Question about the climb out from EGHA
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For short field takeoffs in an Arrow, select two notches of flaps (25 degrees), rotate at 65 knots, pitch to maintain 72 knots (Vx gear down). You should be able to maintain this configuration and clear any reasonable obstacle. Once you raise the gear, pitch to 78 knots (Vx gear up) until all obstacles are clear. Confirm positive rate of climb and slowly retract the flaps. Pitch to 90 knots (Vy gear up) and hold that for the remainder of the climb.
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Thanks for your suggestion. I did try taking off with 25o flaps, but it didn't matter much actually. The problems seems to be that, with gear down, the plane is very draggy. Once the gear is up, the Arrow accelerates quickly.
The thing is, the runway is actually not short at all. According to Skyvector.com it is 2635 ft. After consulting the ODM manual, page 6 "0o flap takeoff performance over 50 ft barrier", I arrive at about an 1100 ft take-off distance (the estimated weight of the plane is 2200 lbs, that's empty weights, half fuel and a few pounds for the pilot).
@Martyn Is there a video that demonstrate how to properly take-off from this field?
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@BernieV Thank you very much, I appreciate you took the time to do that. The video shows a takeoff from runway 26, correct? I tried to takeoff the other way around, runway 08. Unless I'm mixing up the runways. Anyway, in the direction you took off the trees are a lot less daunting :-)
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@corvus5624 Takeoff from runway 08. Couple of things; 1) use the full length of the runway for takeoff. The default starting point leaves about 100ft of runway behind you. I used it all. 2) There is a HUGE tree at the exact end of the runway. Blame that on the AI not the grounds keeper. It would not be there in real life. Still I cleared it. Barely.
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Yeah, those trees are definitely not there in real-life (it is easy to check on Bing maps). A bit surprising that this runway is chosen for a tutorial. Quite a challenge for a beginner! :grinning_face_with_sweat:
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@yungilike Thank you for sharing the video. I've looked at your takeoff, indeed I could not follow the commentary, but as they say, a picture speaks a thousand words. If I compare with the second video from @BernieV it seems that you are taking off at an offset compared to the actual runway. If you taxi to the runway numbers (there is a 08 painted on the grass) and takeoff from there, I think you will notice MSFS placed a few trees right at the end of the runway. Quite inconvenient!
Btw, even with the trees, you can manage to clear them. However I was thinking my takeoff technique was inadequate because in real-life you would never takeoff in such a precarious situation. As it turns out, the trees are not there in real-life and my takeoff technique was actually not so bad. That said, the tips posted in this forum, did help!
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@corvus5624 Oh, really, I did not notice that they even paint the numbers on grass runway - which means I usually use every inch of there as long as it's flat.
And btw the summer is coming, so before takeoff, we might need to take extra caution on the density alitude (pressure and OAT) on the small airfield like this one. -
@BernieV If you want to see how it feels when density altitude equals runway length, try this exercise;
Airport 2b2 (Plum Island, Mass.)
Set weather to clear sky, temp 30C, 0 wind.
Set aircraft weight to 2450 lbs.
Line up just short of the runway 28 markings (disregard the big yellow X, the runway is not closed, its a MSFS database error). Runway length is 2205 ft. Density altitude is 2270 ft.From the takeoff performance chart on page 4 of the ODM;
Select 25 degrees of flaps.
Lift off at 56 knots and accelerate to 59 knots.
Gear up as soon as possible for this one :)
