Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
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Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in news:J6mdnf-
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Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
"Private" wrote in :

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...
It's interesting to note that although stall recovery should be
thought of as something done with a minimum loss of altitude, the
emphasis on recovery should always be placed on the regaining of
angle of attack as PRIME to recovery.
Agreed, I have always thought of myself as flying a wing to which
is attached a fuselage rather than the reverse.


Xactly right IMO. All you need is a wing to fly, after all.

Bertie

As you already know and I can confirm emphatically , as soon as you
start flying high performance jets, it's all about wing management.

Actualy, in the turkeys we fly it's all about nailing your pitch to
what the computer wants, but you're right, they're all about the
wing. I've always understood that to be the case, but I learned to
fly in gliders, so it was more about pefromance and less about
procedure like it is in a lot of lightplane instruction.


Bertie
In the T38 for example, the approach is flown at an optimum alpha on
the indexer or at a specific airspeed plus fuel. Either way, the
object is to keep the wing within specific limits aoa wise. The bird
will develop a sink rate that can't be recovered otherwise.
I've always wondered why you guys in the big jets don't use alpha more
on the approach. I'm guessing it's because of the complicated fuel
loads possible which gives you such a wide range of approach speeds to
bug to keep the pitch angle right at touchdown.
I know that Boeing for one is doing some research into providing
better aoa data to you on the ADI for approaches but haven't heard
much about how this outreach is being accepted by the carriers.


Well, the military guys have it. I was in a 141 sim once and that had
it. We bug a diffeent approach speed for each weight. The takeoff speeds
provide for a variety of AoAs depending on whether we want to climb, get
off a short runway or get over some obstacles. We can select a range of
V2s based on a runway analysis to get the most weight possible off the
ground on a given takeoff. That, of course, gives us different AoAs
depending on whether we're looking for best angle or best rate. We don't
call it any of that, but it's exaclty what we do. on approach we select
Vso 1.3 based on the weight. So we do use a constant alpha. It's
important to avoid float, and to touch down at the right attitude so we
don't end up bouncing off the nosewheel or the tail as well. I do it in
light planes as well, and hopefully most guys do have nominal approach
speeds for different weights.. I just knock off a few knots if I'm
light, basically.


Bertie

Bertie


I've always said that if I could only have one instrument in the
airplane I'd like an angle of attack indicator. :-))
In a way we have the same problems landing in airplanes like the T38 as
you do in the big jobs. We usually are dealing with a long fuselage mass
to wing mass configuration in the fast jets that requires a specific aoa
spread at touchdown to keep from catching the tail feathers. The F104
was particularly susceptible to this. (never flew the zipper but always
wanted to). The F14 and the F16 (have flown these) are a narrow alpha
spread at touchdown.
The approaches in these airplanes all require strict wing management
right down to the ground.
With you guys, the GW can be so wide an available spread that flying an
optimum aoa would probably put you outside your landing allowance spread
to clear your tails if I understand correctly. This makes sense anyway,
considering how long some of the stuff is you guys are handling.


--
Dudley Henriques