a PBY will carry a two thousand pound over load with no real problem.

[Slick Goodlin]

It’s in the FARs that aircraft under 12,500 pounds are automatically allowed an upgross of 15% just by being in Alaska. I guess the folks at the FAA figured the low density altitude there took care of performance concerns and it was far enough within engineering safety margins for certification.

I also read somewhere about a MU-2 Solitaire that had big enough ferry tanks installed that it took off 60% over MTOW.

[David MacRay]

Well, I hope I am just not explaining myself very well. Then again if I’m too dumb that’s fine. Let me know if I should quit fooling around and leave flying to people qualified to do it.

I don’t think a 172 would come apart on takeoff because of 400 extra pounds I believe it should not have on board.

I’m saying I am conservative when loading up a small airplane. I would rather make extra fuel stops, to ensure half a tank of fuel or what ever the maximum weight I can take on, is plenty for me to land with extra fuel left after each leg, than fly overweight. I prefer lots of reserve and when going somewhere, I keep an eye on how long I have been flying for, compare it to how long I calculated it should be taking, then I will be aware if winds start making me late, I figure that might mean the plane will use more fuel to get a certain distance.

I’m not interested in landing on 36 street because the engines stopped and the plane can not make it to the airport ahead.

Because I fly for fun I have the luxury to make decisions like that.

Shoot, the 7ECA has a hard enough time climbing at gross sometimes. I was looking through the POH this morning reading up on procedures and it has 118 hp.

In fact I saw a picture once of a Piper single that was unable to lift off at Calgary Springbank. It had something like 1500 pounds of soda pop and food that a fellow was planning to fly somewhere. The only known damage to the plane was the nose gear broke off when he hit the survey marker for the runway centreline.

I don't recall exactly how much overweight exemptions I used to get ferrying PBY's all over the world but it was in the thousands of pounds range.

Was never refused an exemption so I guess they figured if I could get it airborne I could keep going.

Are you suggesting I don’t even need to even do a weight calculation on a light single because we can’t fit enough in it to exceed the over gross takeoff weight of a PBY? Maybe that’s what the guy with the Piper at Springbank figured.

I personally think a PBY can take more weight than some other planes.

I used to think the Piper Warrior IIs the flying club had were pretty tough. They were very solid planes thirty years ago. I still like them and would fly one. I would even own them if I found one and things worked out.

After watching a video of someone wiggling loose wings on a Piper plane, I was startled and would physically check the wings before each flight.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Are you suggesting I don’t even need to even do a weight calculation on a light single because we can’t fit enough in it to exceed the over gross takeoff weight of a PBY?

No I am not suggesting you do that, I am suggesting that one use common sense when loading an airplane based on its known flying performance and what you plan on doing with it each flight.

By the way a PBY will carry a two thousand pound over load with no real problem.

Hell it holds a hundred us gallons of oil in its oil tanks and I always filled them full before any long flight.

And the longest flight I ever did in one non stop , was nineteen hours and ten minutes.

[David MacRay]

Let’s recap.

I was renting a Cessna 172 from a flight training unit that made me fill out a weight and balance form and record the gross weight result on a large piece of paper that required an instructor’s signature prior to letting me fly.

Years of similar instruction may have caused me to be under the impression that calculating the gross takeoff weight is important.

I do a preflight inspection and find out because they made a mistake, the plane was over maximum gross takeoff weight, when I had requested the plane be fuelled to half full tanks.

Then after being lectured about making sure the plane is always within weight and balance limits for quite some time, instead of asking to have the unnecessary fuel removed, I should have had “common sense” and just tried to see if I was miss lead and find out for myself if it would fly?

[Liquid_Charlie]

First, the issue of weight and balance on light singles and even light twins is a relatively new thing. From the time I started to flying until I flew and aircraft over 12,500 lbs I can't remember ever doing a weight and balance before a flight. This included my private and even my commercial check rides. LOg books were completed with U/G or W/L (under gross or within limits) in the weight log book column. We would do a full day of flying and as many as 10 plus trips and do the log book over a beer at end of day.

I know times change and now such operations would be frowned upon, a little

The wing spar issues and fatiguing are generally associated with age, cycles and low level turbulence. My scary experience with this is when the Herc water bomber shed a wing. I was just doing my initial ground school on the C130 at the time. It did not effect the H model, they had changed the wing design from the A&B models, much to my relief.

[David MacRay]

Sure old is bad, all the instructors tell us that. It would be nice if we could get some active instructors here but they probably don’t want to be mocked for flying planes merely at maximum gross takeoff weight for a living. Sissies!

The thing with older planes is most of the PBYs are in museums or cut up to make beverage cans. On the other hand…

It’s pretty common to see more than one old Cessna flying around. Particularly if it’s a flying school. Some of us like Piper products even if the schools don’t. I mean sure, they don’t teach in the really old planes that have conventional gear but still.. if they can find a nice C-172M they might even install a couple of little TVs and away they go.

I have not heard about as many Cherokees with loose wings, maybe because they won’t fly heavy enough. The Arrows are more capable of being loaded to the point you might harm the poor things taking off too heavy.

If someone put an extra two thousand pounds in a Warrior II or a 172 they will just taxi really fast. Perhaps off the end of the runway into the fence.

[TwinOtterFan]

At our FTU when you go to sign out the plane they have a little top down diagram of the plane and you can type a weight for each seat and rear baggage compartment. Then the database coralates that with the estimated fuel in the plane and gives you a W&B graph, it's actually a pretty neat setup.

Also, I will eventually be an instructor on this page if I have it my way.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Why is it necessary to fill out a W&B form if the airplane is obviously within the W&B limits, like when you are flying it solo with half tanks?

[Chuck Ellsworth]

When I owned a flying school I called my instructors aside and told them that making a customer waste time filling out a W&B for every flight made me think they and their students were to stupid to use common sense so the practice was finished if they wanted to fly my airplanes.

They complained to TC and I got a call from Vancouver TC telling me I could not issue such a order.

I told the TC inspector to go fuck himself and hung up the phone....

...never heard anymore from TC after that.

[TwinOtterFan]

The only thing I have seen it kind if useful for is when you want a plane in the utility category you can quickly reference the graph and if the little dot is inside the utility curve your good to go. Other than that two adults of average weight each with a flight bag in a 4 seat aircraft should be pretty easy to guess that it will be fine.