I was waiting for Anthony to post this but its been a few days so maybe he forgot:
Flying a Piaggio P180 Avanti to 35000ft. A Pilot Perspective

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzpNlrNj8Do

(Not sure why the "YouTube" embed doesnt work)

Looking good, Antho!

Nice vid, Richard!

Wrong tags [url][/url] for the utube link. Should be [YouTube][/YouTube]



Looking good, Antho!

Nice vid, Richard!

Here you go.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/KzpNlrNj8Do[/youtube]

Great! Thanks. Good to know for next time.

For the record: it's not my video. I just found it and I recognised the tail-number.

Oh wow. He had not sent me this link yet.

Funny story - I met this guy b/c he posted on instagram a pic of me taxiing in front of him one day and a friend that knew both of us said we should meet.

He wanted to fly right seat if it was ever open, so he hopped a trip with me to visit a customer.

I like flying with people like this. I would never be able to make this sort of content. Adam - we need to fly together again so you can do another video!

In other news, took 8 people to Cali this weekend. 1650lbs of people and bags, plus ~2400lbs of fuel put us right at gross. So 12,100 on the roll on a warmish (58F) degree winter day from Denver. Rotated at 120 and appeared to be right where book said we would be takeoff roll wise. Climb rates a little slower than usual but we still managed 375-380kts at FL320.

On way home, we were a little lighter as some folks airline'd elsewhere, but left a 4.8k ft strip at 11,700lbs. Per the book, we should have been good on balanced field calcs. Everything worked as advertised but I will say, the runway end is approaching rapidly at rotation speed. Had we been heavier, we could have gotten off but not had balanced field.

What was your ground roll and your BFL?
I've be hard pressed to give up my short fields, but that speed could be addicting.

See attached chart. My empty weight is 7975. Full fuel is 2800lbs. You can figure out roll from there.

I should have added, this is the supplement for the gross weight increase. Sea level balanced field chart attached along w lower gross ground roll

Thanks! That's very helpful.

It looks like it won't work for me. I'm literally off the accel-go chart during the summer, and a few of my favorite destinations are just too short.

The way they do the feet->meters conversion is bizarre.

Interestingly, the distances shown on the supplemental chart are somewhat longer than on the original charts - they also changed the Vr speed.

On the original chart, Vr for 11,550 lbs is 106 kts. On the supplemental, Vr for 11,551 lbs is 112 kts. Which leads to a longer distance (as you'd expect...).

Example: 25*C at S.L. (no wind, no slope), 11550 lbs on original shows Ground Roll as 2200 feet. Same conditions (11551 lbs!) on supplemental shows Ground Roll as 2500 feet.

Interesting observation Jon. The plane accelerates very rapidly to about 110kts. Above that, the runway acceleration is slower and it feels like you are really chewing up the ground.

I found an old AOPA pilot where they tested the original Avanti, some of the first articles that ended up stateside. The planes had lower gross weight limits and they talked about rotating at 101kts if memory serves.

Would love to know how flight testing played into the changing numbers. Rotating closer to 100, the plane comes off easily but sits in what feels like super ground effect for a few seconds while it accelerates, then climbs away. The Malibu felt similar. When you rotate faster, it just smoothly climbs away with no pause.

Yeah, would be interesting to know about flight testing and why they changed the technique. In particular, why they changed the supplemental but didn't back fill it to the original.

Was just looking more carefully based on your description of the acceleration. It looks like the ground roll with the higher Vr changed significantly on the new chart, but the total distance over 50' is very close to the same. So it must just like to accelerate in ground effect using the lower Vr.

I was told by someone who flew once with a Piaggio test pilot that the shortest ground roll is achieved by holding full back pressure till the plane pops off. Keep back pressure despite front wing stalling and let it slowly accelerate, then climb away. That apparently beat the book numbers . Downside is the stalling fwd wing creates a racket and a lot of vibration.....