Q: If a pilot departs an airport with a relatively high density altitude on a gusty day, what climb speed should the pilot use, and when should it be established?
A: The principle of adding a few knots—10, or half the gust speed, or whatever your favorite rule of thumb suggests—to approach speed applies to takeoff and initial climb as well. It’s simply a matter of putting as much distance between you and an inadvertent stall as possible. But the takeoff case is potentially more troublesome.
When approaching to land, you’re slowing down from a speed with wide safety margins, and you can keep up your speed if the air-speed fluctuations caused by gusts and wind shear begin to make you uneasy. Taking off, you have to fly through the very band of speeds you avoid on landing; furthermore, you don’t know what you’ll encounter until you’re in the air.
