Hey guys, you are talking about airplanes having a normal or positive stability design, while there are also airplanes with a relaxed stability design or Unstable (one overall the F16 Falcon) in wich the tail is used exactly opposed to the normal stable airplanes.
In theese airplanes (tending to drop their backs) the tail is used to raise the back so increasing the total lift, while the others have to pitch dn the tail to increase the AoA so loosing precious lift.
But why some are stable and others unstable planes ?
Because of the position of the CG related to the main lift vector.
If the main lift vector is applied infront the CG, then the plane tend to drop its back so it is called unstable, while if the CG is infront main lift vector the plane tends to drop its nose and it is called a stable plane.
If you can build a paper plane, you can test this soon, just moving a little weight from the nose to the tail, and you will see the more the weight comes near the main lift vector, the more the plane is transforming from a diver to a glider.
When the weight comes behind the main lift vector, the plane become uncontrollable at all (it just needs a flight control computer to fly stable to prevent it noseup tendency) just like the F16 Falcon does.
So this is the reason the F16 is one of the most meneuvering aircrafts, because it is unstable and its flying abilities are controlled by a very fast Flyght Control Computer, but if unfortunately the flight computer crashes (then the Augmentation Stability Control System = ASCS doesn functions too) the pilot will die almost instantly (someone said the accelerations doubles every quarter of a second or more so in 1 sec you hit 8G that's a kind of dive against the wall).
A fast computer controlls all the aspects of the flyght in a F16 but, a fast computer is nothing without a fast mean to transmits all the commands tho the control surfaces, so here is the Fly by Wire.
All the commands are sent to the control surfaces by means of cables that serves electrical motors (not hydraulic piping or direct connection with the stick).
I was reading of some F16 pilots get confusin seeing the tails moving constantly up and dn while the stick was held fixed for the horizontal flyght. The flight control computer were doing its job trying to maintain the aircraft inside the flight envelope.
I'm sorry for my bad english, I hope in your intelligence if I was not too much clear.
What a strange thing to talk about the F16 in a WWII forum
