If I am off on any of these basic subjects let me know.
True airspeed increases as air density decreases, because the air is thinner which allows your aircraft to move more quickly through the air.
However, the same factors that affect density also affect aircraft performance.
On a hot day at my high elevation airport, my cruise TAS would be higher than on a winter day, but I wouldn't be able to reach more than 60% power. Conversely on a cold day I can have better performance but my TAS would technically be lower?
How do I make sense of this? It would seem like there could be a point where there is a perfect match of density to allow for best possible TAS without sacrificing performance.
On the cruise performance chart for GA aircraft (I'm going to use the CE-172) as my %BHP decreases my TAS increases. This is for cruise, obviously not climb. So am I right in saying that in the summer, it is more difficult to climb because of density altitude, but once we are in cruise then "performance" would overall increase because we are traveling faster through the air?
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