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There's a similar scenario described in "How To" by Randall Munroe, where he asks astronaut Chris Hadfield if you "could land a plane by rolling it on it's side

There's a similar scenario described in "How To" by Randall Munroe, where he asks astronaut Chris Hadfield if you "could land a plane by rolling it on it's side and catching the arrest hook on the cable hanging from a crane?" Chris is skeptical it would work, but answers seriously and references the frequency of small planes getting caught in powerlines & towers.

imoverclocked 3y ago
This particular plane has a top-speed of 100mph. It might be flyable down to 30mph… which would make such stunts far more possible than with faster aircraft today. Of course, you can do anything once; The real question is, “can you do it multiple times?”
- mattpallissard 3y ago
  A good landing is one you walk away from. A great one is where you can fly the plane again.
  - tejtm 3y ago
    quote attributed to Chuck Yeager.
- TylerE 3y ago
  30mph is unrealistically low, more like 45-50, which is already more than doubling the impact force. On top of that, they can only fly that slow straight and level. Banking increases the amount of lift you need to generate to maintain altude, as the lift is now pointing to the side instead of straight up. Maintaining flight in a 90 degree bank is something aerobatics aircraft can do, but it's hard, requires a specific aircraft setup, and you're not doing it at approach speed. More like 100-150mph. Very easy spin an aircraft when attempting to maneuver at low speeds, and that will invariably result in a crash as you need several thousand feet of altitude to recover. Such crashes are 99.9% fatal. Usually looks something like this (Warning: It's a crash, there's a fireball, but it isn't overly graphic): https://youtube.com/shorts/urTs-y7MiJE?si=ovfiC3ZvCgcFr5Nu https://youtube.com/shorts/urTs-y7MiJE?si=ovfiC3ZvCgcFr5Nu Rather than just rolling out the pilot pulled back sharply right around when when he got fully inverted, you see the nose quickly start to come around, and then a split second later the left wing stalls deeper at which point it enters a counterclockwise spin and impacts the ground after approximately a quarter rotation.
  - imoverclocked 3y ago
    A similar plane, the Sopwith Tabloid had these characteristics: | During official trials, the Tabloid achieved a maximum speed of 92 mph, with a stalling speed of 36.9 mph. https://www.ctie.monash.edu/hargrave/sopwith3.html https://www.ctie.monash.edu/hargrave/sopwith3.html You have a lot of good points above but missed out of a great way to reduce stall speed: less weight! As you burn off fuel or otherwise shed weight, your wing loading decreases and thus you are able to decrease your angle of attack for a particular airspeed. Of course, angle of attack is the key to a stall (and thus a spin) so we can talk about other ways of reducing the angle of attack, often by unloading the wing. Eg: another way to unload the wing is to reduce the tail-downforce that the main wing needs to counter in this classic design. By moving the center of gravity as far aft as is practicable, you achieve the same goal. As with anything in aviation, this is a trade off; By moving the CG aft, you make recovering from a stall harder or even impossible. I imagine that stalling in one of these bi-planes couldn’t have been a benign experience to begin with so, pilot beware!
    - TylerE 3y ago
      A pre-WWI single seater aircraft is in no way equivalents. Extremely flimsy construction. Weight doesn’t help nearly as much as you’d think. Lift needed scales linearly with weight but lift scales exponentially with speed
      - tlb 3y ago
        Lift scales with the square of speed.
        TylerE 3y ago
        Yes that’s what exponential means.
        imoverclocked 3y ago
        No, “2” is a constant exponent. That makes it a square relation. An exponential relationship is when your variable is in the exponent. ie: e^ax behaves very different than x^a Lift is proportional to a*v^2 where “a” is a bunch of constants based on wing geometry, density altitude, etc. v^2 is most definitely not exponential behavior.
- wlll 3y ago
  > you can do anything once I'm not sure that's the quote. You can't after all eat your own head, even once.
  - CobrastanJorji 3y ago
    Abby and Brittany Hensel probably could, depending on how you define "you."
kilolima 3y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_aircraft_carrier https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_aircraft_carrier

imoverclocked 3y ago

This particular plane has a top-speed of 100mph. It might be flyable down to 30mph… which would make such stunts far more possible than with faster aircraft today. Of course, you can do anything once; The real question is, “can you do it multiple times?”

mattpallissard 3y ago
A good landing is one you walk away from. A great one is where you can fly the plane again.
- tejtm 3y ago
  quote attributed to Chuck Yeager.
TylerE 3y ago
30mph is unrealistically low, more like 45-50, which is already more than doubling the impact force. On top of that, they can only fly that slow straight and level. Banking increases the amount of lift you need to generate to maintain altude, as the lift is now pointing to the side instead of straight up. Maintaining flight in a 90 degree bank is something aerobatics aircraft can do, but it's hard, requires a specific aircraft setup, and you're not doing it at approach speed. More like 100-150mph. Very easy spin an aircraft when attempting to maneuver at low speeds, and that will invariably result in a crash as you need several thousand feet of altitude to recover. Such crashes are 99.9% fatal. Usually looks something like this (Warning: It's a crash, there's a fireball, but it isn't overly graphic): https://youtube.com/shorts/urTs-y7MiJE?si=ovfiC3ZvCgcFr5Nu https://youtube.com/shorts/urTs-y7MiJE?si=ovfiC3ZvCgcFr5Nu Rather than just rolling out the pilot pulled back sharply right around when when he got fully inverted, you see the nose quickly start to come around, and then a split second later the left wing stalls deeper at which point it enters a counterclockwise spin and impacts the ground after approximately a quarter rotation.
- imoverclocked 3y ago
  A similar plane, the Sopwith Tabloid had these characteristics: | During official trials, the Tabloid achieved a maximum speed of 92 mph, with a stalling speed of 36.9 mph. https://www.ctie.monash.edu/hargrave/sopwith3.html https://www.ctie.monash.edu/hargrave/sopwith3.html You have a lot of good points above but missed out of a great way to reduce stall speed: less weight! As you burn off fuel or otherwise shed weight, your wing loading decreases and thus you are able to decrease your angle of attack for a particular airspeed. Of course, angle of attack is the key to a stall (and thus a spin) so we can talk about other ways of reducing the angle of attack, often by unloading the wing. Eg: another way to unload the wing is to reduce the tail-downforce that the main wing needs to counter in this classic design. By moving the center of gravity as far aft as is practicable, you achieve the same goal. As with anything in aviation, this is a trade off; By moving the CG aft, you make recovering from a stall harder or even impossible. I imagine that stalling in one of these bi-planes couldn’t have been a benign experience to begin with so, pilot beware!
  - TylerE 3y ago
    A pre-WWI single seater aircraft is in no way equivalents. Extremely flimsy construction. Weight doesn’t help nearly as much as you’d think. Lift needed scales linearly with weight but lift scales exponentially with speed
    - tlb 3y ago
      Lift scales with the square of speed.
      - TylerE 3y ago
        Yes that’s what exponential means.
        imoverclocked 3y ago
        No, “2” is a constant exponent. That makes it a square relation. An exponential relationship is when your variable is in the exponent. ie: e^ax behaves very different than x^a Lift is proportional to a*v^2 where “a” is a bunch of constants based on wing geometry, density altitude, etc. v^2 is most definitely not exponential behavior.
wlll 3y ago
> you can do anything once I'm not sure that's the quote. You can't after all eat your own head, even once.
- CobrastanJorji 3y ago
  Abby and Brittany Hensel probably could, depending on how you define "you."

kilolima 3y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_aircraft_carrier https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_aircraft_carrier