FAA regulations - W&B

"George Patterson" wrote in message
...
Are you required to perform weight and balance checks before every
flight?

No. If I'm flying alone in an aircraft that has a useful load of over 800
pounds, it would be pretty silly to calculate W&B.

Sort of. The "weight" part is obviously satisfied, but the "balance" part
is not.

Of course, in most cases, a pilot will have done enough sample W&B
calculations to know when they need to consider the "balance" part for solo
or lightly loaded operations. This is probably true in your case as well.
But that doesn't mean you didn't do the "balance" part...it just means you
did it once (or a few times) and have applied the results to many subsequent
flights.

Even for the "weight" part, the few seconds it takes you to consider that
you're alone and well under the useful load of the aircraft would certainly
qualify as "perfoming a weight check". Just because you didn't write it
down or do formal calculations, that doesn't mean you didn't verify that you
were within the weight and balance envelope of the aircraft for that flight.

IMHO, the correct answer is "yes, you are required to perform weight and
balance checks before every flight". What those checks entail varies
according to the flight and prior experience with the aircraft. But a pilot
who can say, without making a (another) weight and balance calculation,
whether the aircraft is within limits or not has made a de facto check of
the weight and balance for that flight, whether or not they have made a
formal calculation using the exact fuel, oocupant, and cargo load for that
flight. (And conversely, a pilot who cannot make such a statement has not
fulfilled the preflight duties required of that pilot).

Bottom line: if you *know* that the aircraft is within the required limits,
then you've made the preflight weight and balance checks. And you ARE
required to *know* that the aircraft is within the required limits.

Pete