Glad to hear you made it safely. Probably the best lesson learned is
that the real world performance of a 30 year old plane rarely matches
the numbers in the POH, and that when operating near the edge of the
envelope - there is little margin for error (or Mother Nature).

The takeoff distance charts in the POH for my '71 PA28-180 stop @ 7k
density altitude. Extrapolating above the highest values in the table
give an ~1250ft ground run and ~2800ft to cross a 50ft obstacle.

Also, best ROC @ gross @ 7500ft DA is less than 300fpm. Not much
margin for downdrafts.

-Nathan


On 21 Jun 2004 00:27:36 -0700, (Dave
Jacobowitz) wrote:

Return Leg ( KBIH - KPAO )
-----------------------------

Because of a passenger's constraint, we could not return on Monday morning
in similar cool air conditions that we had gone out in. I was not super-
happy with this, but I aquiesced to an early evening departure on Sunday,
around 7pm. I thought that this would be a good compromise between waiting
for the air to cool and not crossing the mountains in the dark.

As PIC, I think this was the biggest mistake of my trip, and I'll be
thinking about it for a good while to come.

I got a briefing, and a 15 minute-old PIREP from a Centurion at 12.5
said the ride through the Mammoth pass was smooth so I felt good about
the crossing.

We took off from BIH rwy 30 at about 7. The wind was light and variable,
and 30 seems to be the calm runway there, and it's the longest. The
density altitude was about 7500. The POH made it clear that I could
comfortably escape in those conditions, so I tried it, and regret doing
so.