Richard Lamb wrote

I think somebody may have overlooked the effect of that 'snap the
whip' manouver on the tow plane too.

I'd almost expect the sudden increase in drag to stall the 747...

Richard

The airplane is op specs limited to +2.5 g's and -1.0g. Not worried
about stalling a 747. There's so much mass the tow rope would break
before any instant degradation would show up on the airspeed
indicator. Airspeed trends take A LONG LONG time to develop on this
bird. It's not like anything you've every flown before. I use the
analogy of surfing on a mountain of metal to describe a visual
approach on the 74 because the previous vector it was on before you
made the change is what it will be on for a number of seconds. By the
time you've pulled off the thrusters because you're too fast, the huge
inertia will keep it accelerating. You must use speed brakes or drop
the gear to arrest the buildup and start a deceleration trend.
(anticipate desired changes big time!) But if you're deep into flaps
already and the wheels are already down; it's a go around if you can't
get below speed for final flaps! Speed brakes can't be used down
here. You need to have this airplane stable at the Outer Marker or
you can get hopelessly out of phase with the airspeed trends in a
hurry. If you think you're headed for a stall, going to full power,
Scottie, will, after a number of seconds delay, start pushing the
mountain faster again. The power to weight of this thing at mid
weights below gross is just incredible. But the shear mass of the
mountain will always delay a desired acceleration direction reversal.

You cruise at Mach .86, typically ~550kts IIRC, stall might be at
about 180kts clean at heavy weights. But you would want a cruise
climb of say mach .82 to mach .84 to conserve fuel and keep a good
buffet boundary margin at higher altitude. What we always did was
stay at max climb power for a while at the target altitude to crawl up
to .86. But in this case, I'd think you'd want to try to get as close
to .92 before release in a turn. You can pull G/A power in this thing
rated anyway, for five minutes. Then you'd have to notch down to MCT.
Very do-able. If there's too much drag on the line, then maybe put
the thing on top like the Space Shuttle?

Anyway I always marvelled at the fact an old 747-100 could carry the
Space Shuttle around on it's back. Maybe that's the real way to go.

pac