Narrative:

I took off from a touch and go and the aircraft climb rate dropped to near zero at about 200 ft AGL. I made a very low cross wind turn/leg and got almost to pattern altitude by the end of the downwind leg. The airplane behaved as if it had very little power. I checked to be certain that the gear and flaps were up. I was just a couple of knots below best angle speed.several hours later I think I now understand what happened; it was operator error. The red light on my electric tach lit up; it often does this for a very small excursion over the limiting RPM. The proper way to deal with this is to adjust the propeller control. I now think that I must have been pulling back the throttle instead of the propeller control to keep the rpm below red line.this; I believe; would explain the loss of power. If I am correct; this was a clear error on my part. Unfortunately; I cannot think of a way to prevent such an error. I have way more than 1000 hours in the airplane and I am current in it. I was out practicing landings as I did only a few days prior.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: C210 pilot reported a power loss after takeoff that may have been caused by improper propeller and throttle control.

Narrative: I took off from a touch and go and the aircraft climb rate dropped to near zero at about 200 ft AGL. I made a very low cross wind turn/leg and got almost to pattern altitude by the end of the downwind leg. The airplane behaved as if it had very little power. I checked to be certain that the gear and flaps were up. I was just a couple of knots below best angle speed.Several hours later I think I now understand what happened; it was operator error. The red light on my electric tach lit up; it often does this for a very small excursion over the limiting RPM. The proper way to deal with this is to adjust the propeller control. I now think that I must have been pulling back the throttle instead of the propeller control to keep the rpm below red line.This; I believe; would explain the loss of power. If I am correct; this was a clear error on my part. Unfortunately; I cannot think of a way to prevent such an error. I have way more than 1000 hours in the airplane and I am current in it. I was out practicing landings as I did only a few days prior.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.