Attitude + Power = Performance

Welcome to Canadian winter operations  for a private aircraft owner they are normally called shovel and cancel.

The title of this post is not the caption of a motivational poster, though it could be.  It actually is a basic lesson taught early on on how to fly a plane. All the fancy gauges in front of us as pilots don't fly the plane. The pilot the engines and the wings make the plane fly. the gauges give us information for confirming performance and navigation. but when it comes down to it, you can fly a plane with a working engine and your eyes.

For both of my flights this year I have fought with static port blockages.  For non-aviation readers this is a system that controls some of the most important instruments a plane has the Altimeter and the Airspeed indicator and an instrument called the vertical speed indicator which is far less important.

Pilots are taught a bunch of things about blockages in this system but there is not training about what happens when there is a partial blockage or when something goes wonky and they just plain Lie.Today I flew with instruments that are liars. Airspeed varied over 10mph between my 2 static sources and looked fast in general My altitude was lying by about 300 feet (I fly in very busy airspace so the altimeter lying is cause for concern with traffic around you) and the VSI said i was descending by 1100 feet per minute in level flight (IN fact it still says so now that the plane is on the ground)

Now for those saying "eek" its not that bad  the plane was purring like a kitten producing full power and we knew form radar how badly the altimeter was lying.  All of that together made it a good day to not go flying low level diversions low to the ground but I had an aircraft that was still flying perfectly well.

Here is where that basic lesson comes back in. The attitude the aircraft is pointing in (nose up nose down level) plus the power setting means the plane will perform the same. IF the plane is at full power and the cowling is a little over the horizon in my plane I'm climbing at Vy (the best rate of climb to get the most altitude in the least amount of time) I up the nose a little by 2 more fingers against the horizon I'm at Vx (Most altitude in the least distance, this is the one to get over obstacles at the end of the runway)

Same thing applies to landing. 1500 RPM 2 notches of flaps nose slightly less than level and I'm descending on my normal approach.  As I'm approaching the airport I'm looking at the runway far more than my gauges anyhow because all landings are judged by sight and if the lines on the runway and the numbers are moving.

As much as I dislike terminating the flight early the refresher on attitude flying and dealing with unreliable instruments was a good lesson in itself.


Brent
Back after a long delay