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2 Answers

Top of Climb VFR

Asked by: 11065 views Commercial Pilot, Flight Instructor, General Aviation, Instrument Rating, Private Pilot, Student Pilot

Hi all,

I'm doing a VFR nav log and I confused on how to find my top of climb. I'm flying a 172R. Once I have the TOC, how should you incorporate that with a set heading point right after departure?

 

Thanks,

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2 Answers



  1. fugae fuit malleator on Mar 25, 2017

    If I understand your question correctly you are asking for the procedure to find the time, distance and fuel burn during the climb out to level off.

    Your POH has a chart in the performance chapter labeled as such. That chart will tell you how long it takes to get to your cruise altitude at a given speed. An example would be a climb from sea level to 8000 feet MSL. My POH for the C172SP says the aircraft will get 410fpm @ 72KIAS, take 14 minutes, use 3.0 gals, and travel 19 NM. Keep in mind these figures are based on zero wind (hardly ever reality). The trick now is to incorporate those numbers into your planned route of flight.

    Since the POH climb performance chart takes you to the 50ft obstacle then directly following that is the beginning of your nav log. If your first leg waypoint is 25NM away the first 19NM will be used climbing to the cruise altitude of 8000 feet as selected previously.
    Now its easy math for the remainder of the first leg of the nav log. You have 6NM remaining, but now utilize the cruise performance chart to calculate your time, speed, power setting, and fuel burn. Leg 1 complete. Move on to the next leg.

    That should get you going in the right direction. Please let me know if you were asking something different or if I can help further…

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  2. Jim F. on Mar 25, 2017

    There’s a handy Chapter 5 chart entitled “Time, Fuel, and Distance to Climb” which should help out tremendously.

    As for the second part of your question referring to incorporating that with the heading on departure: Let’s say you depart to the west, then you take the climb distance calculated from the chart, so that number of miles flown on heading 270 will be your TOC.

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