italia,
Originally Posted by italia458
My point was that the elevator actually helps turn the aircraft. It's party due to the elevator and party due to the rudder.
You are now allowing that maybe some of the lateral surface is relevant to reacting to sideslip (or yaw, depending on which axes you are measuring in). That is progress of a sort.
Let me suggest you accept what ImbracableCrunk said right at the beginning, and what aerodynamicists have said in text books (which I have quoted), and what they say when one discusses it with them. The VS is there for a purpose. Someone put it there. They know why they put it there, and it works, over decades of experience. So when they say why, and how, I imagine there would - should - be a strong inclination to believe them, no?
Minstermineman,
Originally Posted by minstermineman
If you (pilot)shift yourself to the left so you hang further under the left wing, then you yourself will create more drag on that side of the aircraft than was there previously, plus you will alter the C of G to the left,
Thanks for responding to my request for explanations! Maybe you could phrase things in the usual terms of Newtonian dynamics?
There are two coordinate frames typically used when speaking about flight. One is earth-centered, in which the z axis passes through the CofG (and you, if you are hanging on a non-rigid line below a wing). So "alter[ing] the CofG to the left" makes no sense in this frame. The other is aircraft-centered, also passing through the CofG. Again, moving the CofG "to the left" makes no sense in this frame.
911slf,
Thanks also for responding to my request for explanations! I appreciate your attempt to explain what happens in discursive terms, but I think it suffers from the same issue as minstermineman, namely that you are using (let me say) hanggliderspeak which is at variance with the ways in which one expresses dynamics when talking aerodynamics.
You are hanging below some object which is not fixed to the earth. You push on a frame attached to that object. Except for very briefly (and very slightly) when you are moving the frame (equal and opposite reactions, and all that), you are hanging directly below the CofG. That's what Newton says happens when you don't want to be a pendulum (which, as you point out, is not recommended!)
I am not sure I can get much further with your explanation without trying to interpret in the usual way of balance of forces, and I am not sure I can do that as it stands.