Ask The Pilot

[JohnM]

Canberra rarely posed an issue with traffic, the one exception I had was an F18 departure, the only way I could fit him in was to require a climb to 20000 ft within the confines of CBR airport, the F18 met the requirement.

And I bet the F18 driver had fun accommodating your instruction.

 

[harvyk]

<snip>
Light aircraft people might keep roads or cleared areas in mind,
<snip>

Yes, we sure do (well meant to at least). Whilst I'm still student pilot, the standard pre-takeoff briefing I have with the instructor in the 172 is what we'll do in the event of an engine fire or failure. We talk about what options are available at what point of the takeoff, and that includes the available paddocks at the end of the runway.

My instructor has also put me to the test on this. We were taking off on runway 35 at CBR when without warning he pulled the engine back to idle shortly after we lifted off and said "you've lost your engine, deal with it". Unfortunately landing back on 35 was no longer an option as there was not enough of it left to get the plane down and stopped in time, nor was turning back an option as we were below 1000ft AGL. Whilst we'd discussed what we'd do no more than about 60 seconds earlier, actually realising what was going on (and avoiding the temptation to push on the throttle), picking a field to land in, and getting the plane to best glide speed all within a few seconds was an interesting experience. Of course once I'd gotten the aircraft to best glide and aiming towards a suitable field, the instructor brought the throttle back to climb, and we climbed away.

He'd cleared doing this with ATC before he did this to me, but even then I wasn't expecting it.