Emergency landing today Troutdale, OR

Peter R. wrote:
On 2/1/2007 9:12:05 AM, "Gig 601XL Builder" wrote:


gatt, call your local news station and give them an atta'boy for not saying
the engine stalled.


But in this case it appears that the engine did just that.

It didn't stall, it quit. Airplane engines don't stall, airplane wings
stall, airplane engines quit. It's an english thing.

Margy

On 2/4/2007 9:38:52 PM, Margy Natalie wrote:

It didn't stall, it quit. Airplane engines don't stall, airplane wings
stall, airplane engines quit. It's an english thing.

I was joking. Even those smiley faces aren't enough anymore, it seems.

--
Peter

Margy Natalie wrote:
Peter R. wrote:

On 2/1/2007 9:12:05 AM, "Gig 601XL Builder" wrote:

gatt, call your local news station and give them an atta'boy for not
saying
the engine stalled.



But in this case it appears that the engine did just that.

It didn't stall, it quit. Airplane engines don't stall, airplane wings
stall, airplane engines quit. It's an english thing.

Airplane engines stall also. Stall is a perfectly good word to use when
an airplane engine stops turning. They don't always stop, but if they
do, they have stalled. I suspect engines were stalling before airplane
wings were stalling. :-)

Matt

Margy Natalie wrote:
Peter R. wrote:
On 2/1/2007 9:12:05 AM, "Gig 601XL Builder" wrote:
gatt, call your local news station and give them an atta'boy for not
saying the engine stalled.

But in this case it appears that the engine did just that.

It didn't stall, it quit. Airplane engines don't stall, airplane
wings stall, airplane engines quit. It's an english thing.

Alas for aviation, the word "stall" probably had as one of its many
meanings that of engine stoppage long before airplanes came on the scene.
So it is perhaps either inappropriate or futile to ask people to drop
that meaning from the word. Context would normally disambiguate things;
e.g. "the airplane engine stalled" or "the wing stalled" are pretty
unambiguous, but "the airplane stalled" is ambiguous as to meaning
without further context. There are an awful lot of meanings to the word
"stall" and entering "define:stall" into Google (or looking into a decent
print dictionary) yields:

Stall:

* procrastinate: postpone doing what one should be doing; "He did not
want to write the letter and procrastinated for days"
* a compartment in a stable where a single animal is confined and fed
* come to a stop; "The car stalled in the driveway"
* booth: small area set off by walls for special use
* a booth where articles are displayed for sale
* deliberately delay an event or action; "she doesn't want to write the
report, so she is stalling"
* put into, or keep in, a stall; "Stall the horse"
* a malfunction in the flight of an aircraft in which there is a sudden
loss of lift that results in a downward plunge; "the plane went into a
stall and I couldn't control it"
* experience a stall in flight, of airplanes
* seating in the forward part of the main level of a theater
* carrel: small individual study area in a library
* cause an airplane to go into a stall
* cause an engine to stop; "The inexperienced driver kept stalling the
car"
* a tactic used to mislead or delay

On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 21:38:52 -0500, Margy Natalie
wrote:

Peter R. wrote:


But in this case it appears that the engine did just that.

It didn't stall, it quit. Airplane engines don't stall, airplane wings
stall, airplane engines quit. It's an english thing.

What happens when an auto engine stalls? I thought you could only
"stall" a car engine by applying a sudden load, as when popping the
clutch at low rpms. Jim L's list of definitions tends to support
that..

If that were the case, it would be impossible to stall an airplane
piston engine short of running the prop into the ground?

What happens when a turbine compressor "stalls"? Is there a critical
angle of attack for the turbine blades that's exceeded by running the
engine rpm too low or high for a given thrust? Or is backpressure the
culprit?

Don

Don Tuite wrote:
On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 21:38:52 -0500, Margy Natalie
wrote:


Peter R. wrote:


But in this case it appears that the engine did just that.


It didn't stall, it quit. Airplane engines don't stall, airplane wings
stall, airplane engines quit. It's an english thing.


What happens when an auto engine stalls? I thought you could only
"stall" a car engine by applying a sudden load, as when popping the
clutch at low rpms. Jim L's list of definitions tends to support
that..

If that were the case, it would be impossible to stall an airplane
piston engine short of running the prop into the ground?

If I leave my car idling and the engine just quits on its own, I also
say that the engine stalled and most people I know use the term the same
way. It is unfortunate that the same word has two radically different
meanings WRT to airplanes, but that doesn't negate the validity of the
meaning WRT to the engine.

Actually, I always thought that stall was a very unfortunate choice for
the aerodymamic flow separation on an airfoil. Seems like a lot of more
appropriate choices could have been made.


Matt

Jim Logajan wrote:
Margy Natalie wrote:

Peter R. wrote:

On 2/1/2007 9:12:05 AM, "Gig 601XL Builder" wrote:

gatt, call your local news station and give them an atta'boy for not
saying the engine stalled.

But in this case it appears that the engine did just that.


It didn't stall, it quit. Airplane engines don't stall, airplane
wings stall, airplane engines quit. It's an english thing.


Alas for aviation, the word "stall" probably had as one of its many
meanings that of engine stoppage long before airplanes came on the scene.
So it is perhaps either inappropriate or futile to ask people to drop
that meaning from the word. Context would normally disambiguate things;
e.g. "the airplane engine stalled" or "the wing stalled" are pretty
unambiguous, but "the airplane stalled" is ambiguous as to meaning
without further context. There are an awful lot of meanings to the word
"stall" and entering "define:stall" into Google (or looking into a decent
print dictionary) yields:

Stall:

* procrastinate: postpone doing what one should be doing; "He did not
want to write the letter and procrastinated for days"
* a compartment in a stable where a single animal is confined and fed
* come to a stop; "The car stalled in the driveway"
* booth: small area set off by walls for special use
* a booth where articles are displayed for sale
* deliberately delay an event or action; "she doesn't want to write the
report, so she is stalling"
* put into, or keep in, a stall; "Stall the horse"
* a malfunction in the flight of an aircraft in which there is a sudden
loss of lift that results in a downward plunge; "the plane went into a
stall and I couldn't control it"
* experience a stall in flight, of airplanes
* seating in the forward part of the main level of a theater
* carrel: small individual study area in a library
* cause an airplane to go into a stall
* cause an engine to stop; "The inexperienced driver kept stalling the
car"
* a tactic used to mislead or delay
Dam** forgot my smiley face. I used that expression to get 10 year olds
to learn the difference between aerodynamic stalls and engine problems.
In aviation we do say the engine quit rather than stall to avoid
confusion.

Margy