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I happened to be at that one place Grayhawk talks about on a cool day in November. I happened to notice that the temperature was about 59F, the barometer was about 29.92 and naturally, the humidity was almost zero. An opportunity too good to pass up. So I took off from Furnace Creek in my Cardinal (a little below gross, I'll admit) and held it down to 200 AGL (zero MSL) over the salt flats until the speed stabilized. It got up to within a knot or two of the factory-claimed top speed. I took a picture of the airspeed indicator and altimeter for a keepsake. So it can be done. Gary
Fred, Yep, and flying in the ETE or backwards is no help. The problem of flying at sea level over land is well known as the only place in the US is abnormally hot too. Equine power (HP) is another weirdo since the FAA, in concert with the aviation-industrial complex, uses
sea level (baro setting) with dry air at 15C to rate it. The SAE is a bit more reasonable in that they use a higher temperature and a lower baro (I think they try the dry air trick also) that would lower the HP rating of aircraft engines by 5% (?, could be more) using their formulation. Egads, I blather on............ Grayhawk |
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