Dudley Henriques wrote in
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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
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"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
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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.
Yeah, I could well imagine with an airfoil like that.
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.
Well, it depends on what you mean by optimum. I presume you're talking
about maintaining a healthy enough Alpha to prevent a departure, then
controllability, and finally due consideration to touchdown attitude. I
know most of the fast jet guys I fly with can't do a crosswind landing
worth a damn! They fly a straight line down to touchdonw ( good) then
pull the taps closed, yank and close their eyes. It seems to work but it
ain't pretty! We fly most of them just like airplanes, really.
Bertie