Less Power for More Aircraft Range

What if getting to B by burning as little fuel as possible is our objective? Or we want to stay aloft as long as possible? There are speeds to fly to achieve those goals, but well have to slow down, usually a lot. And those exact speeds, for best range and for best endurance, usually arent published for personal airplanes. A workaround is to simply use the lowest book power setting. If no limitations prevent it, best range or endurance usually is found at even lower power.

Joseph E. (Jeb) Burnside

Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Pilots can optimize flights for either maximum range (greatest distance per fuel unit) or maximum endurance (longest time aloft), both requiring specific slower airspeeds that are often not published for personal aircraft.
Best range speed is generally equivalent to the aircraft's power-off best-glide speed, requiring adjustments for changes in weight and accounting for headwinds (increase speed) or tailwinds (decrease speed).
Best endurance speed is the slowest speed needing the least power to stay airborne, found just above the region of reversed command; if not published, it can be determined by flight testing or approximated using the best-glide speed.
Achieving both maximum range and endurance fundamentally relies on minimizing total drag (induced and parasitic) for optimal fuel efficiency relative to the chosen objective.

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Among the universe of reasons we fly are aerobatics, pipeline patrol, aerial application and photography. Then there’s $100 hamburgers, plus plain old sightseeing. There’s also personal and business transportation from Point A to Point B, which implies a cross-country flight. Normally, we’ll want to make that trip as quickly as possible. But what if we don’t want to fly as fast as our flivver will go?

What if getting to B by burning as little fuel as possible is our objective? Or we want to stay aloft as long as possible? There are speeds to fly to achieve those goals, but we’ll have to slow down, usually a lot. And those exact speeds, for best range and for best endurance, usually aren’t published for personal airplanes. A workaround is to simply use the lowest book power setting. If no limitations prevent it, best range or endurance usually is found at even lower power.