A FM question/observation...

[Shane]

fwiw, i've noticed this all tehway back to teh early AH2 releases... just very infrequently...  your plane kind of "falls" almost "pulls" belly into the ground and it seems you had no elevator input whatsoever.  and no, my elevs' weren't shot off. i've noticed it happen at speeds where i shook my head and went, huh?

[humble]

Originally posted by hitech
Humble can you try get a film of the condition you are seeing?


HiTech

I might have one...I've been filming a bunch...I cant seem to duplicate it on purpose. I'll just keep on filming till I get it:) (if not on clip already)

99% of the time it's simply a "heavier" feel but the other 1% is exactly as shane describes it below. Whats funny is it isnt at the "edge" of the flight envelope where I'd expect it. It seems to happen on a more "lazy" type of "wing over"...where your simply letting the nose fall on thru instead of "pulling it thru in a combat ACM situation....I'll look thru my clips tonight...

[Adogg]

Originally posted by Shane
fwiw, i've noticed this all tehway back to teh early AH2 releases... just very infrequently...  your plane kind of "falls" almost "pulls" belly into the ground and it seems you had no elevator input whatsoever.  and no, my elevs' weren't shot off. i've noticed it happen at speeds where i shook my head and went, huh?

Happened to me last night in a La5 I might actually have a film of i though (HT i'll look tonight and send you the film).

Now I was at the top of a loop but Basically i dropped like a brick through a couple of thousand feet before leaving a plane-shaped imprint in the soil. Very much what FTndr described. Only i couldn't break out of it.

[FTndr]

Originally posted by humble
FTndr....

Thanks...my only question is regarding orientation...visually I'm in a nose down situation with reasonable speed (and no stall horn) auditorily the "wind" noise is increasing...stick back pressure should initiate a pull out...yet it "feels" like I'm falling straight down...

assuming that I'm actually in a full stall to initiate the event then as I leave the airframe unloaded I'd assume that as soon as airspeed and AoA enabled flight I've "recovered"...when you fell out of the hammerhead I'd assume "controlled flight" started with a nose down attitude as soon as airspeed reached the required minimium. I know in RL a major issue in unusual attitude recovery is "restalling" the bird...anyway thanks for the insight...

My pleasure..  

Would assume that the stall warning horn would be on if you were in a "stalled" situation.   Sounding like the perverbal "fall thru the crack" type of coding situation that once isolated will be corrected.

Just a quick reminder on stalls....  Always remember that stalls are a function of AoA and not Attitude.

Not sure how much experience you have with this so forgive me if I sound presumptious.  AoA is the difference between the "relative wind" (your a/c moving thru the air) and the "Cord Line" (center of leading edge to center trailing edge of wing) of the wing.  Most of your cessna's and pipers stall around 13 degree's AoA.

As the a/c is yanked and banked about the sky you are constantly changing the AoA (if only momentarlly), this includes the vertical.

The stall I had while doing the aerobatics occured while the nose was pointed straight at the ground.  I was attempting to pull (nose up) from that position when I induced the accelerated stall @ about 120 mph.  The nose (relative to it's previous position) only moved "up" about 20 degrees but the flight path stayed basically straight down.

Had I not been in co-ordinated flight (ball centered) at the time, then at minimum, a wing would have drop off, and at worst I would have "snap" rolled it.

As it was... Having never stalled going straight down before I was a bit slow on the uptake as to why my hammerhead wasn't going to happening.  There I was looking out at the horizon (which is up as you are sitting in the seat) and the horizon just kept going.   Once it hit me I released all the back pressure on the stick and the plane recovered.  Then it was level out and listen to my instructor snicker in the headset

[FTJR]

Didn't realise you did aerobatics NDR. It explains alot

[Tilt]

I note what I assume to be an increased gravitational inertia effect in AH2 at the bottom of loops.........

ie whilst I pull the nose level out of the dive the downward vector remaining is now higher (in AH2 than it was in AH1) and takes longer to fade.

This reveals it self as an apparant lack of elevator authority or  at lower speeds it seems to bring on stall (high speed stall?) characturistics earlier.

I could not comment on the correctness just the apparant difference.

[Shane]

yeah, what tilt said.  he decribed it much better.

[humble]

Once it hit me I released all the back pressure on the stick and the plane recovered. Then it was level out and listen to my instructor snicker in the headset


I have zero hours of acrobatics and less than 100 hrs overall (spread over more than a few years). My only "real world" experience that would be similiar is 3 hrs (+ classroom) of unusual attitude recovery work done at williams AFB with a friend who was an instuctor there. Basically it all came down to recognition (actually the hardest part), unloading the aircraft, recovery (if needed...usually just unloading did it). Most problems occured by under reacting initially and then overreacting and "re-stalling" the plane. Anyway I was suprised that unloading had no effect...I think Tilt is right on in describing a significant part...however the initial "falling" preceeds the difficulty pulling out...guessing the "downward" vector (I know I'm not saying that correctly) far exceeds the "lift" being generated under some circumstances...