Video
Density Altitude WeatherXplore.mp4
(2020)
Description
Why Density Altitude Matters
Why all this matters to us as general aviation pilots is that all of the airplanes we fly experience decreasing performance as altitude increases. This is more pronounced on some aircraft than others (things like turbochargers or superchargers can help somewhat), but most of the naturally aspirated engines we fly (engines without turbo or superchargers) experience a large decrease in power as altitude increases, as well as the decrease in available air molecules for our wings and propellers.
Keywords
- aviation education,
- training,
- weather,
- aviation meterology,
- lori brown,
- wmu,
- aviation,
- education,
- flight instruction density altitdue
Disciplines
Publication Date
Summer 2020
Comments
There are lots of things we can do as pilots to mitigate the effects of high density altitude on our airplanes. Some of them include:
- Waiting to fly early in the morning or later in the evening with cooler temperatures
- Waiting for headwinds for takeoff and landings
- Reducing the weight of our aircraft (making several trips with less gear rather than one trip with lots of heavy gear)
Outfitting our airplane with better equipment (such as a climb prop or a more powerful engine).
Citation Information
Lori Brown and Jon Kotwicki. "Density Altitude WeatherXplore.mp4" (2020) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/lori_brown/19/