On Saturday 13th Feb 2015, it's really cold outside, -23°C ~ -18°C at south-centre of Ontario. And plus the chill wind, it feels like -30°C ~ -40°C. I booked a flight with my instructor to learn and practice the short field take-off/landing. It's lucky, I wasn't frozen up in the sky ;-)
When I got the Burlington Airpark, the plane is in hangar, and plugged on power cord to heat up the engine. I take the documents and checked maintenance log book to see the defeats & due time. From the documents, everything is good. So I walk into the hangar to walk around for the pre-flight checking. At that time, I was thinking we usually don't walk around our cars to check the windshield, tires, brakes, oil level, power steering and so on. We just jump into the car, turn-on the engine and run out. Most of the time, we are good to go with the car, if we do the regular maintenance by the manual. But in these kinds of extreme cold days, should we do something more? Yes, we should. But the fact is that it's so cold we just want to get into the car ASAP. That's why we see some vehicles stops working on highways, and waiting for CAA or towing truck.
Ok, let's get back to the flight. When I was taxiing to the runway, there was Coyote on the runway and running the same direction as our airplane, and almost the same speed as the airplane. I was worrying about on the taking off on the runway, but it turned out of runway when both the airplane and Coyote reached the start point of runway 32. For the short field, when the airplane is accelerated on full power, it should automatically lift-off on about 50~55kt. If not lift-off the airplane when the airspeed is over 50kt. Since we are flying on short field, keep the best angle to climb. For Cessna 172, it's 57kt from the POH. That's hard to keep exact 57kt for best angle, so I just keep the airspeed on around 60kt. That means I need to pull the control column after lift-off to build the airspeed around 60kt. I mean we need really pull the yoke back to reach the 60kt at the beginning. After 100 feet above ground, we can push the nose forward a little bit to build the airspeed to best rate of climb 74~79kt.
To achieve the short field landing, we need flight a little bit slower than normal landing profile. For the normal landing, the best speed on final is about 70kt. But for short field landing, it should be about 62 to 65kt. We may need add a little power when approaching the runway if there are some obstacles close to runway. For Burlington Airpark runway 32, there are some trees and a small channel ahead of runway 32. So if the airspeed is low, it may need to pump some power over the trees to clear the top of those trees. After the trees, there is a brook between runway and trees, so there are some turbulence sometimes. If you are going to fly at Burlington Airpark to land on runway 32, be prepared on those trees and the channel. When main wheels touch down, fully pull back the control column and apply full brakes. When you apply full brakes, please don't actually fully step on brakes. Because there is no ABS system on the Cessna 172, so tires may slide on the runway. The airplane's tires are not thick like the car's, so watch and hear when applying full brakes. The plane will stop quickly, so no need to really give too much pressure on brakes. The practicing is going to build a kind of feeling like we driving a car. Keep to feel on the flight, you will finally build your confidence.
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