I recently started renting a plane (PA-28-181
) from a new flight school and had to get checked out before I had the "OK" to rent.
I had brought 2 family members with me during my checkout because...
- They wanted to experience a small plane for the first time
- My intentions with the plane were to have the option to fly with a full load of passengers (which I couldn't do in the planes I was used to flying) so I wanted to experience what flying at max gross weight was like.
During the checkout, while in the runup area going through my checklist, the instructor encouraged me to go back through my checklist. Eventually after hearing this suggestion multiple times and not understanding what he was hinting to, he came out and said "You need to set your flaps to 2 notches because we're at max weight".
I hadn't heard this before and I'm not seeing a ton of discussions about this type of thing online. His point was, the flaps would increase lift since we're heavy - that makes sense to me... But they also increase drag.
Note: this was not a short-field takeoff. 5,503ft paved runway, although it was hot (90+ degrees fahrenheit).
So, this leaves me with 3 questions:
- Is this correct? When you're on the "heavy" end of the spectrum, should you be deploying flaps?
- If so, what would be the proper flap setting at max gross weight?
- Since, in this case, the point wasn't to clear an obstacle, would you simply climb out at
Vy
instead ofVx
?