Cool New Aviation Technology - Stall And Spin-Resistant Aircraft!

[Hardrock69]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsQcfzNWJWc&feature=player_detailpage

[Nitro Express]

Not good at low altitude. You can't do shit until you pick up some air speed. Around here people fly their airplanes into mountains. There is one road the VFR people follow but the foothills next to the road come up in a gradual slope and they are focusing on the road and the next thing they know they have flown into the side of a mountain.

If you stall a plane you have to get the nose down and pick up enough air speed and once the air flow is over the control surfaces it becomes easier to recover the spin. That's why take off and landings are the most dangerous times of flying an airplane. People also stall overloading the plane and trying to take off in warm weather. At high altitude on a warm day in a loaded plane it takes a lot of runway.

Small airplanes are just recreational aircraft. If you need to be there fly commercial air. People get themselves into trouble trying to make it somewhere in a small plane. You can't get above the bad weather, headwinds can slow you down and make you use up your fuel, and other things. I know one guy who crashed on final approach because he ran out of gas. He thought he could get home without topping up his tanks and hit a headwind coming home and burned more fuel than he had thought he would.

[cadaverdog]

I worked for a small Aircraft manufacturer in North Hollywood years ago. We built 3 out of 4 planes needed to get certified to build more. They were Stall and spin resistant too. The proof of concept plane (the first built) blew an engine and the pilot landed it at a glider airport. It was supposed to be the next big small business plane but they fucked around too long. It was called The AASI JetCruizer. Pusher with a gas turbine engine.

[Nitro Express]

The lawyers killed small aviation. They made it to where the original manufacturer was liable for the airplane as long as it was flying. I can remember when the average middle class Joe could afford his own small airplane.

[Hardrock69]

When I worked at Learjet, it was right next to the marketing/sales department. They had their recycling barrels right outside the door that lead to their office suite.

I would periodically take a look at the paper they were tossing just to see what was up.

I would find stuff like forecasts for small aviation sales for the coming decade and shit like that.

But I would also find a lot of legal documents about all the lawsuits they were facing due to crashes, contractual fuckups and shit like that. None of which ever was made public.

[Seshmeister]

Lear recycling?

That's like the Nazis opening a Jewish creche.

My only interesting factoid about that crowd is that the founder of the company Bill Lear called one of his daughters Shanda...

[Nitro Express]

Bob Lear's son John is what I would call interesting to say the least.:biggrin:

[lesfunk]

Stall/Spin proof airplanes are nothing new. The had them in the 40's and 50's with the Ercoupe. It didn't even have rudder pedals. You drove it like a car and landed it in a crosswind in a crab without correction.
The concept was simple . They just made the rudder and elevator so small that there was not enough control authorty to stall the airplane. You can't spin if you cant stall.

[lesfunk]

if they hadn't stopped teaching stall/spin in flight school we would'nt need to develop pussified airplanes.
It used to be that to graduate with a pilots license, You were required to initiate a stall and recover from a two revolution spin on heading.
Nowadays all you need to do is show recognition and recovery of and from an imminent stall, which is no stall at all. No wonder these incompetent dipshits are splattering themselves all over the runway.

[Nitro Express]

if they hadn't stopped teaching stall/spin in flight school we would'nt need to develop pussified airplanes.
It used to be that to graduate with a pilots license, You were required to initiate a stall and recover from a two revolution spin on heading.
Nowadays all you need to do is show recognition and recovery of and from an imminent stall, which is no stall at all. No wonder these incompetent dipshits are splattering themselves all over the runway.

I think the point is the plane won't stall when you don't have enough altitude to recover. I had to recover from a stall to get my license but I had plenty of altitude. One problem is when you do make things safer, people get reliant on that built in safety and when they go and fly something else they don't have to skills to stay out of trouble.

Even anti-lock brakes on cars can get people into trouble. I have cars with them and without them. If you get into an older car and just stomp on the brake pedal on a slick road and hold it, you are in trouble.

[Nickdfresh]

if they hadn't stopped teaching stall/spin in flight school we would'nt need to develop pussified airplanes.
It used to be that to graduate with a pilots license, You were required to initiate a stall and recover from a two revolution spin on heading.
Nowadays all you need to do is show recognition and recovery of and from an imminent stall, which is no stall at all. No wonder these incompetent dipshits are splattering themselves all over the runway.

Or this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407) wouldn't have happened.

[Nitro Express]

However, instead of following the established stall recovery procedure of adding full power and lowering the nose to prevent the stall, the captain only added about 75% power and continued applying nose-up inputs.

Yup. You add power and nose it down but when you have no altitude you are fucked. The pilot was probably in "Oh Fuck!" panic mode because nosing down was certain death.

[Nickdfresh]

Yup. You add power and nose it down but when you have no altitude you are fucked. The pilot was probably in "Oh Fuck!" panic mode because nosing down was certain death.

They've changed training to reflect this and now are supposed to have emergency simulations to react appropriately. It didn't help that the pilot was a douche and that the female copilot was hot and he was trying to flirt with her the whole time. She said in the recordings that she hadn't had much sleep after a ski trip and was sick. I knew several people who lived not far from the crash...

[lesfunk]

Yup. You add power and nose it down but when you have no altitude you are fucked. The pilot was probably in "Oh Fuck!" panic mode because nosing down was certain death.

Not exactly. Now I am not qualified to fly commercial aircraft but I do have several hundred hours in light aircraft and the principles remain the same. Contrary to intuition,
Airspeed is controlled by pitch (pointing the nose up or down) not throttle
Altitude is controlled by Throttle. Not pitch.
So nosing down was [probably] not certain death,; In fact, it was proper procedure to gain airspeed along with full power to maintain altitude. The pilot did neither. The plane went in.