Bill Becker submitted the following photo by Robert Gessert and note: “Inverted flight in my 1975 Decathlon above my hangar at Troy Airpark (02MO) in Missouri.”
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How cool is that! I live in Troy, MO!
The article “The impossible turn is now possible ” may lead to an increase in LOC-1 accidents if left uncorrected.
A short statement regarding the principles governing the flight of aircraft.
To fully understand how aircraft fly IT MUST BE ACCEPTED THAT AN AIRCRAFT HAS INERTIA. This ‘’inertia” is the misunderstood cause of aircraft L.O.C. accidents.
The motion of an aircraft through the air can be explained and described by physical principals discovered over 300 years ago by Sir Isaac Newton. Newton worked in many areas of mathematics and physics. He developed the theories of gravitation in 1666, when he was only 23 years old. Some twenty years later, in 1686, he presented his three laws of motion in the “Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis.”
Newton’s first law states that every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. This is normally taken as the definition of inertia. The key point here is that if there is no net force acting on an object (if all the external forces cancel each other out) then the object will maintain a constant velocity (constant speed and direction). If that velocity is zero, then the object remains at rest. If an external force is applied, the velocity (speed and/or direction) will change because of the force.
Newton’s Law of Motion can be made more ‘acceptable’ to a pilot without a background in classical physics with the following. An aircraft at rest stays at rest and an aircraft in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.” All turns downwind by an aircraft in flight need an accelerative force if its inertia is to remain constant. This is how Inertia is a factor in each L.O.C. accident.The aircraft’s groundspeed (NOT airspeed) is its (ENERGY)* and following a downwind turn must increase when turning from upwind to the downwind direction.
*PROOF: A helicopter flying at an airspeed of 65 knots directly into a 45 knot wind has a groundspeed of 20 knots. Its velocity (speed and direction)/groundspeed is 20 knots and it’s inertia is 20 knots. However if the same helicopter suddenly turns and expects to fly at 65 knots downwind with a 45 knot tailwind following a quick DWT, its groundspeed would need be 110 knots. This is a worst case scenario of a DWT in which a very strong wind insures a sudden loss of groundspeed following a tight DWT which results in a inertial deficit of 110 knots and an L.O.C. accident.
Loss of Control In-flight (LOC-I) remains one of the most significant contributors to fatal accidents worldwide. LOC-I refers to accidents in which the flight crew was unable to maintain control of the aircraft in flight, resulting in an unrecoverable deviation from the intended flight path.