The Swedish Model: How to build a jet fighter.

On May 10, 4:00 pm, Douglas Eagleson
wrote:
On May 10, 3:54 pm, WaltBJ wrote:
SNIP:

btw, you wanna be real? Tell me WHY I am not correct. NO bs.

SNIP:
You are correct in suggesting that I have never flow a canard
aircraft. However, I have bult and flown several canard model aircraft
and yes with proper design they are stable aircraft. They will stall
but with proper design they will recover by themselves - as will all
properly designed aircraft. A higher angle of attack for the canard
will ensure it stalls first to drop the nose and pick up speed and
recover automatically. Similarly, dihedral in the canard made them
laterally stable.
I know of no maneuver that a canard can execute that can not be
duplicated bya 'conventional' aircraft. As for stopping in mid-air, I
have done precisely that in 3 different aircraft, the T33, F104 and
F4. In all 3 cases I was going straight up to zero airspeed, slid
straight down backwards, and all three aircraft pitched over forward
to straight down and flew out of the maneuver. This particular
maneuver has no use tactically as one is helpless until maneuvering
airspeed is regained.
BTW, I was trying to execute 3 successive vertical rolls in the
T33 and ran out of speed. I was still in flight training and
definitely learned something on that flight. In the F104 I was testing
the aircraft with its new model engine to see how fast it could get to
45000 from brake release. 90 seconds, but shortly thereafter I was out
of airspeed. in the F4 I did it repeatedly as part of a series f
maneuvers to demonstrate to pilots new to the airplane that it was
predictable and dependable.
As for the Cobra maneuver, it leaves the aircraft suspended at 90
degrees to an attacker's path as a stationary target for gunfire. Even
if the Su pilot manages to shuck one atacker by doing the Cobra 'just
right' he better hope #2 isn't anywhere near.
A rolling dive? WW1 fighters could do that. Roll inverted to a
dive? Old prop driven divebombers did that, too. Yes, you can simply
push forward in negative G to get into a dive but that causes all thw
dust and sand in thw cockpit to get into your face and down the back
of your neck. FWIW no fighter particularly cares what you do to it so
long as you don't over-G it too much. In that case sometimes it breaks
and that can ruin your whole day. The one exception is continuous max
rate rolls - in some fighters you end up in yaw-roll coupling and
finish up going sideways and maybe breaking up.
As for a canard recovering by itself, so will a conventional
design aircraft - as the speed rises above the trim setting point the
nose wil automatically start to rise. Left alone, the bird may even
execute a series of loops until the ground interferes. I know of a
case where a 747 was inadvertently stalled up around 40,000 and it did
two wingovers (sloppy loops) before the crew got it all figured out.
But normally somewhere along the way an aircraft will roll off on one
wing and go into an increasingly steep spiral - to the ground, unless
recovered by the crew. Unless of course it is one of the new
generation computer-flown aircraft - as long as the fancy stuff
works.
A few days ago at MacDill AFB I watched the F16 and the A/F!8
perform maneuvers that told me both the wing and the tail were
generating positive lift, as does a canard. Both those aircraft are
unstable aircraft and must be computer-flown.
You can see they are different breeds of cat since the horizonta
stabilizer is pretty much in line with teh wing instead of a large
nose-up angle. Weird.
Nothing wrong with a canard as long as it is not blocking your all-
around vision. It can be designed to augment main wing lift through
vortex action. But it's not magic and there is always a tradeoff in
aircraft design.
Sweden's upgrading of the Gripen still leaves them with an
obsolescent aircraft - it ain't stealthy!
Walt BJ