3 ms·

It could just be that the aircraft doesn't need flaps. The purpose of a flap is to change the wing geometry such that the aircraft can fly at a lower angle of a

by yock 16y ago

It could just be that the aircraft doesn't need flaps. The purpose of a flap is to change the wing geometry such that the aircraft can fly at a lower angle of attack. This allows the plane to fly slower without stalling the wing. If the aircraft can already fly sufficiently slow to land then it doesn't need mechanical flaps to adjust the wing geometry. As for replacing the control surfaces with jets of air, I can't help but wonder how that affects airflow around the aircraft. I'd bet something like this doesn't scale well to larger aircraft.

jrockway 16y ago
I'd bet something like this doesn't scale well to larger aircraft. I think you're right. I've seen people's model DC-10s that they build, and apparently at that small scale, they don't even bother with coordinating the turns. If you want to turn, you just jam the rudder all the way left or right, and then the plane goes there. In a real DC-10... that probably doesn't work so well. (Tried this in X-Plane, and it doesn't really do anything. But the "edge cases" are poorly handled there; I can't even get a Cessna 172 to spin.)
- yock 16y ago
  I don't know that full rudder deflection is really a corner case! In fact, the roll orientation of a plane shouldn't affect the effacacy of the rudder so long as the plane isn't in a slip or spin. The whole purpose of a rudder is to correct for a difference in lift between the wings in a bank. If there is no bank, and therefore no difference, the rudder should cause one.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    The airflow over the wings when stalling is the "corner case". The usual models don't apply; if they used a model that could handle any arbitrary airflow, then the sim would run at 1 frame per hour. So they make some assumptions for normal flight that are easier to calculate, then they make some other special assumptions for stalling, and switch between the models as necessary. I think. But apparently they don't do anything special for spins or uncoordinated turns, so you can't try this in X-Plane and be confident that a real plane would perform well. Anyone have a DC-10 they don't want?

by yock 16y ago

jrockway 16y ago

I'd bet something like this doesn't scale well to larger aircraft. I think you're right. I've seen people's model DC-10s that they build, and apparently at that small scale, they don't even bother with coordinating the turns. If you want to turn, you just jam the rudder all the way left or right, and then the plane goes there. In a real DC-10... that probably doesn't work so well. (Tried this in X-Plane, and it doesn't really do anything. But the "edge cases" are poorly handled there; I can't even get a Cessna 172 to spin.)

yock 16y ago
I don't know that full rudder deflection is really a corner case! In fact, the roll orientation of a plane shouldn't affect the effacacy of the rudder so long as the plane isn't in a slip or spin. The whole purpose of a rudder is to correct for a difference in lift between the wings in a bank. If there is no bank, and therefore no difference, the rudder should cause one.
- jrockway 16y ago
  The airflow over the wings when stalling is the "corner case". The usual models don't apply; if they used a model that could handle any arbitrary airflow, then the sim would run at 1 frame per hour. So they make some assumptions for normal flight that are easier to calculate, then they make some other special assumptions for stalling, and switch between the models as necessary. I think. But apparently they don't do anything special for spins or uncoordinated turns, so you can't try this in X-Plane and be confident that a real plane would perform well. Anyone have a DC-10 they don't want?