On Sat, 11 Oct 2003 20:00:31 -0700, David B. Cole wrote:


After takeoff we
climbed to about 4000' to do some dutch rolls. Initially I was a little
timid with the ailerons, but eventually got it together although my feet
were still slower than I would have liked. After the dutch rolls we
moved on to a few power-off stalls. Again, you have to be on your toes
as the nose has more of a tendency than the 172 to drop off to either
side if you're too slow on the rudder.

Great write up.

One very small nit to pick - I know a lot of people think a dutch roll is
a manoeuvre where the pilot it actively making the aircraft roll back
and forth around a point. But the term properly means a combined yawing
and rolling oscillation that the aircraft does all by itself.

It is hard to have clear communication when we have words that
mean different things to different people.

For a rant on the mis-use of the term dutch roll, see:
http://www.douglasdc3.com/sohn/41.htm

For what Bill Kershner thinks about it:
http://pulsar.westmont.edu/aeronca/d...ques/0080.html

For descriptions of what dutch roll is:
http://www.rmcs.cranfield.ac.uk/aeroxtra/dtcstab7.htm
http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/equilib.html

And to show that dutch roll is not just an issue with swept-wing jets:
http://www.berkutengineering.com/pag...rtav898-3.html

--
Kevin Horton
Ottawa, Canada
e-mail: khorton02(_at_)rogers(_dot_)com
http://go.phpwebhosting.com/~khorton/rv8/