TangoFox wrote:So being a Cessna guy, If the 205-6-7 sits on its ass when you load up you are too far aft with CG.

With the C207, sometimes even after you climb up into the pilot's seat, the nose won't come down. You fire up with the nose feeling like it's sticking straight up in the air. As long as it comes down with the engine runnin' you're good to go!

And.... It's within CG like that.

Gump

With the C207, sometimes even after you climb up into the pilot's seat, the nose won't come down. You fire up with the nose feeling like it's sticking straight up in the air. As long as it comes down with the engine runnin' you're good to go!

And.... It's within CG like that.

Gump

Been there, done that!
What an airplane..........

The lowly Sled...

Maybe I'm weird, but I always loved flying my Sleds. While lots of guys couldn't wait to move up the airplane food chain, I came back over and over, and was happy as could be. $65 an hour to fly 1100+ lbs of soda pop around at 145 MPH. Over some of the most breathtaking scenery on the planet... Hell yeah.

Gump

GumpAir wrote:The lowly Sled...
$65 an hour to fly 1100+ lbs of soda pop around at 145 MPH. Over some of the most breathtaking scenery on the planet... Hell yeah.

That right there is my aviation dream job.

TangoFox wrote:

obxbushpilot wrote:The Nose wheel on the FBO's rental plane (Cherokee 6) was coming off the ground during taxi.

So being a Cessna guy, If the 205-6-7 sits on its ass when you load up you are too far aft with CG.
Are the Cherokee's set up the same way?

I think if you are loading the plane and it falls on it's ass you should carefully monitor the W&B situation, but if you are not in your seat, then by no means is this a direct indication that you are out of the window (unless you know the plane's tendencies through experience as Gump does on the sled without having to calculate it).

However, one has to assume that all crew pax and cargo are in their assigned stations with regard to W&B when the aircraft is being taxied. If you operate that close the edge, then it's a good idea to make a few scenarios on paper for W&B as fuel is consumed to ensure that you don't fall into the too far aft CG while en route. I tend to be a little more pedantic about calculations since I'm an engineer, so I always make a spreadsheet for my airplanes and plot the CG on an embedded chart. You can easily change certain values and see what the CG looks like without having to manually re-crunch the numbers. Once you analyse it you may never need to perform another W&B for most situations.

A lot of light twins and most larger aircraft can take off with a full load of fuel at gross weight, but landing them with that load can over stress wing spars, landing gear and tires and Increase braking distance and reduce brake effectiveness. Aircraft with tip tanks added usually have some supplemental requirements to burn the tips off first so as the aircraft becomes more complex, you can expect that more consideration should be given to weight and balance other than an obvious sign like the nose wheel coming off the ground.

OX,

You are absolutely correct......one MUST take loading seriously in these things.

In Gump's 207 case, and in the situation I described with the 206, we both knew exactly where the CG was located, based on calculations, often based on multiple similar loads.

When you carry the same or very similar loads day after day, you get to the point where you know how much load a plane can legally carry, and where it has to be located.

I was on a small commuter once, a Beech 1900 (an airplane that is pretty easy to get out of CG. The copilot came back and asked a couple of us to move to more forward seats. A lady seated near me was questioning how safe this thing was, and I pointed out that the good news was that a competent crew knew their airplane and were ensuring the safety of this flight. Better than "ah, he'll, that's close enough, fire em up."

You also are correct that one must understand what happens to the airplanes CG as fuel is burned....an essential bit of knowledge. Some airplanes CG moves aft as fuel burns, some move forward, others pretty much stay where they started.

Fortunately, the big Cessnas stay pretty close to CG as fuel is burned.

But, as you suggest, be careful out there, folks....bad math or lack of math can hurt you. You don't necessarily need to calculate a weight and balance for every flight, but you DO have to KNOW that the airplane is loaded within legal weight and center of gravity limits.

MTV

When I flew the Caravan and Twin Otter, we were required to have paper work for W + B for every flight...6-8 flights a day. I had a palm pilot with a program on it and I could do all stations in less than a min. If it's quick and easy you are more likely to do it. Had weigh the cargo some times because the listed weight would sometimes not reflect the "extras" that were being shipped. We were non profit but not everyone working for us was.

In A through C model Pawnees, all the fuel and much of the hopper load was forward of the CG. They flew poorly at first, but it got better with each swath run.

