I think if you would look really closely, the airspeed would stabilize at a
pretty much given number with a fixed elevator
position. Whether you climb, cruise or descend would depend on power. The
rest is probably the phugoid motion
causing the airspeed variations. One of these times do some experimenting
with blocked controls. Or disconnected
controls. You can simulate blocked by using various sized stuff to keep the
stick fixed. To simulate disconnected, let
go. I found I could easily control my aircraft by using flaps instead of
elevator. In fact it seemed
so stable that I let go of the ailerons and rudders also. So no elevator, no
aileron, no rudder. Just flaps. It established
a spiral and just stayed there. I could only get it to tighten up a bit by
letting the phugoid get more severe. When I
damped out the phugoid, the spiral lessened and it went back to a stable
spiral descent. This would
have been a bail out situation for me because it would mean contacting the
ground with the tip first. Add a tad
of rudder or aileron control and it would have been quite survivable. One
other interesting thing, I could not get it
to establish a straight ahead wings level stable condition (no fair touching
the stick or rudders after you let go).
It would eventually end up in a stable shallow spiral one direction or the
other. Maybe I need to look at the flaps
and see how they match up. On the other hand, I think I'll just keep my
chute on and know that if the controls all
break at the same time it's time to jump.
How many others of us know how many controls can break before they need to
jump? What? They don't know?
Dale wrote in message ...
In article ,
"dennis brown" wrote:
As I recall, you said it stabilized at about 80 kts, reduced power,
slight
descent.
Sounds like you had a nice approach set up. 80 might be a tad high for a
light
206. At what speed did it stabilize with no power?
Less than about 14 inches and the nose would drop, more than about 14
inches and the nose would pitch up.
--
Dale L. Falk
There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing
as simply messing around with airplanes.
http://home.gci.net/~sncdfalk/flying.html