Sheriff Responds to AOPA

On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:40:11 -0800, kirk.stant wrote:

90 degree bank is a lot steeper than most pilots imagine. Unless you are
current in acro anything over 60 degrees will feel like 90. And unless
its a transient condition caused by turbulence any intentional 90 degree
bank for more than a few seconds would result in an impressive sink rate
regardless of the strength of the thermal. But it makes for a good
hangar story: "There I was at 300 ft over the nuke cooling tower,
banked to 90 degrees and barely climbing..."

It stands to reason that you can't climb in a 90 degree bank because
there's no vertical lift vector unless, of course, you so much top rudder
fed in that you're climbing on lift generated by the fin and fuselage
sides.

However, a couple of times I've certainly been using around 70 degrees
bank and still going up like the clappers:

- once on a Pegase 90 when I was climbing in the chimney plume from the
Stewartby Brick works just west of Bedford. That was odd: there was
nothing (not even sink) outside the plume and in it you could center
nicely by maximising the smell of furnace oil fumes. It was very narrow:
I had the stick almost fully back to turn tightly enough and needed to
extreme bank to turn that tight, bit I got 6-7 kts out of it

- a similarly tight thermal with no apparent reason for it being too
tight, over our airfield. This time solo in the club's Puchacz and again
cranked over at least at least 70 degrees and with the stick well back to
turn as tight as possible. Any wider turn left me out in the surrounding
turbulence and sink. Again I got a strong climb to cloud base directly
under a nice street.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

On Wednesday, January 23, 2013 4:35:45 PM UTC-7, Martin Gregorie wrote:

It stands to reason that you can't climb in a 90 degree bank because

there's no vertical lift vector unless, of course, you so much top rudder

fed in that you're climbing on lift generated by the fin and fuselage

sides.



However, a couple of times I've certainly been using around 70 degrees

bank and still going up like the clappers:

Precisely. 70 degrees is about 3 Gs, would give you a turn diameter of a little less than 200 ft (!) at 55 knots. But I doubt many pilots actually practice constant 70 degree banked turns, it's not as easy as it looks. Hard enough to get a lot of pilots to bank over 30 degrees - grrrr!

It sure is fun to rack it up when you find the right thermal - the harder you pull, the faster you go up! Do it with someone you know across the thermal and it gets really interesting...

Kirk
66

kirk.stant wrote:

Precisely. 70 degrees is about 3 Gs, would give you a turn diameter of a little less than 200 ft (!) at 55 knots. But I doubt many pilots actually practice constant 70 degree banked turns, it's not as easy as it looks. Hard enough to get a lot of pilots to bank over 30 degrees - grrrr!

It sure is fun to rack it up when you find the right thermal - the harder you pull, the faster you go up! Do it with someone you know across the thermal and it gets really interesting...

When I was pre-solo, on a very unprepossessing March day
in the UK (solid stratus at 3400ft), my very experienced
instructor "found"[1] something. Given the conditions,
it can't have been a thermal.

We were flying at 70kt in a K13 and noticing the G force,
but we were rising at =10kt until we abandoned the climb
at cloudbase.

There was a glider opposite us sharing the thermal, so
we kept an eye on each other's position by looking at
the top of our heads.

Glorious, and a good anecdote for indicating why
flying in gliders is almost entirely unlike flying
in spamcans.

[1] I hesitate to say "blundered into"

In article ,
"kirk.stant" wrote:


Precisely. 70 degrees is about 3 Gs, would give you a turn diameter of a
little less than 200 ft (!) at 55 knots. But I doubt many pilots actually
practice constant 70 degree banked turns, it's not as easy as it looks. Hard
enough to get a lot of pilots to bank over 30 degrees - grrrr!

It sure is fun to rack it up when you find the right thermal - the harder you
pull, the faster you go up! Do it with someone you know across the thermal
and it gets really interesting...

Kirk
66

Have had pretty much that experience a few times. Banked very steeply,
pulling hard, watching the guy across the thermal nearly through the top
of my canopy. After a bit, it seems like the gliders are stationary and
the world becomes a blurred, whirling cylinder.

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On Thursday, January 24, 2013 11:18:26 AM UTC-8, WB wrote:
In article ,

"kirk.stant" wrote:





Precisely. 70 degrees is about 3 Gs, would give you a turn diameter of a

little less than 200 ft (!) at 55 knots. But I doubt many pilots actually

practice constant 70 degree banked turns, it's not as easy as it looks. Hard

enough to get a lot of pilots to bank over 30 degrees - grrrr!



It sure is fun to rack it up when you find the right thermal - the harder you

pull, the faster you go up! Do it with someone you know across the thermal

and it gets really interesting...



Kirk

66



Have had pretty much that experience a few times. Banked very steeply,

pulling hard, watching the guy across the thermal nearly through the top

of my canopy. After a bit, it seems like the gliders are stationary and

the world becomes a blurred, whirling cylinder.



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Since this thread drifted into discussion about bank angels, I'll add my 2 cents - next time you feel you are banking steeply, look at the screws in your panel and compare to the horizon. It will tell you if you are banking more or less than 45 degrees.

Ramy