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Old 18th April 2005 | 18:00
  #33 (permalink)  
n5296s
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From: LFMD
Again, this is my understanding of the ATPL text. The ailerons may still work; straight wings generally stall at the root first. Generally speaking swept and taper wings stall tip first. I can imagine the problems created by a tip stall in the flare. Regardless, there is a theoretical danger (not managed to experience this yet) that the down going aileron will take the angle of attack beyond crit and stall the up going wing. May I refer you to my earlier comment on wing down landings?
Indeed. I wasn't tryng to say that all planes will behave like this, just reinforcing the point that a stall isn't an "all or nothing" thing. In my plane (Cessna TR182), evidently the wingtips are unstalled - as evidenced by aileron effectiveness - even though the net situation is a stall (i.e. increasing aoa reduces lift). Your comment about the aileron taking the wing beyond critical aoa is a valid one and the reason I didn't try an abrupt aileron deflection, since the 182 isn't an aerobatic aircraft and I didn't want to try doing snap rolls in it. (A snap roll is done by simultaneously stalling the wing, yawing towards one wing and trying to bank away from it, developing a very deep stall on one wing and unstalling the other, giving a very high rate of rotation).

While swept wings naturally stall at the tips first (for reasons I honestly can't remember), designers go to a lot of trouble to avoid this. That's why airliners have such huge amounts of washout (differential inboard aoa) together with various other tricks such as stall fences.

As for the Tomahawk, what can I say. Sounds like Darwin will soon have dealt with the fleet. I've never heard anything about it that would make me want to fly one.

Oh and one other thing... the buffet thing. High wing Cessnas show almost no stall buffet, so it\'s not surprising that you don\'t feel it on landing. However the Pitts has LOTS of buffet close to the stall, and you don\'t feel it even on a tailwheel landing. Which tends to suggest that even that isn\'t stalled at landing.

n5296S
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