Have a look at the red cabin height gauge. It shows 13,300 ft on the ground. We are at La Paz. The rwy is only 13,116 ft. I was just able to get off with a Super VC10 at AUW.Can you????????????????????????vololiberista

Have a look at the red cabin height gauge. It shows 13,300 ft on the ground. We are at La Paz. The rwy is only 13,116 ft. I was just able to get off with a Super VC10 at AUW.Can you????????????????????????vololiberista

I used to have lots of trouble taking off with an Aerosur Boeing 727-200, until I discovered that my loadout was at almost 100%... Reduced that to 50%, and takeoff was suddenly a lot easier. Tried to reduce your fuel and payload?Also try this at Sucre (SLSU, also in Bolivia). LatinVFR made a very nice scenery for it. Also try landing there... At one end there is a valley, at the other end a hill. And if that doesn't complicate things, then the very sloped runway should make it even more difficult.

Just do what we did in the real world. You have all the passengers disembark who are not cute and sexy. You tell them to run alongside the aircraft and if it looks like it's going to get into the air, you open the door and let them jump in. If not, you take off and party with all the cool pax. The others can catch the next flight or take a train. It always worked for me! :( Seriously, the previous posting is correct. You need to calculate density/altitude, minimum safe fuel for your planned flight and then adjust pax and cargo load until you are in the safe t/o and climb-out regime. If you don't have the real figures, then just try a few configurations until it works for you. (Or turn off crash detection and just keep rolling until finally you get into air somewhere before your destination!) :( Main thing to remember - have fun! It's a simulation so don't sweat it....

I quite deliberately loaded up until the pax were clinging to the roof and the wing leading edges!!!!!!I used the standard short field take off technique which allowed the VC10 to reach its minimum unstick speed thus I was able to get it off the ground substantially before Vr.What was also interesting was having to increase the cabin pressure to 6,000ft after take-off. In real life the crew would have been on oxygen during the taxi and take-off!!!vololiberista

I quite deliberately loaded up until the pax were clinging to the roof and the wing leading edges!!!!!!I used the standard short field take off technique which allowed the VC10 to reach its minimum unstick speed thus I was able to get it off the ground substantially before Vr.What was also interesting was having to increase the cabin pressure to 6,000ft after take-off. In real life the crew would have been on oxygen during the taxi and take-off!!!vololiberista

Very interesting point about the crew using oxygen at such a high altitude - that would make sense if they had not had time to acclimate to the altitude. Your pax loading procedure sounds very close to most real-world airlines these days! When you say it unsticked before Vr, I'm assuming you're referring to a standard Vr figure rather than one calculated for your actual conditions? You wouldn't want to get airborne in any aircraft below the actual, calculated Vr as the aircraft would not have sufficient airspeed for the flight controls to be fully effective. The last thing you want to happen is to be staggering at high AOA just short of the stall speed with mushy controls at low altitude. (Unless you're a crop duster in which case that is pretty much the norm) :( If the short field technique involves getting the nose wheel off the ground early, you would still not want to "rotate" at that speed as all you will do is get excessive drag due to a high AOA and may find yourself staggering into the air at the back end of the speed/drag envelope - a great way to get yourself killed. The trick is to get the nose wheel just off the ground, keep moving the stick forward as airspeed increases and the elevators get more "bite" and maintain a low nose attitude so you don't get excessive drag but have enough AOA to reduce the weight footprint of the main wheels. Then ease it off the ground at Vr and keep a shallow attitude to get some more airspeed before going into a normal climb out attitude.You've definitely got an intriguing thing going here - you've inspired me to go fire up the sim and see how it goes.

If the short field technique involves getting the nose wheel off the ground early, you would still not want to "rotate" at that speed as all you will do is get excessive drag due to a high AOA and may find yourself staggering into the air at the back end of the speed/drag envelope - a great way to get yourself killed. The trick is to get the nose wheel just off the ground, keep moving the stick forward as airspeed increases and the elevators get more "bite" and maintain a low nose attitude so you don't get excessive drag but have enough AOA to reduce the weight footprint of the main wheels. Then ease it off the ground at Vr and keep a shallow attitude to get some more airspeed before going into a normal climb out attitude.

