My "flying" experience is limited only to combat flight simulations, but damn that seems to be calm in stall. At least all ww2 fighters that I have "flown" are ready all the time to bite you if you make even small mistake. Almost always assymmetrical stall.
Same experience here lol, I figure a fighter's manuverability comes at the expense of stability. Same idea with stealth coming at the expense of stability, which is why humans can't control modern stealth bombers and fighters without computers aiding them.
Stealth doesn't necessarily come at the expense of stability. F-117 had lower stability because of its unusual configuration. F-22 and F-35 are unstable due to maneuverability requirements. B-2 should be stable during normal flight ops, though flying wings do have yaw oscillation issues. The yaw can be corrected with normal yaw dampers and split rudders. Where you want fly by wire is age the edges of the envelope, sing flying wings have nasty stall characteristics.
While in theory you can have a low observability without fly by wire, I'm not sure there's actually been such an aircraft since both technologies emerged at the same time.
A lot of articles tend to overstate how small a XB-35, SR-71 or B-1 (etc.) appeared on radar. They had small returns for aircraft of their size, but even civilian operators had little trouble seeing and tracking such aircraft.
You brought up the XB-35, SR-71, and B-1. (Which was already a non-sequitur btw.) And made a meaningless comment about their RCS. So I would say yes it is the point. But thanks.
No, you just didn't understand what was being discussed. Those are 3 aircraft that were noted for exceptionally low radar signature for their time. They also all predate fly by wire systems.
The topic was whether there was ever a stealth aircraft that didn't use fly by wire. There are none, but as my comment highlighted, there were earlier aircraft that had reduced signatures and analog flight controls. You don't need one for the other. The two technologies appeared at the same time because they're both downstream of improvements in digital computers, not because one needed the other.
Engineers have been thinking about cross section reduction since WWII. Bringing up three random aircraft and saying, apropos of nothing, that "they had small returns for aircraft of their size, but even civilian operators had little trouble seeing and tracking such aircraft" has no bearing whatsoever on whether they were fly-by-wire or not.
If you had merely said, "there are aircraft with intentionally reduced radar cross sections that predate modern stealth designs" I never would have said a word.
Instead you went out of your way to make a specious comment. I corrected you. Dunno what to tell you.
Fun idea, but I fear it is not for me. I very much dislike idea of going to craft without parachutes. I guess it comes from my mariner side, I would never go to boat without floatation aids either.
I do have wish to buy Yak-52 one day though. Ticks all the boxes for me, as an experimental I could do service myself.
Australia and NZ don’t teach spin as part of ppl either. Thankfully in gliding it’s taught early and well, so I feel confident in managing them. Madness to not do it at all imo
I am out of date with current UK PPL. But spin recovery was part of the training early on, before first solo. We had Grumman Trainers and Cessna 150, 152s. All spin training was done in Cessnas due to the reliable response, usually the 150 as it was the aerobat version with better 5 point harnesses etc.
I’ve done some stall/spin training as part of my ppl in a 172. The 172 will definitely spin if you really provoke it, but you pretty much need to be trying to spin by having full aileron deflection at the moment of stall. It was also kind of difficult just getting it to stall, 35-40kts, nose up 35 degrees, full elevator back, just kinda floating around like that with the stall horn squeaking its song. When it finally does break loose, if you’re stable, the nose just drops a bit and you’re flying again. Good training for slow flight and slow maneuvers though. I can see how if you’re low, slow, and turning, in the pattern for example, you could stall/spin and have a really bad day
First time I did a spin and recovery, as a student in a C152, I needed several trys to get it to spin, with much encouragement from the instructor. When it did spin, the adrenaline was going and I recovered so fast the instructor complained it wasn't a proper spin unless at least 3 turns. It seemed longer to me.
The Piper Tripacer PA22 usually didn't drop a wing or nose, just sat there, nose right up and sinking fast. Also no stall warning device. I think several accidents were due to getting into this condition and just keep pulling back, not lowering the nose to get airspeed and climb.
The spin was part of UK PPL in the 1980s, at least the instructor I knew always included it in a Cessna 152. He did a little story demo. "Here we are coming in to land in a cross wind, so let's slide slip to keep the track. Oh, a bit low, let's pull back, a bit (lot) more side slip. Oh, still too low, let's pull right back to climb...." rapid wing drop and entry into a spin.
I so badly want this track. Shazam isn't getting it, perhaps unsurprisingly. Leaving this comment here in the hope that someone, at some point, can tell me what it is.
