Sedona

Today my friend SP and I decided to fly up to Sedona for breakfast. Another beautiful flight to a beautiful airport. Great breakfast too. At about 10:00AM we needed to head back to the Valley of the Sun.

The automated weather briefing had a remark that the density altitude was 6,900 feet. Hmmm. That's pretty high. Didn't seem that warm out. The field elevation is just shy of 5,000. Well, if I can reach 70% of Vr halfway down the runway, we should be OK. Also try a short field takeoff. Full power, full brakes. RPMs are all the way up and release the brakes. Rolling. Slowly rolling. Thin air...

We used ALL of the runway and were maintaining 5,000 feet turning crosswind for a left downwind departure. Thank God the runway sits 500 feet above the town! It took a lot of time to climb up to 7500 feet for the trip home. If any new pilots are reading this and don't think density altitude and weight and balance are important, think again!

This wasn't a really close call but it is unnerving for a new pilot. Once we picked up some altitude, the flight was nice. It was good to get out of town for a couple of hours...

Flight time: 2.1

Total time: 82.6