Aero-Tips!

A good pilot is always learning -- how many times have you heard this old standard throughout your flying career? There is no truer statement in all of flying (well, with the possible exception of "there are no old, bold pilots.")

Aero-News has called upon the expertise of Thomas P. Turner, master CFI and all-around-good-guy, to bring our readers -- and us -- daily tips to improve our skills as aviators. Some of them, you may have heard before... but for each of us, there will also be something we might never have considered before, or something that didn't "stick" the way it should have the first time we memorized it for the practical test.

Look for our daily Aero-Tips segments, coming each day to you through the Aero-News Network.

Aero-Tips 07.18.06

I was training a pilot in a new-to-him Beech A36. The A36 is the larger, six-seat, conventional ("straight") tail variant of Beech's 60-year-old Bonanza design, and the immediate predecessor to the current-production glass cockpit G36.

Like many A36 owners, my client bought the airplane for personal and business use, typically flying alone or with one passenger on board but sometimes with more passengers and their baggage. The big Bonanza's aft cabin, with four seats in a "club" arrangement and a small aft baggage bin, looks tailor-made for such use.

But "weight"

But wait -- when we got to the Weight and Balance portion of our ground school we looked up specific his airplane's useful load, 1111 pounds (from its Weight and Balance information). Add full fuel (74 gallons usable, 444 pounds) and the full-fuel cabin load is 667 pounds. That's not even four people -- and THAT assumes an FAA-standard 170-pound adult! And it leaves no weight for baggage.

Note: This all assumes the resulting airplane is loaded within the critical center of gravity envelope -- a topic for a future Aero-Tips.

Options

Now, this particular A36 has air conditioning (70 pounds), a standby generator, and a lot of other options that eat up useful load. This is not a Bonanza-specific problem--there are very few airplanes that can carry full fuel and all the seats filled, and still be within safe (and FAA/insurance legal) weight limits.

This leaves you several options:

• Leave people behind
• Ship heavy baggage ahead to destination
• Spend thousands (or tens of thousands) for modifications that include a tested safe (and legal) gross weight increase... accepting the performance reduction that results from flying at higher weights
• Take off with less than full fuel and fly shorter legs

What? That last item sounds sacrilegious to many people, who are taught (by well-meaning instructors) to always take off with full fuel. But in the case of my client, taking off with half-full tanks adds 222 pounds to the payload, leaving about two hours' fuel with IFR reserves (assuming careful engine management).

Can you ignore the weight limit and still fly? Not safely (you don't know what will work until you test fly-with unsuspecting passengers as "test equipment"), and certainly not legally. My client put it best:

• it's a moral question whether you can expose passengers to an untested flight regime; and
• operating within limits is all about piece of mind. 

Aero-tip of the day: Considering purchase of a specific airplane? Ask the seller to give you a copy of the Weight and Balance information before you go any further. Make calculations for the way you plan to fly the airplane to see if it meets your mission, and what options you might have to exercise to stay safe.

FMI: Aero-Tips