As you say just keeping the weight of the nose wheel and then stopping the a/c from over rotating as the airspeed builds up. However the climb out is initially quite shallow. No noise abatement rubbish !!! (The VC10 doesn't like to conform anyway!!!)Also remember that you can't pressurise the cabin until after take-off. As that would make it much heavier!!!!!vololiberista

In case you're interested in flying under such conditions, you may want to have a look at a relevant project of mine, called "The Bold & the Beautiful Project" (1 & 2), which puts together the most difficult/dangerous/beautiful airports and approaches of the world (flown by 737s). You can find info in my signature but you can also directly visit Project's 1 Legs here and Project's 2 Legs here. It might give you an idea for your next flight!Blue skies.

Have a look at the red cabin height gauge. It shows 13,300 ft on the ground. We are at La Paz. The rwy is only 13,116 ft. I was just able to get off with a Super VC10 at AUW.Can you????????????????????????vololiberista

When I read this on the 4th I knew I had to try it out as well. Finally found the time to do it. I wanted to see if it could be done with a fully loaded Tupolev Tu-154M and a normal fully loaded VC-10 (not the super one - just to be different).First the Tupolev:Here we are at SLLP El Alto International - 13,325 ft!It took the whole 13,123ft runway, but I managed to get her up. As 'vololiberista' mentioned - Kept the weight off the nose wheel and slowly got it up just a bit during the takeoff run and kept it there. It was possible to rotate before Vr (in the Tu-154 about 250kmh minimum - depending on conditions/load etc...). I did go into the red on the Angle of Attack (AoA) and G-meter indicator, but she took off ok.Hard part is not over yet. Now we have to keep her up. Its really easy to stall and crash in this situation. We've taken off below Vr and fully loaded. Try to keep the nose down and maintain just a bare climb at first until speed has built up, need to maintain just the bare minimum AoA to keep us up and climb - may have to even completely level off for a short time if speed starts slowing. Anything more will stall the aircraft and with just a few meters off the ground, recovery will not be possible. I was so busy doing this I couldn't get around to raise the gear as quickly as usual, I let it hang out for a couple of seconds longer. Should have raised the gear ASAP to reduce drag and help climbing out. Living it out for those few seconds was a mistake, but I couldn't help it on my first run at this - too busy flying and I've never spend so much time close to the ground when taking off in a Tu-154, usually I just rocket up. Nevertheless managed to take off OK and survived!Now the fully loaded VC-10.Same procedure:Again took the whole runway but also manged to take-off. Take off performance was similar between the two aircraft. Fantastic planes!With 50% fuel (told some of the passengers to jump off too) it was a whole different story and a much easier take off:In the real world there's no way I would attempt this with a fully loaded aircraft. However I had a blast trying it out in FS9. Thanks for the idea 'vololiberista'.

What was/is your MTO? For the Super VC10 it's 151,960 kilograms !!!!!!!!!You need to be careful with the rotation to not over rotate. With the SVC10 I ditched any noise abatement procedure and climbed out initially with full power at 500fpm until past V2 then gradually easing the a/c into its normal climb profile. Which at that immediate altitude can be 4,000fpm!!!vololiberista

What was/is your MTO? For the Super VC10 it's 151,960 kilograms !!!!!!!!!You need to be careful with the rotation to not over rotate. With the SVC10 I ditched any noise abatement procedure and climbed out initially with full power at 500fpm until past V2 then gradually easing the a/c into its normal climb profile. Which at that immediate altitude can be 4,000fpm!!!vololiberista

MTO in the Tu-154M - 104,000 kilograms, max.Got to give it to the VC-10 - 151,900 kg is very impressive. It does have one more engine over the Tu-154.Nevertheless the Tu-154M is also a fantastic climber:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1uWFfOO0V8http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipDcRBmu8Kg&feature=player_embedded#at=105with a 950 km/h+ top speed!Both of these are brilliant aircraft.Sounds like we used similar procedures when climbing out.

Very nice!!! But!!!!!!!!!This has to take the biscuit as one says. When the VC10 gets onto the runway remember to turn up your volume to max!!!!!!!vololiberista :-)

http://www.videosurf.com/video/vc10-at-manchester-airport-1239659482?vlt=ffext&vlt_position=rightrail

Excellent! What a Soundtrack.