Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

You're right. Those crosswind landings in fast jets are pretty much
crab um right into the concrete...a lot like the old Ercoupe really.
You touch down in the crab, and the impetus straightens you out
(hopefully) in the right direction :-))


Yep, that's what they do. A lot of screeching and lurching. It's not
the way to do it, but....
Another thing I've noticed about them is they tend to be quite coarse
in the way they handle the airplane. A smooth roll inot a 25 deg bank
doesn't seem to be an option with a lot of them. The roll has to be
made as crisply as possible. likewise with pitch changes. I imagine
this comes form a lot of formation flying and refueling and what not,
but I don't know. I'm not knocking them, but it's interesting to see
there's more than one way to skin a cat. Mine;s better, though.
I used to get a lot of ex military guys coming to fly cubs and
Stearmans and gliders. Most of them had forgotten what their feet
were for and I would have to point at the ball regularly. I noticed
that ex-navy guys never stepped on the ball, they moved the stick in
the direction the ball needed to go. I asked one about this and he
told me that's what you do to co-ordinate! Interesting. It works just
as well and unless you're making a gross correction you'd never
notice the difference. I guess it comes from a naval notion of the
rudder being the primary control or something..


Bertie






It's strange about fighter guys. I've noticed the same thing when
teaching them. They can be very rough. I used to get a lot of them
wanting to join the display community that wanted to go pro on the
circuit with a Pitts or something more exotic. I found the best way to
deal with their roughness was to explain it back to them in terms they
understood....with Ps and energy state. The rougher you are in display
acro, the deeper you pull the airplane into drag rise, and drag
equates out to energy loss rate and decay.

Yes, of course they have more thrust than they need for most cases so
that usually isn't an issue with them.

I had two Blue Angels in the air once on the same day in the S2; one
solo and one flew the slot position. The solo was rougher than hell,
and the slot flew me through a solid hour without a twitch.
Interesting about things like this.

Well, i'm generalising , of course. There are guys who just got it and
that's it. They can adapt to anything. Most people are creatures of
habit..

Bertie