I got to feel the beginnings of that stall buffet once in the KC-10.
We were tanking from a KC-135 at about 580k GW over the Atlantic, on our way to 590k to continue our fighter drag (force extension, for those who know). The tanker’s autopilot disconnected, and they did the “-135 dive” into us just as the tanker Boom Operator called BREAKAWAY on the radio. My pilot didn’t get the nose down aggressively enough after pulling power to idle for the separation, and our 580,000lb airplane shook in a way I hadn’t felt before for a couple seconds, and both pilots said “OH SHIT”. It was not a good feeling. Once we were fully recovered, I asked if that was the stall buffet that we felt, and both my pilots said “Yeah…” in that Holy shit, we just dodged a big ass bullet tone of voice.
most airliner test pilots don´t.. because if things go that wrong that you have to use it, the chances of going to a door and getting it open in a plane tumbling down uncontrolled are not that realistic.
There’s a prototype Concorde at Duxford which has an escape hatch in the belly, with signs saying very clearly that if you use it, the plane is going down. There are pictures of engineers sitting in the main cabin in pressure suits, watching panels of instruments. So at least for that plane there was a serious effort to cope with a near worst case scenario.
IIRC it has two escape hatches—one at the front of the cabin/right behind the narrow passage leading to the flight deck, for the flight crew, and one at the back for the test engineers (which is not that far back—the arse end of a Concorde fuselage is wall-to-wall machinery and fuel tanks). They had fireman's poles and a drop-down shield to protect the crew as they baled out, not unlike the Space Shuttle in-flight-evac pole (and a similar speed regime if they ever had to use it, i.e. hope you have some spare underwear waiting for you on the ground).
Not true. In certain flight test regimes, an escape tunnel is often installed to allow for bailing out with parachutes on airliners. See this article on the A350 MSN001. This tunnel / escape hatch system is then typically removed once early test flights covering the most risky flight regimes have been completed
well they go progressively up to the failure limits to measure them, and do so in a way that they can recover. these aren’t jet fighters where they go into flat spins and shit they are aerodynamically stable platforms with lots of altitude
Yep. For these large airplanes, the domain of "recoverable with enough altitude" overlaps considerably with "destruction of airframe due to aerodynamic forces"
Nope. Should things go awry and they are able to find an exit, they have only their giant balls to cushion the landing. However, with said balls usually constructed of steel…..the impact is still typically fatal
Many such fatal accidents happened during the 50s when the rear mounted engines + T-tail configuration was tested and nobody had foreseen the wings blocking the airflow toward the top mounted horizontal stabilizers and making the T-tail stalls unrecoverable.
Sortof... the separation of airflow from the wing creates a ton of turbulence. That results in buffering of the plane especially large surfaces. All flight surfaces are designed to be flexible in order to cope with these forces up to a point.
If the surface is flexing and even fluttering without deflecting in an unpredictable manner (e.g. twisting or folding), then it is working as intended.
Means that the stall speeds they predicted from wind tunnel and other testing/mathematical calculations (and perhaps computer simulation, though probably too early for that) turned out to be on the money or even better than expected on the full scale testbed. Though I'm not quite sure a promotional video would say "well our predictions turned out to shit but it gets the job done". In any case, the the real world tests were deemed acceptable.
Federal_Cobbler6647@reddit
My "flying" experience is limited only to combat flight simulations, but damn that seems to be calm in stall. At least all ww2 fighters that I have "flown" are ready all the time to bite you if you make even small mistake. Almost always assymmetrical stall.
hard-in-the-ms-paint@reddit
Same experience here lol, I figure a fighter's manuverability comes at the expense of stability. Same idea with stealth coming at the expense of stability, which is why humans can't control modern stealth bombers and fighters without computers aiding them.
PartyLikeAByzantine@reddit
Stealth doesn't necessarily come at the expense of stability. F-117 had lower stability because of its unusual configuration. F-22 and F-35 are unstable due to maneuverability requirements. B-2 should be stable during normal flight ops, though flying wings do have yaw oscillation issues. The yaw can be corrected with normal yaw dampers and split rudders. Where you want fly by wire is age the edges of the envelope, sing flying wings have nasty stall characteristics.
General-Piece8490@reddit
Tacit Blue the forefather of the ranger in Interstellar! lol
Federal_Cobbler6647@reddit
Not completely, while partially. It is just design choices of stall charasterics of wing.
