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On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 10:11:18 +0000, Robert Ehrlich
wrote: Bob Johnson wrote: As long as we're sitting around the campfire and also to show you I can go both ways, I 'member a time only a couple of years ago that I experienced the dreaded aerotow line break at 200 ft and 60 kt over the outbound fence. I looked out front and it wasn't too exiting, so I gingerly turned ninety to the left and the scenery looked some better, but not the greatest, so I REALlY gingerly gave it another ninety to the left and was really impressed this time as I found I was perfectly lined up with the takeoff runway. And I recall I hadn't lost too much of my original 60 kt. Will wonders never cease!! I thought "OK now God, you've made it possible for me to do this little magic trick perfectly the first time I tried it in front of all my friends and hangar bums, give me your hand again and let's try just one more." So I pulled spoilers, checked gear down and rolled up to my exact takeoff spot. And as I popped the canopy, my good friend who shall remain nameless, said "S--t!, you've gone and lost us another Tost ring, somebody go back to the hangar and see if they can find another tow rope". It was his turn to tow, so I pushed back. Nobody else said a word. Safety lecture from a dummy follows: I don't remember to this day why I ninetied to the left. During the previous year's biannual when Juan Batch pulled the plug on me over his outbound fence, turning right was the correct choice because in that direction lay the wind, which blows one back over the airport. This improves the scenery like you wouldn't believe. When I tried the trick for real solo, the wind lay to my left. I'd like to think it was instinct. But I believe it was a coin toss. Anyway, thank God. And Juan. It Depends BJ This raises the interesting question of the height loss during a 180 degrees turn in a glider or an airplane with a dead engine. I recently had a dicsussion about that with a friend who is a power pilot and on this occasion made again a small computation I had already made on this matter. As I never have seen these results elsewhere, I think it may useful to show that here. Assume you fly your turn wit an angle of attack which correspond to the speed V when flying straight and wings level, and that the vertical sink speed in the same conditions wuold be Vz, then during this 180 degrees turn flown with a bank angle phi, the height loss is pi*V*Vz/(g*sin(phi)*cos(phi)), and the turn is flown at speed V/sqrt(cos(phi)). The optimum (minimal height loss) is when sin(phi)*cos(phi) is maximum, i.e. phi = 45 degrees, and the product V*Vz is minimum. A glance on a typical glider polar will show that this last thing is obtained with V just below min sink speed, but as it is not easy to find how many below, let's assume the turn is done at min sink speed, this is not very far from the optimum. For a typical glider with min sink of .6 m/s at 80 km/h (22.2 m/s) the height loss is 8.5 m, for a typical airplane with min sink of 3 m/s at 120 km/h (33.3 m/s) the height loss is 64 m. This explains why the 180 degrees turn back to the runway over the outbound fence succeeds in a glider but not in a power plane. In the case mentioned above, the speed (60kt) was far over the optimum, however the result is as expected not catastrophic. Assuming a bank angle of 45 degrees, the equivalent speed in straight flight would be multiplied by 1.18, this gives 26 m/s or 93 km/h. Assuming the sink speed is 1 m/s in these conditions, we get a height loss of 16.6m. This is for a poor glider (L/D = 26 at 93 km/h). Thanks for that. A most informative calculation and certainly matches my most recent relevant experience. The last time I was having a supervised aero-tow refresher in our Puchacz I was doing a running commentary for the instructors benefit and as soon as I said "400 ft - no problem now from a rope break" BANG as he pulled the release. We had a touch over 60 kts and as soon as I saw the rope go I pulled a 45 degree banked 180, keeping the 60 kts just as Bob described, and was amazed at how easily we got in over the fence. In fact, once I'd rolled out it looked like a normal approach, so I opened the brakes and did a typical Puchacz approach and landing. -- martin@ : Martin Gregorie gregorie : Harlow, UK demon : co : Zappa fan & glider pilot uk : |
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