Nothing annoys me more than unnecessary memory work. I believe the entire Vspeed thing is a pain. We clearly need to know the appropriate indicated airspeeds (IAS) to achieve the steepest angle of climb, fastest rate of climb, best glide speed, stall speed with and without flaps and gear down. I don't know if they called them Vx, Vy, etc. when I learned to fly in 1966, my flight training school, Peninsula Air Services in Hamilton, Ontario did not.
In my mind it is much more important to know the appropriate IAS to clear an obstruction than to know that this airspeed is arbitrarily labelled "Vx". These V lables don't add to safety, they add to memory work.
Am I nuts? What do you think?
1 comment:
Mike:
When I learned at Victoria Flying Club in 1977 they didn't use them there either. I learned them on my own after ground school.
Looking at my collection of aircraft POHs they didn't mention them either in the 1960s. They seem to have crept into the POHs in the mid-1970s when the light aircraft certification standards, FAR 23, was amended to require that they be stated in the limitations sections.
V speeds are really for certification engineers, not pilots.
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