And there has been pretty stealthy planes without need for full blown fly by wire.b
PartyLikeAByzantine@reddit
While in theory you can have a low observability without fly by wire, I'm not sure there's actually been such an aircraft since both technologies emerged at the same time.
A lot of articles tend to overstate how small a XB-35, SR-71 or B-1 (etc.) appeared on radar. They had small returns for aircraft of their size, but even civilian operators had little trouble seeing and tracking such aircraft.
reddituserperson1122@reddit
Stealth is always about lowering range to detection. Every little bit helps.
PartyLikeAByzantine@reddit
Not the point, but thanks.
reddituserperson1122@reddit
You brought up the XB-35, SR-71, and B-1. (Which was already a non-sequitur btw.) And made a meaningless comment about their RCS. So I would say yes it is the point. But thanks.
PartyLikeAByzantine@reddit
No, you just didn't understand what was being discussed. Those are 3 aircraft that were noted for exceptionally low radar signature for their time. They also all predate fly by wire systems.
The topic was whether there was ever a stealth aircraft that didn't use fly by wire. There are none, but as my comment highlighted, there were earlier aircraft that had reduced signatures and analog flight controls. You don't need one for the other. The two technologies appeared at the same time because they're both downstream of improvements in digital computers, not because one needed the other.
It's proving correlation vs causation.
reddituserperson1122@reddit
Engineers have been thinking about cross section reduction since WWII. Bringing up three random aircraft and saying, apropos of nothing, that "they had small returns for aircraft of their size, but even civilian operators had little trouble seeing and tracking such aircraft" has no bearing whatsoever on whether they were fly-by-wire or not.
If you had merely said, "there are aircraft with intentionally reduced radar cross sections that predate modern stealth designs" I never would have said a word.
Instead you went out of your way to make a specious comment. I corrected you. Dunno what to tell you.
Federal_Cobbler6647@reddit
Thats true. Best of early low observability crafts never flew as Convair Kingfish was stopped at RCS mockup stage.
But that thing would have been most likely easily best before Have Blue.
mods_n_admins_r_naz@reddit
find a local flight school and do a discovery flight, should only cost a couple hundred bucks. ask the instructor to demonstrate a stall and recovery
Federal_Cobbler6647@reddit
Fun idea, but I fear it is not for me. I very much dislike idea of going to craft without parachutes. I guess it comes from my mariner side, I would never go to boat without floatation aids either.
I do have wish to buy Yak-52 one day though. Ticks all the boxes for me, as an experimental I could do service myself.
Atypical_Mammal@reddit
Real Cessna 152 is a sweetie in a stall. She just kinda hangs there, nose up and squeaks from her wing, and then just drops her nose.
Apparently you can force her into a spin if you try really really hard but that wasn't part of the PPL course.
Stock_Information_47@reddit
Is that in the states? Wild to not get trained on spins.
Draughthuntr@reddit
Australia and NZ don’t teach spin as part of ppl either. Thankfully in gliding it’s taught early and well, so I feel confident in managing them. Madness to not do it at all imo
Stock_Information_47@reddit
Yeah that crazy. I'm Canadian its not like we did anything crazy but you had to recognize, enter and recover from a spin.
That was about nearly 20 years ago so who knows if that has changed.
Puzzleheaded-Ad-4883@reddit
I am out of date with current UK PPL. But spin recovery was part of the training early on, before first solo. We had Grumman Trainers and Cessna 150, 152s. All spin training was done in Cessnas due to the reliable response, usually the 150 as it was the aerobat version with better 5 point harnesses etc.
theamericaninfrance@reddit
I’ve done some stall/spin training as part of my ppl in a 172. The 172 will definitely spin if you really provoke it, but you pretty much need to be trying to spin by having full aileron deflection at the moment of stall. It was also kind of difficult just getting it to stall, 35-40kts, nose up 35 degrees, full elevator back, just kinda floating around like that with the stall horn squeaking its song. When it finally does break loose, if you’re stable, the nose just drops a bit and you’re flying again. Good training for slow flight and slow maneuvers though. I can see how if you’re low, slow, and turning, in the pattern for example, you could stall/spin and have a really bad day
Puzzleheaded-Ad-4883@reddit
First time I did a spin and recovery, as a student in a C152, I needed several trys to get it to spin, with much encouragement from the instructor. When it did spin, the adrenaline was going and I recovered so fast the instructor complained it wasn't a proper spin unless at least 3 turns. It seemed longer to me.
