Performance and limitations

What this lesson is for: teaching a student to work a chart for the airplane in front of them, and to understand what the answer does not tell them.

One rule governs this lesson and it is absolute. You will not reproduce a performance number from a flight manual, here or anywhere else in this program. Every figure comes from the book in the airplane, in front of the student. A number on a handout applies to an airplane that may not be the one you are sitting in.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, Area of Operation II, Task F.
• The flight manual for the airplane you will instruct in, the performance and weight and balance sections.
• FAA-H-8083-1B, Weight and Balance Handbook, plus the October 2025 addendum.

Deliverable: Work a full weight and balance and a takeoff distance for a realistic flight in that airplane: two adults, full fuel, a summer afternoon. Bring your working, not just the answer, and cite where each input came from. Then write one sentence on what would make the real takeoff roll longer than your figure.

1. Using charts, tables, and data to determine performance.
2. Factors affecting performance: density altitude, weight, wind, surface, configuration.
3. Weight and balance terms: basic empty weight, maximum gross weight, arm, moment, station, CG.
4. Methods for computing CG.
5. The aerodynamics underneath it.
6. What the chart answer does not tell you.
7. You teach.

• Teach a computation, working it live from the flight manual, to a Simulated Student who wants to know whether the number is safe, not whether it is correct.
• Handle a loading that is legal but close to a limit.

1. You teach a performance or weight and balance computation, working it live from the airplane's own approved material, for about ten minutes.
2. You reproduce no number from memory, and direct the Simulated Student to the source for every figure you use.
3. You state the assumptions behind a chart figure, including that it reflects a demonstrated result under specific conditions and a specific technique.
4. You handle a legal but marginal result by saying what you would do, rather than reporting that it is within limits.
5. You name two factors that would make the real result worse than the chart figure.
6. You deliver a self-critique before hearing your instructor's.

• Quoting a figure from memory. You know this airplane. You will still be wrong eventually, and the day you are, it will be in front of a student who believes you.
• Treating a chart number as a promise. It is a demonstrated figure, from a new airframe, flown by a test pilot, using a specific technique. Your student has none of those.
• Reading "within limits" as "safe". Those are different statements and a student needs to hear the difference from you.
• Computing a CG correctly and saying nothing about what it means to fly. Forward and aft CG feel different. Say so.
• Teaching density altitude as a formula. It is a hot afternoon at a high field with four people aboard.
• Forgetting that the airplane may not match its own paperwork. When was that weight and balance last revised?

Not applicable. Ground lesson.

This lesson has no Video Slots.