Yeah, by all means increase your speed and climb out a bit faster. Please maintain that ‘five extra knots for the wife and kids’. I’m not knocking basic common sense applications.
Showing off: It’s an entirely different concept when you hold it down at zot feet for as long as possible, before pitching up your nose at a ridiculously high angle, quickly losing that speed again, and risking going below your optimum climb speed. Then you’re in a world of hurt, behind the drag curve etc etc … doing things that you may have never even done up at a safe height.
I did similar stunts when I had a few hundred hours, and I learned before I ever got killed. There are guys and girls with thousands of hours, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have learnt their lessons.
In my opinion (and that’s all it is) I think that every pilot should do a course in Unusual Attitude recovery. They should experience incipient spin recovery, accelerated stalls in a greater than 1G situation, stalls in turns, and manouevering on the buffet. All at a nice and safe height, with an appropriate instructor. Then you may re-assess your previous ‘stunts’.
Who knows, you might even fall in love and continue on with a course in aerobatics. It’s the worst that could happen 🙂 Love flying, just please don’t die doing it wrong.
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