3 ms·
As you said, stable is not necessarily good. A fully developed spin is incredibly stable to the point where you might not recover from it even if you try, but i
by kqr 4y ago
As you said, stable is not necessarily good. A fully developed spin is incredibly stable to the point where you might not recover from it even if you try, but it also reliably takes you into the ground with too much vertical speed.
- NickNameNick 4y agoFor conventional layout aircraft, with a suitably sized tail, stable mostly means nose-heavy. Which implies constant negative lift on the tail, and corresponding excess positive lift on the wings. Which means additional induced drag. All of which adds up to an efficiency and performance penalty. And if the tail controls aren't suitably sized, then the pilots won't have enough control authority to move of of the very stable ballistic arc the plane wants to travel on.
- ngcc_hk 4y agoCan they trim it?
- kqr 4y agoI guess what I was trying to say is that a conventional aircraft has multiple stable lift-generating modes. Aside from going forward at the front side of the power curve there's also the spin. Both of these are implied by the design. One is desirable and the other is not.