I've been seeing this mentioned in forums and in the POH for the aircraft, but I could never figure out what exactly power indicates since it apparently does not indicate throttle.

While cruising, is there any reason I shouldn't do full throttle while leaning it appropriately, as long as the RPM doesn't hit the red and I don't over speed, of course? What I'm most curious about, however, is what is considered "75% power" and how do I find that value.

In a default airplane, and disregarding flight economics, you should be fine. If you fly a study-level aircraft, wear and tear would be more significant if you fly as fast as you can. And if you try getting to a remote destination, setting power for best range instead of best speed may be necessary.

Peter 

I think the C172 modeled in the sim is equipped with a Lyocoming IO360 (I stands for Injection). I fly a DR400 with a Lycoming O360 (the version with a carburator) in real life. The O360 can be operatet with full power in climb according to the POH of the aircraft (a slight RPM reduction on the constantspeed prop is necessary). The aircraft I mentioned is a club aircraft and is operatet all the time with full power until cruise altitude. We didn't have any problems to reach the engines TBO of 2000 hours, operating like that.

I have no experience with the IO360 but I could imagine that it indeed can be operated at full power as well.

Edited December 17, 20241 yr by gassa

The term 'power' refers to the engine's power output as a percentage of its maximum rated horsepower. These values, adjusted for altitude and temperature, can be found in the cruise performance table of the POH.

I fly a G1000 Cessna 172 in real life.

First of all, as @outermarker has noted, you get power percentage from the tables as noted -- it's not displayed on the G1000. Even though 75% is the maximum cruise power, I wouldn't typically fly at that power setting. You're burning a lot more gas (and it's louder) for not a lot of extra speed. (And let's face it, if you want to get somewhere quickly, a 172 isn't the right plane in the first place.) A comfortable power setting is 2300 or 2350 rpm, which will give you around 100 KTAS at a reasonable fuel burn.

5 hours ago, Jmvars said:

While cruising, is there any reason I shouldn't do full throttle while leaning it appropriately, as long as the RPM doesn't hit the red and I don't over speed, of course?

Full throttle in a low-altitude cruise certainly wouldn't be done in the real world. I don't know if you'd hit the rpm redline (I obviously don't want to try), but you'll be outside of the green arc, which has its upper limit at 2500 rpm below 5,000 feet. I don't think you'd need to be worried about Vno -- a 172 is pretty draggy.

Thanks for the answers everyone, this makes it much clearer.

In most piston singles (fixed pitch prop) you can do a technique called "big mixture pull" which is effectively like setting 75% best power.

You lean out the mixture until the engine struggles a bit then enrichen it.

That's it.  But like martin said you're going to burn more fuel like that.