On Jan 6, 9:40*am, Doug Greenwell wrote:
At 16:11 06 January 2011, Andreas Maurer wrote:

On Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:09:39 +0000, Doug Greenwell
wrote:

There's a chapter in Eric Brown's book 'Wings of the Weird &
Wonderful' in which he describes flight tests of the GAL 56 flying
wing
glider in 1946. *This was a 28deg swept wing with an aspect ratio of
5.8
towed by a Spitfire IX* (!!!) to 20000ft (!!). *

Coooooooooool.

every tug pilots dream ... wonder what the climb rate was like!





He describes the opposite effect, with a very strong (often
uncontrollable) nose-up pitch on take-off - this was thought to be due
to
ground effect. *In this case the tug span was similar (37ft) to the
glider
span (45ft), so the wake/wing interaction would be different.

Definitely. I think that the slipstream and the turbulence of that
huge propellor might have an influence, too.

Possibly - he had trouble getting the nose down on landing too.









Interestingly he also reports that the GAL56 could be flown hands-free
on
the tow - unless the tug slipstream was entered, in which case all
lateral
and longitudinal control was lost. *Robert Kronfield was later killed
spinning this aircraft.

Seems like some gliders actually stabilize themselves behind a tow
plane.

Here's an example of a free-flight test of a space shuttle model that
flew well in aerotow, but worse in free flight.

Ladies and gents, Great Britains only serious contribution to
spaceflight - the Reliant Shuttle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJdrlWR-yFM

Andreas

That's a bit unfair ... we did manage one satellite into orbit on Black
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What about Skynet? I worked the Skynet 4 program.

Andy