had changed to a right-quartering tailwind. The two trees were only slightly to the left of the runway.

HR

It "buffed right out" (in several months); see 2nd photo.
 

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mcarlini said:
I flew to the 4,000ft runway just fine, touched it and goed it, and did my best to maintain best rate of climb. As we were climbing out, I noticed it was not happening fast. Trees at the other end (the 50-ft obstacles they train you for during flight training... they do exist) came fast and before I knew it, it was time to fly over them. I made it fine, but looking down, the tops were way too close for comfort.
Click to expand...

Sounds like best angle of climb speed would have been more appropriate.
 
Palmpilot said:
Sounds like best angle of climb speed would have been more appropriate.
Click to expand...

Woops, that is what I meant. 70mph in a 150.


In response to all the other comments, I think it was just the fact that the airplane was near gross weight, and with about 100hp to work with, the climb out from any field would've been slow. When i enrichened the mixture, there was really no change in performance.
 
EdFred said:
Your mixture was probably set for a better power setting at that mixture than if it were full rich. Remember - full rich is the "dummy" procedure. It's the safest catch all, but not necessarily the best.

I would check for another explanation. Mixture is not the problem here.
Click to expand...

Ed I recall in my IR training coming in on the ILS24 at KABE just shy of 400' MSL. When we went missed I pushed the throttle all the way forward ( Archer) and she sputtered and stammered and power was pretty anemic then I realized I forgot to enrichen the mixture. It was still leaned out. Ugh. Big lesson learned!

mcarlini said:
Woops, that is what I meant. 70mph in a 150.


In response to all the other comments, I think it was just the fact that the airplane was near gross weight, and with about 100hp to work with, the climb out from any field would've been slow. When i enrichened the mixture, there was really no change in performance.
Click to expand...

Yea that could do it too.
 
4000ft long runway, what is the normal landing distance over an obstacle ? Granted that expects you to stop not T&G.
What is the normal takeoff distance over an obstacle? Granted, starting with some speed maybe 1/3 to 1/2 way down the runway?
Does it add up to less than 4000ft?
Do you know those trees are only 50ft or less and not taller?
And yes you want best angle, not best rate.
 
AdamZ said:
Ed I recall in my IR training coming in on the ILS24 at KABE just shy of 400' MSL. When we went missed I pushed the throttle all the way forward ( Archer) and she sputtered and stammered and power was pretty anemic then I realized I forgot to enrichen the mixture. It was still leaned out. Ugh. Big lesson learned!
.
Click to expand...

Perhaps, but this airport was 2500, and leaned for 3000.
 
I am not a fan of touch and goes. It's negative transfer, as the order of operations (flaps, power, pitch, climb) is NOT the same as a balked landing (power, pitch, climb, flaps).
I have seen people (and I did it myself once) get into a balked landing and have muscle memory reach for the flaps first.

It's even worse with a retract, where gear up is also out of place between T&Gs and balked landings.

Now, I rarely do T&Gs. My home drome is long enough for stop and goes, with a full stop, reconfigure, and take off operation.
When I buy a retract, I will cease T&Gs entirely.
 
mcarlini said:
I flew to the 4,000ft runway just fine, touched it and goed it, and did my best to maintain best rate of climb.
Click to expand...

Just curious... how far down the runway were you at touch down? ON the numbers? 1/4 or 1/3 of the way down? Do you remember?

And how quickly did you get back on the "go" part of touch & go? It's amazing how much runway you can eat up if you touch down a little farther than normal (float float float) then delay two or three seconds before "go".
 
PilotAlan said:
I am not a fan of touch and goes. It's negative transfer, as the order of operations (flaps, power, pitch, climb) is NOT the same as a balked landing (power, pitch, climb, flaps).
I have seen people (and I did it myself once) get into a balked landing and have muscle memory reach for the flaps first.

It's even worse with a retract, where gear up is also out of place between T&Gs and balked landings.

Now, I rarely do T&Gs. My home drome is long enough for stop and goes, with a full stop, reconfigure, and take off operation.
When I buy a retract, I will cease T&Gs entirely.
Click to expand...

I've been leaning that way too, especially after doing a T&G at night when the flaps didn't retract from 40, and I didn't look like I was taught... :hairraise:
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Just curious... how far down the runway were you at touch down? ON the numbers? 1/4 or 1/3 of the way down? Do you remember?

And how quickly did you get back on the "go" part of touch & go? It's amazing how much runway you can eat up if you touch down a little farther than normal (float float float) then delay two or three seconds before "go".
Click to expand...

Right past the numbers. I was aware that I wanted to save as much runway as I could, but I do believe that I let her roll for a bit before adding power again.

The reason I didn't calculate the distances before hand was because I regularly fly into another nearby airport that has a runway of just 3600 feet and I've never ran into a problem with touch and goes there. That airport's elevation is 1,800 msl.
 
My buddy used to land our 150 about 10 knots fast, so of course he'd float halfway down the runway. On one of his solo cross country flights he set down halfway down the runway, then had the bad luck of engine trouble when he went to take off again. He managed to get it around and back on reduced engine power, and was proud to have done so. In true internet forum style, I yelled at him for landing so long that he couldn't just shut it down and land on the remaining runway.
 
Sounds like it was hot out, and you learned just what an impact that has on performance.

Yeah, sometimes takeoffs happen that way. Sometimes the trees are pretty close. Although they usually look closer than they are - it's what happens when your brain goes "Oh ****, I don't want to hit those!" :)

One of the things to remember with touch-and-gos is that you can end up eating up a lot of runway on the "touch" part, effectively turning the "go" into a short field takeoff. Of course, you're probably not setup for a short-field, especially if you do the standard throttle in, carb heat off, flaps up. It wouldn't surprise me if that was a contributing factor there.
 
I also noticed that flying uncoordinated extracts a significant toll on climb performance in a Cherokee -- enough that it would not want to lift out of ground effect at all. In my case the trigger was a very low go-around. My muscle memory was to pick up rudder control when the nose lifts and when the mains lift, but in this case I carried the crosswind correction through the procedure. It was my 2nd flight with PP ticket. Obviously T&G is different, so this explanation is not very likely, but something to think about.
 
Keith Lane said:
I took off with the mag switch set to "Right" or "Left" once and realized we were not climbing as well as we should. I had nothing but flat fields all around and decided to turn crosswind and return to the field. After I got to 1500' AGL (for margin) I looked at the switch and DUH!, pit it to "Both". Problem solved. New checklist item after the runup. "Mags to Both".
Click to expand...
Did this same thing on a night takeoff at Plymouth (PYM) with my CFI. I have no idea how the MAG switch got set to left rather than both but I suspect the CFI had something to do with it. It was also the same flight he demonstrated opening the window on C152. Some poor Plymouth resident found MY nearly new sectional on his lawn the next day.
 
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