Murphy Rebel

Flight Data

All four attempts to return to the 2905 ft runway easily made the runway (see above). See the reasons below.

Flight Analysis

Takeoff distance                                               Small. But Climb is Late

Difference between climb and glide angle   Very large (6.7 degrees)

Altitude lost in turn                                          Very Small

The dashed grey line coming from the 4,000 ft. runway distance is set at the glide angle of the plane. Any time the plane falls below this line, without power, it is not possible to return to the runway (4,000 ft is used as our standard way to compare planes).

In this case, since the climb angle was much larger than the glide angle, and the altitude lost in the turn was small, the plane could easily stay above the dashed grey line the entire flight. Even with the late climb out, the climb angle was so high compared to the glide angle, that the plane easily remained above the grey line.