reverse the last thing you did.

On Jan 26, 5:57*am, mart wrote:






Now the problems started. While putting the airbrakes away the flaps
slipped to negative. *Not very handy at 20 feet and relatively slow.
The glider promptly stalled.

He than did what he was thought by a test pilot." If everything goes
to ****, reverse the last thing you have done."

So contrary to what you would normally do when stalled, which is to
push the nose over , he pulled the brakes again, which in turn pulled
the flaps out again. He said that it saved his bacon. Took out the
undercarriage and hurt his back, but he walked away.




Mart


I am surprised that only one pilot responded to the misconceptions
exibited it the above post! I tried to respond but for some reason my
posts don't seem to get throught...

Anyway, the misconception is that sudden retraction of flaps will
cause a "stall". And in the case above, that a "non-stall recovery",
"recovered the glider from a stall".

Retracting flaps will DECRERASE the effective angle of attack. If the
glider was not already stalled, DECREASING the angle of attack
certainly will not stall it.

What the sudden flap retraction did however, is change the coeffecient
of lift, which resulted in an imbalance of lift, drag and weight,
which in turn resulted in an acceleration, which was partly
DOWNWARD....

The pilot simply redeployed the flaps, returning the original
coeffecient of lift, which arrested the downward acceleration.
A non-stall recovery, for a non stall problem!

The pilot could have also pulled back on the stick, which might have
restored the balance of lift, drag, and weight, and arrested the high
sink rate. This however, WOULD increase the angle of attack, and
might possibly cause an actual stall if the critical angle was
exceeded.

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