When at full throttle and pulling back on the stick does not result in climb, try pushing forward on the stick just a bit.

contactflying wrote:When at full throttle and pulling back on the stick does not result in climb, try pushing forward on the stick just a bit.

Know your aircraft's performance limits and build healthy margin in to your departure planning. You do not want to discover that, shortly after taking off, your airplane does not have what it takes to climb over obstacles. I've been there, and take my word for it, you don't want to go...

I departed upstream from Stehekin, WA into a stiff downstream headwind in a 170B loaded to about 120 pounds under gross weight. It was a bit warm, but at 1230' field elevation, the numbers looked perfectly acceptable for departure.

Once we were on the wing, I leveled to accumulate some zoom reserve energy and began climbing out of the 2600 foot strip at 400 fpm. Once out of ground effect, we began to sink back towards the surface. Lowering the nose any further was not an option with the 100' timbers quickly approaching, and insufficient runway to land and abort. I had to pull back for a 55-60 mph climb or else we were going in. I don’t think we had a 50 ft./min. climb rate with respect to the earth. The invisible issue was that the downstream breeze carried with it a roughly 350 fpm downdraft.

My pal in the lightly loaded Husky cleared the trees by more than 200'.

Don't get in a situation where you need to, but cannot climb by building extra margin during the planning phase.

We all make mistakes, or will at some point in our flying career. Had you not had the zoom reserve airspeed from staying level in low ground effect, you would have flown into terrain. You would probably still be here, having flown all the way to the crash, but the extra energy not from a more powerful engine is what saved you even from that.