HT, a Question about the Spit FM:

[skycaptn]

LEARN TO FLY WITHIN THE LIMITS OF YOUR AIRCRAFT!

and for the love of pete stop ing and  ing you whiners.

[cpxxx]

Maybe it wasn't an unknown departure mode for the Spit. Just no one survived to discuss it.

Coincidentally I found the same problem in the 110 only yesterday, just like Widewings video. I was being molested by a seafire and jumped into the gunners seat. Back in the cockpit I found the ASI at zero and a fully developed stall, mushing straight down. Remarkably when I hit the ground the 110 remained intact (more or less) and I got a ditch. The Seafire pilot must have been very frustrated to lose the kill.  It had previously happened in the 110 when I got low and slow and ended up at the wrong end of the drag curve. I mushed straight in most frustratingly as I had just murdered three Lancs and wanted to land those kills. What puzzled me was that no combination of engine or control had any effect whatsoever.

It reminded me very much of the 'deep stall' phenomenon, which occurred to aircraft like the Trident or the BAC 1-11 and more recently  the Canadair Challenger. However it is a known factor with T-tail aircraft. I don't recall it as an issue with conventionally configured aircraft although the F16 and F18 has been mentioned here.

Having said that, if you think about it. An inverted Spitfire is a de facto T-tail aircraft. The tailplane and elevator might well be blanked by the wing while inverted producing the right conditions for a deep stall.

This doesn't explain similar issues with the Mossie. 110 and P38 which deep stall upright.  However all three are twins and two have twin tails. That can't be a coincidence. Another possible consideration is centre of gravity. If it's a little bit aft, perhaps this has an effect. A bit of test flying is perhaps in order.

Just because we have the same result, it doesn't mean we have the same cause.

Of course, given that all of these aircraft are not in fact real. It could be that in fact what we have is an artifact of the programming. HTC are good but they are not NASA.  I t could be corrected I suppose but is it really important? When I flew real aircraft I'm careful not to push too close to edge of the envelope (most of the time anyway:O ), because my life depends on it. But in AH, I fly as if I was immortal, which is in fact true.  So we do things we certainly would avoid in real life.

It will be interesting to see if the upcoming Combat Tour (two weeks away I hear ) with it's character based play will be different.

[Bucky73]

Originally posted by Stoney74
NASA did some testing with spin recovery.

Is this the same NASA that can't figure out how to stop FOAM from bringing down their shuttle??

[stockli]

It happened to me in a 190a5 last night.

got shot up, shut down engine and floated upside down all the way to the ground, about as slow as a chute.

[Platano]

this stall of death caused me a round in KOTH once:(

[OOZ662]

Originally posted by skycaptn
LEARN TO FLY WITHIN THE LIMITS OF YOUR AIRCRAFT!

and for the love of pete stop ing and  ing you whiners.

The problem here is when you fly within the limits of your aircraft and go down anyway. Please take your personal attacks elsewhere.

Thank you.

[dtango]

Originally posted by OOZ662
The problem here is when you fly within the limits of your aircraft and go down anyway.

If there is a "problem" at all the question is what post-stall characteristics should the spit exhibit?  In a stall by definition you've gone beyond the normal limits and departed from flight.  That means you've flown outside the limits of the aircraft to get into the situation.

Do departures from flight which are unrecoverable happen in real life? The unequivocal answer is a resounding YES.  Do they occur under the situations we've heard described here and seen on a couple of films posted (nose-up zero forward velocity tumbles or tailslides, slow speed inverted departures, etc.)?  The answer is again YES.  So if they do, it's a credit that we see them even at all in the AH physics model.

Very specifically do inverted deep stalls occur where you end up flat on your back and drop down with no spin in real life?  The answer again is yes.  Badboy has brought up the F-16 as an example of an aircraft that this occurs in.  I'll spare the physics for some other time but essentially pitch equilibrium occurs meaning you can't budge the nose up or down enough or at all to get out of it.

Tango, XO
412th FS Braunco Mustangs

[OOZ662]

Well, the point I don't understand is; what happens to the forward thrust from the engine? Yes, you've entered this inverted fall. I could understand how possibly the propeller blades can't properly "bite" the air, but a jet engine?

[Guppy35]

Originally posted by hubsonfire
The original question was "is it something that should happen?", and the answer to that is "no, it's not intentional".

I would interpret this to mean that they didn't intend for the spit to do this.

There ya go making sense again hub.  That's twice now in a month.  What's going on?

Can't you see these guys aren't looking at the actual question?

[Benny Moore]

Originally posted by cpxxx
This doesn't explain similar issues with the Mossie. 110 and P38 which deep stall upright.  However all three are twins and two have twin tails. That can't be a coincidence. Another possible consideration is centre of gravity. If it's a little bit aft, perhaps this has an effect. A bit of test flying is perhaps in order.

Would you clarify?  I fly the P-38 and I think I've gotten into every situation possible, but I've never done a non-spinning stall that I could not get out of.

[dtango]

Originally posted by OOZ662
Well, the point I don't understand is; what happens to the forward thrust from the engine? Yes, you've entered this inverted fall. I could understand how possibly the propeller blades can't properly "bite" the air, but a jet engine?

Because thrust isn't a primary factor in determining the angle of attack of the wing (and tail) either in a jet plane or prop.  (This isn't true of course for thrust vectoring jet's).

Tango, XO
412th FS Braunco Mustangs

[dtango]

Originally posted by Guppy35
There ya go making sense again hub.  That's twice now in a month.  What's going on?

Can't you see these guys aren't looking at the actual question?

Pyro's response was carefully worded.  The FM of the Spit was NOT coded so that it would INTENTIONALLY have this characteristic.  That doesn't mean that the dynamic physics engine modelling the forces acting on the body of the spit outside of normal flight is acting incorrectly resulting in the flat inverted drop.

Tango, XO
412th FS Braunco Mustangs

[BaldEagl]

Originally posted by dtango
Very specifically do inverted deep stalls occur where you end up flat on your back and drop down with no spin in real life?  The answer again is yes.  

But missing a wing?  I don't buy it that what's happening in-game is a real-life phenomenon.

[dtango]

Originally posted by BaldEagl
But missing a wing?  I don't buy it that what's happening in-game is a real-life phenomenon.

Everything I've mentioned has to do with planes with all their parts .  
How the forces are dynamically acting on a busted up plane is a dynamics problem that aren't typically describable by flight characteristics.  

If you don't buy the AH general dynamics then maybe you should draw some free body diagrams to show how the forces should be acting on parts of an airplane falling down.

Tango, XO
412th FS Braunco Mustangs

[Murdr]

I wouldn't include the P-38 in the list.  It needs specific conditions in order to enter a flat stall.  You need to stall out of the vertical, belly toward the groud with full power and flaps extended.  Remove power or flaps and you're no longer pitch locked.

Here is a film example of an intentional flat stall, an intentional rudder induced spin from the flat stall, and a recovery.