Had an interesting moment yesterday, I lost my airspeed indication on rotation off the runway. With 2600' of runway and wires on the end, it was a "keep going" situation.
This is when knowing the airplane really pays dividends. I know full power solo with full tanks will give me 2000'/min climb, so I just held about 1000'/min and knew I would be good. I leveled off and set 2500 rpm and 17" MAP which will always give me 100 knots, and came back around to a long final. Pulled all the power and dumped 20 degrees of flaps and stuffed the nose down to the same angle I use every time, and it worked this time just like every other, from my flare and float I'm guessing I was maybe 10 knots fast over the threshold. Turned out to be a non-event.
I chased the problem down to a broken TEE fitting where my pitot line splits behind the panel to feed my backup EFIS with airspeed data. This particular fitting came from the aviation department at Lowes Hardware, and after 135 flight hours it decided it had served its sentence and gave up.
Anyway - the upshot of all this - practice some slow flight occasionally without airspeed info, or just turn off the EFIS entirely and play with it. Learn how it feels and sounds, you never know when that experience and time spent will pay dividends.
This is when knowing the airplane really pays dividends. I know full power solo with full tanks will give me 2000'/min climb, so I just held about 1000'/min and knew I would be good. I leveled off and set 2500 rpm and 17" MAP which will always give me 100 knots, and came back around to a long final. Pulled all the power and dumped 20 degrees of flaps and stuffed the nose down to the same angle I use every time, and it worked this time just like every other, from my flare and float I'm guessing I was maybe 10 knots fast over the threshold. Turned out to be a non-event.
I chased the problem down to a broken TEE fitting where my pitot line splits behind the panel to feed my backup EFIS with airspeed data. This particular fitting came from the aviation department at Lowes Hardware, and after 135 flight hours it decided it had served its sentence and gave up.
Anyway - the upshot of all this - practice some slow flight occasionally without airspeed info, or just turn off the EFIS entirely and play with it. Learn how it feels and sounds, you never know when that experience and time spent will pay dividends.