cforst513 said:
... i notice that the airspeed indicator was not coming off of 0 kts. instead of electing to abort my take off and apply the brakes, i took off.
...
according to ATOMATOFLAMES, you need it for VFR flight. did i make the right decision or should i have applied the brakes, aborted, and gone back to the ramp? what would you do?
First off, let's dispel the little myth of "What would you do?" Quite honestly, we probably don't know what we'd do. We can sit in our comfortable chairs and weigh the facts as we know them now and pontificate about what we SHOULD HAVE done, or what we envision ourselves in a perfect world wanting to do, but when the exact circumstances present themselves to us unexpectedly, what we ACTUALLY do in that split second of decision might be quite different. Take comfort in that, then, if the course of action you took and the course of action you wish you would have taken are not quite the same.
The vague description of the position in which you found yourself when the airpseed indicator was discovered to be inoperative makes it difficult to give a simple answer to your question about the correctness of your decision to continue the takeoff or reject/abort.
If at the time you affirmed the instrument failure you had sufficient runway ahead of you to safely stop the airplane without taking any undue risks, I believe (there it is, the opinion - - take it with a grain of salt) the better course of action would have been to stop the airplane. I don't say this because I think the airplane requires an instrument to fly. Clearly, it does not. I say this because the FAA has determined what is legally required to fly, and we fly at the pleasure of the FAA. Although it was a split-second decision, you decided to go fly without the required equipment.
If the determination that the airspeed indicator was inoperative came AFTER the point where you could still safely stop the airplane, then you made the correct decision to continue the takeoff. The requirement of equipment was superceded by the safety of aborting the takeoff. You also made the correct decision to terminate the flight by bringing it back around to land.
The thing is, only you can know if you made the correct decision, because you're the only one that was there. Right or wrong, you learned from the experience, and in sharing it, we have all pondered the question and learned as well. One poster described an airpeed indicator that was "teasing" him, fluctuating from 0 to 40 before actually going to zero -- how would we handle that? How long would we go before we decided it was not going to work? If we're taking off on a 12,000 foot runway, the safety of an abort is enhanced. How will our decision-making be affected by a 6,000 foot runway? By a 3,000 foot runway? By a 1,000 foot runway? Would crosswinds affect the decision? Would it be affected by a wet or snow-covered runway? Does it matter if it's tarmac, gravel, or grass?
If in retrospect you determine that you had the opportunity to safely abort the takeoff, and that you made the wrong decision ( not a problem, we've all made wrong decisions), then you should do the aviation community a favor by submitting the NASA ASRS form. By doing so, you can share your experience with the folks who study these events, and perhaps provide some useful insights into how we as an industry can improve decision-making skills. It certainly can't hurt you. The only potential is benefit.
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