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Understoodwhstlngdeath said:Wing dihedral, that is, the upward angle of the wing, at the tips, to the centerline of the wing plays a big role in dynamic stability. Wings with large amounts of dihedral, say a Cessna 172, tend to recover from a "reasonable" disturbance pretty much hands off.
When you say tail-moment, you mean the leverage of the control surfaces? I have no idea what decalage is unless you mean the application of decals...I would say that the dynamic stability of a airplane is designed from the start, by carefully controlling design parameters such as wing dihedral, tail moment, wing washout, sweepback, incidence and decalage.
I'd have figured longer would be quicker responding too... that's weirdTail moment would be like leverage, where the fuselage is the lever, and the CG is the fulcrum. A long tail, (lever), is more powerful and requires less input to cause movement. However, the movement will be slower, or more stable. A short tail, (short coupled), is a less powerful lever, needing more input to cause movement, but that movement will be quicker and less stable.
Great, simple description. And don't forget that you have all of these considerations around each axis too.Here read this. An aircraft is designed to have either positive, neutral or negative dynamic stability. Typically training aircraft such as your typical Cessna will have a positive dynamic stability. Fighters which are supposed to be highly maneuverable are designed to have a negative dynamic stability.
The 3 Types Of Static And Dynamic Aircraft Stability
Great, simple description. And don't forget that you have all of these considerations around each axis too.
When you see the runway "flatten out" in front of you it's time to flare. Pull till it stops coming up at you then hold, and when it resumes coming up, pull a little more, repeat til you feel and hear the thump and rumble, and don't stop flying the plane til the prop ticks to a stop at your parking spot. Landing in a nutshell.My instructor gave me a link to the Bold Method which taught you about how to use sight picture while landing. Fixed my landings a
When you see the runway "flatten out" in front of you it's time to flare. Pull till it stops coming up at you then hold, and when it resumes coming up, pull a little more, repeat til you feel and hear the thump and rumble, and don't stop flying the plane til the prop ticks to a stop at your parking spot. Landing in a nutshell.
Cheers,
Wes
When you see the runway "flatten out" in front of you it's time to flare. Pull till it stops coming up at you then hold, and when it resumes coming up, pull a little more, repeat til you feel and hear the thump and rumble, and don't stop flying the plane til the prop ticks to a stop at your parking spot. Landing in a nutshell.
Cheers,
Wes
Point taken. But who's lucky enough to learn from scratch in a taildragger these days? Around here insurance for taildraggers is prohibitively expensive and flight training not covered at any price.Unless you're flying a tail-wheel aircraft and doing a wheel-landing...
Point taken. But who's lucky enough to learn from scratch in a taildragger these days? Around here insurance for taildraggers is prohibitively expensive and flight training not covered at any price.
Cheers,
Wes
Self-insured for 100M/300M? I wouldn't offer to train him without that. My CFI insurance wouldn't have covered training in a taildragger.A good friend of mine did. A fellow A&P. Bought a Citabria and learned to fly in it.
Self-insured for 100M/300M? I wouldn't offer to train him without that. My CFI insurance wouldn't have covered training in a taildragger.
Cheers,
Wes
You need 300 million bucks of insurance to fly a tail-dragger?Self-insured for 100M/300M?
That's part of dynamic stability. The function of pitch trim is to seek a given speed, and a plane disturbed from equilibrium will dampen its (phugoid) oscillations until it stabilizes at that speed. The power setting determines whether that equilibrium speed results in level flight, a climb or a descent.There is another aspect to stability, cant remember the name, but it is regarding changes of trim with speed.
Suppose your student coming in to land collides with a business jet carrying the top executives of Apple or Microsoft, which then crashes into a corporate headquarters under the traffic pattern at a place like HPN (Westchester County, NY), killing a slew of high priced people and depriving their heirs of nearly a billion dollars of potential future earnings. (It has happened!) $300 million looks pretty skimpy here.You need 300 million bucks of insurance to fly a tail-dragger?
Suppose your student coming in to land collides with a business jet carrying the top executives of Apple or Microsoft, which then crashes into a corporate headquarters under the traffic pattern at a place like HPN (Westchester County, NY), killing a slew of high priced people and depriving their heirs of nearly a billion dollars of potential future earnings. (It has happened!) $300 million looks pretty skimpy here.
This is how insurance underwriters think. Add to that the fact that slick tort lawyers have succeeded in creating a precedent in the public eye by repeatedly selling juries on the idea that taildraggers are a relic from the bad old days, and as a flagrant menace to public safety represent criminal negligence every time they are guilty of committing flight.
"And ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defendant in this case not only taught his student to fly in one of these deathtraps, he actually allowed said student, an UNLICENSED pilot, to wander about, all alone, unsupervised and unmonitored in said deathtrap, resulting in the carnage you have just seen so graphically presented."
Cheers,
Wes