Puzzleheaded-Ad-4883@reddit
The Piper Tripacer PA22 usually didn't drop a wing or nose, just sat there, nose right up and sinking fast. Also no stall warning device. I think several accidents were due to getting into this condition and just keep pulling back, not lowering the nose to get airspeed and climb. The spin was part of UK PPL in the 1980s, at least the instructor I knew always included it in a Cessna 152. He did a little story demo. "Here we are coming in to land in a cross wind, so let's slide slip to keep the track. Oh, a bit low, let's pull back, a bit (lot) more side slip. Oh, still too low, let's pull right back to climb...." rapid wing drop and entry into a spin.
BCMM@reddit
Didn't the Spitfire have a rather nice progressive stall?
looper741@reddit
That twist is called “washout”.
NuclearWasteland@reddit
Like a leaf on the wind.
Dawn_Namine@reddit
It's been so long, but it's still too early man!
NuclearWasteland@reddit
Hey uh ... You like Firefly jokes?
Dawn_Namine@reddit
Oh no, unfortunately I do.
Weary-Astronaut1335@reddit
You know how to clean a reaver spear?
Run it through the Wash.
Dawn_Namine@reddit
That's messed up, and I wheezed lmao!
CocoSavege@reddit
We will call it.... this land.
Jinsei_13@reddit
Wasn't so much a stall as it was them saying, "Eff you for DARING to disrupt my airflow!"
NF-104@reddit
This spanwise twist of the wing to decrease in angle of attack (AOA) at the tips is called washout. Commonly done long before the Spitfire.
Sivalon@reddit
At least the early marks did. Hurricanes too.
Due-Fix9058@reddit
I remember a bunch of aircraft in IL-2 1946 would do this. Especially the FW-190 A and the Polikarpov I-16.
Shankar_0@reddit
Twins like to get a heavy yaw moment and turn turtle on you, right at the instant of the stall.
It's... unsettling when the plane would rather be in an upside-down flat spin.
newtoallofthis2@reddit
1980's Corporate video synthesiser music on this is on point.
IronMew@reddit
I so badly want this track. Shazam isn't getting it, perhaps unsurprisingly. Leaving this comment here in the hope that someone, at some point, can tell me what it is.
Kruse@reddit
The art of quality aviation documentaries died in the 90s.
domesystem@reddit
Sighs, pulls out "I slept with Martha King" T-shirt from bottom of drawer..
rico_of_borg@reddit
The future was then!!!
Hefy_jefy@reddit
Can't say the shaking of horizontal stabilizer and third engine inspire confidence.
spirosand@reddit
Test pilots have balls of steel.
Kruse@reddit
I hate these captures with the video controls visible from some other platform.
LightningFerret04@reddit
I found the full version, this segment at 3 min in
CardinalOfNYC@reddit
With "stall" capitalized in the post title for no reason at all
ThatHellacopterGuy@reddit
I got to feel the beginnings of that stall buffet once in the KC-10.
We were tanking from a KC-135 at about 580k GW over the Atlantic, on our way to 590k to continue our fighter drag (force extension, for those who know). The tanker’s autopilot disconnected, and they did the “-135 dive” into us just as the tanker Boom Operator called BREAKAWAY on the radio. My pilot didn’t get the nose down aggressively enough after pulling power to idle for the separation, and our 580,000lb airplane shook in a way I hadn’t felt before for a couple seconds, and both pilots said “OH SHIT”. It was not a good feeling. Once we were fully recovered, I asked if that was the stall buffet that we felt, and both my pilots said “Yeah…” in that Holy shit, we just dodged a big ass bullet tone of voice.
attran84@reddit
So what is the ditching protocol on these test flights haha
Virtual_Area8230@reddit
"We're almost slow enough to refuel that A-10." - KC-10
MarcusBondi@reddit
. Would test pilots have parachutes in that type of testing, which is virtually failure/destruction testing?
I can see they are at very high altitude so presumably they would have time to bail out?
Awkward_Session3408@reddit
most airliner test pilots don´t.. because if things go that wrong that you have to use it, the chances of going to a door and getting it open in a plane tumbling down uncontrolled are not that realistic.
ctesibius@reddit
There’s a prototype Concorde at Duxford which has an escape hatch in the belly, with signs saying very clearly that if you use it, the plane is going down. There are pictures of engineers sitting in the main cabin in pressure suits, watching panels of instruments. So at least for that plane there was a serious effort to cope with a near worst case scenario.
