Hi Again Bob,

Just one of the other questions I got wrong - it was to do with the Gross Weight at Take Off - I had made the assumption that Gross (2544 kg) in this case INCLUDED Passengers AND Fuel (as in the ordinary meaning of Gross), but it appears that in this case it does NOT include passengers, but Does include fuel. I am confused? Please help - what I am doing wrong?

I would have thought that the BEW weight might have been meant instead of Gross, unless it was BEW plus fuel, but would that be gross T/O weight, as Gross would include Passengers and pilot?

See attached

Brook

Gross weight means the combined weight of all of the items of fuel on board including the fuel. In this question, you are checking the gross weight at take-off and also, after SUBTRACTING the weight of fuel, checking again at ZFW.

Bob

Thanks Bob - in this example attached the passengers have been added AFTER the gross weight. Is that supposed to be the case?

Brook

In this question an existing gross weight is given which would include all passengers, cargo and fuel. The question then says IF you add two more passengers what effect will that have on the centre of gravity condition. Therefore you take the existing gross weight and add two more passengers so that you can see what, if any, problem would be caused. That would create a new gross weight consisting of the original gross weight given in the question, PLUS the two extra passengers.

The idea is to check the new gross weight with the two extra passengers to see if that causes a centre of gravity problem. It needs to be checked both with and without fuel because the CAR says that an aircraft must remain in balance at take-off and at Zero Fuel Weight.

Bob

Thanks Heaps Bob, Richard and Sidpilot for all your help! I'm off to sit an exam....!