Climb Out Tactics

Source: Wally Moran

Bob:

"How about as we climb out - what are some of the ways that we can demonstrate that we're a pretty classy pilot as opposed to some yahoo out, you know, running around the air patch?"

Wally:

"Well, one of the things we can be looking at very closely is to make sure our wings are level. We need to check to see if our wings are level during the climb out and if we are using the proper amount of rudder to compensate for the left turning tendencies during the climb.

If we're compensating for those tendencies by holding our right wing down instead of holding in right rudder, we're slipping. And if we're slipping during the climb out, we're not climbing as efficiently as we could. We're climbing slower. So check those wings; make sure they're level. Make sure you have the proper amount of rudder in, and you'll get better performance out of the airplane.

Naturally, as we're climbing we're going to make nice gentle turns. We're going to clear in front of the airplane from time to time. But as we ease the nose down to look for traffic we want to do that nice and gently. We don't want to put our passengers on the ceiling as we do that. We want to do it so that they don't even recognize that we're doing it."

Bob:

"I'm really glad you emphasized the clearing, Wally, because we're so very vulnerable with the nose of the airplane stuck up in the air, for a midair collision. It's probably not something we're consciously thinking about, but we'd better integrate it into our flying because we're going to be pretty busy at that point."

Wally:

"Again, it needs to become a habit. And we still live in a see-and-be-seen environment. And if we aren't checking over that nose from time to time, we're not doing our job as airmen."