GamingGems@reddit
The prototype Tu-144 “Concordski” had ejection seats. Making it the only passenger airliner ever fitted with them.
trippingWetwNoTowel@reddit
Enabling the rare but impressive recreational skydive + multiple murder combo, when you just eject on your passengers in order to get some fresh air
cstross@reddit
IIRC it has two escape hatches—one at the front of the cabin/right behind the narrow passage leading to the flight deck, for the flight crew, and one at the back for the test engineers (which is not that far back—the arse end of a Concorde fuselage is wall-to-wall machinery and fuel tanks). They had fireman's poles and a drop-down shield to protect the crew as they baled out, not unlike the Space Shuttle in-flight-evac pole (and a similar speed regime if they ever had to use it, i.e. hope you have some spare underwear waiting for you on the ground).
jggearhead10@reddit
Not true. In certain flight test regimes, an escape tunnel is often installed to allow for bailing out with parachutes on airliners. See this article on the A350 MSN001. This tunnel / escape hatch system is then typically removed once early test flights covering the most risky flight regimes have been completed
Thakkmatic@reddit
Nice find. Thanks for sharing.
Physical_Ring_7850@reddit
So what happens if they exceed the machine’s capabilities?!
jvttlus@reddit
well they go progressively up to the failure limits to measure them, and do so in a way that they can recover. these aren’t jet fighters where they go into flat spins and shit they are aerodynamically stable platforms with lots of altitude
Vecna_Is_My_Co-Pilot@reddit
Yep. For these large airplanes, the domain of "recoverable with enough altitude" overlaps considerably with "destruction of airframe due to aerodynamic forces"
Accidentallygolden@reddit
They die
A least this plane is somewhat stable during a stall. Some private jet are almost unrecoverable during a stall
longsite2@reddit
For the first flights of the A380 and A350 they had parachutes on, not sure at what stage they felt safe enough to go without.
They sometimes have a hatch in the plane they can jump from, not sure the doors are the best place to use in an emergency.
ClosedL00p@reddit
Nope. Should things go awry and they are able to find an exit, they have only their giant balls to cushion the landing. However, with said balls usually constructed of steel…..the impact is still typically fatal
Ambitious_Farmer9303@reddit
Many such fatal accidents happened during the 50s when the rear mounted engines + T-tail configuration was tested and nobody had foreseen the wings blocking the airflow toward the top mounted horizontal stabilizers and making the T-tail stalls unrecoverable.
nikitaga@reddit
Crazy amount of flutter on the stab. Is that normal for such a test?
DDX1837@reddit
Yes. At that angle, the horizontal stabilizer/elevator is directly behind the main wing which is generating a ton of turbulent airflow.
Vecna_Is_My_Co-Pilot@reddit
Sortof... the separation of airflow from the wing creates a ton of turbulence. That results in buffering of the plane especially large surfaces. All flight surfaces are designed to be flexible in order to cope with these forces up to a point.
If the surface is flexing and even fluttering without deflecting in an unpredictable manner (e.g. twisting or folding), then it is working as intended.
Banjo-Elritze@reddit
Why post a screen-recording and not the link to the video or the video itself?
fullouterjoin@reddit
Someone needs to learn about yt-dlp
kyflyboy@reddit
Pretty gentle stall. Interesting that they dropped the main landing gear as a means to speed stall recovery.
samy_the_samy@reddit
When it stalled it dropped the nose, which sounds normally but its designed to do that,
T tailed planes drop tail first instead because of weird aero effects, which means if stall it gets stuck stalled
scapholunate@reddit
“All of the stall speeds met *or exceeded* predicted results”
Buddy I’m gonna need you to clarify
jokerzwild00@reddit
Means that the stall speeds they predicted from wind tunnel and other testing/mathematical calculations (and perhaps computer simulation, though probably too early for that) turned out to be on the money or even better than expected on the full scale testbed. Though I'm not quite sure a promotional video would say "well our predictions turned out to shit but it gets the job done". In any case, the the real world tests were deemed acceptable.
scapholunate@reddit
“All of the stall speeds met *or exceeded* predicted results”
Buddy I’m gonna need you to clarify
V48runner@reddit
The synth player is gettin' it.
ctesibius@reddit
Have a look at the cone in the exhaust of number 2 engine. Something is moving in the engine area.
ContributionDapper84@reddit
We're gonna need a bigger chase plane
taggingtechnician@reddit
Stick shaker in action.