What if...
john smith wrote:
That gets me to wondering... what about a spin?
A spin will give you a high rate of descent at stall speed.
flynrider via AviationKB.com wrote:
A descent rate in a spin is not that great. You can get down much faster
in a steep spiral dive.
Mortimer Schnerd, RN wrote:
Particularly after the wings separate. As an aside, back in the old days before
IFR, the poor slobs flying the mail would spin down through an overcast
intentionally, assuming they'd break out high enough to recover before they went
splat. Some won, some lost.
It seems to me that the thing to do with trying to get down rapidly is drop the
gear and the flaps, no power and the prop set full forward for maximum drag (or
at least to max rpm but not over redline), then dump the nose at the maximum
gear extended speed or top of the white, whichever is the lower of the speeds.
The spin is not the problem. The spin is a low speed maneuver as the
inside wing is stalled while the outside wing is flying.
The steep spiral dive at high speed can lead to airframe damage.
This was a topic in the acro community a couple of years ago.
Many pilots believed that the airframe g-loading ratings applied to all
attitudes of flight. It was the T-34 the accident that that had the
Baron wing replacement that set off the discussion.
From that we learned that the g-loadings only applied to wings level
flight.
High angle of bank and high airspeed will result in wing failure below
the manufacturers publish g-loading limit.
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