I used to haul fuel to villages in a Pawnee during the winter months. Landing that thing full could be a handfull (or, footfull) at times. It was not my favorite thing to do.

Gump

I concluded a long time ago that as long as the total weight is OK in a 4-place Cessna, it will be in balance, too. But I like the CG to be more forward than aft, so I'll still put the heaviest person up front and the lighter ones in back.

I flew a 6-260 for awhile, and it was possible to run it out of its aft CG, though it took some effort to do that. It has a lengthy CG envelope, and even when it's within the aft limits, it's not a pleasant airplane to fly--way too sensitive in pitch. Fortunately both P and C put forward baggage areas in their long-bodies, which should be used to bring the CG forward some. I was instructing instruments to the owner of that 260, and I made the point that the forward baggage area was not just a place to stuff the airplane's cover--his first flight with a full load and an aft CG was a bit of a thrill for him, after we'd been flying around with just the 2 of us in it.

I've certainly learned over the years that either people lie about their own weights or they guess at it. I took a lady on an Angel Flight up to Sheridan, WY, who claimed to weigh "only" 160 lbs. Fortunately she was alone, so it didn't cause a problem, but my somewhat educated guess is that she was closer to 260. My very first Angel Flight some years ago, based on the figures AFW had given me, I should have been well under gross--a 14 year old kid and his Dad. Well, I think the Dad's weight was pretty close, but the kid had obviously grown since they last weighed him--easily 6'2" and though skinny, probably 190, not the 135 I'd been told. And their baggage was somewhat suspect, too, though probably not too bad. Good guess that we took off from KAPA at awfully close to gross--climb out on a 75 degree morning was less than stellar.

Cary

Oh, yeah, virtually ALL passengers will lie about their weights.

One summer we had a graduate student working for us, and she was really tiny. When it came time for her to go to the field the first time, I asked her what she weighed.....her response was "85 pounds." I said, "Gwen, what I need to know is what you weigh wearing clothes and those hip boots you've got on, not what you weighed when you get out of the shower." To which she replied, with hands firmly on hips and in a significantly elevated tone of voice "I weigh 85 pounds, RIGHT NOW, okay?" .

That girl was the hardest working and strongest per pound of body weight of any field crew we ever had. Tougher than nails. I later chatted with some of the other troops, and asked them what they thought she weighed, and two of them said they'd been there when she'd weighed herself, all geared up to go.....at 85 pounds.

Any pilot would love to have all his or her pax like Gwen.

MTV
MTV

mtv wrote:Oh, yeah, virtually ALL passengers will lie about their weights.

One summer we had a graduate student working for us, and she was really tiny. When it came time for her to go to the field the first time, I asked her what she weighed.....her response was "85 pounds." I said, "Gwen, what I need to know is what you weigh wearing clothes and those hip boots you've got on, not what you weighed when you get out of the shower." To which she replied, with hands firmly on hips and in a significantly elevated tone of voice "I weigh 85 pounds, RIGHT NOW, okay?" .

That girl was the hardest working and strongest per pound of body weight of any field crew we ever had. Tougher than nails. I later chatted with some of the other troops, and asked them what they thought she weighed, and two of them said they'd been there when she'd weighed herself, all geared up to go.....at 85 pounds.

Any pilot would love to have all his or her pax like Gwen.

MTV
MTV

I'll take a lightweight passenger that can carry me out of the bush any day!

A few weeks ago Foreflight came out with a built in W&B feature in its app. In getting it configured, I learned that the CG I had been using for my aircraft's empty weight was wrong. Although it felt like the incorrect W&B data my other app was giving me, I was actually first her aft in CG than I thought. Long hand math verified that Foreflight is correct and it was just a setup error on my part with the other app. I learned, though, that the 205 flies wonderfully even slightly aft of the envelope.

The W&B feature in Foreflight is really simple to use once set up. It makes doing a W&B calculation incredibly simple and fast. Like mentioned before, for common loads we don't do one for every flight, but when there is a question, now there really isn't a reason to not run one if you've got this app.

When I flew smoke jumpers, we had a girl that might have been 105 wet. For one of their final tests to qualify, they have to drop in and haul their gear out on their backs under a time limit. She was also their sawyer. All in all, she had well over her body weight on her back...and she knocked the hike out with no problem. Needless to say, I was impressed!