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Old 21st Aug 2010, 15:39
  #1959 (permalink)  
HazelNuts39
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: France - mostly
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henra;

I can't quite follow your numbers. To get kinetic energy, you need to add horizontal and vertical components of speed vectorially. If the airplane attained a speed of 50 kt at any time, it would need accelerate to a much higher speed (of the order of 180 - 200 kt) to be able to impact in nearly level attitude, whether stalled or not.

Drag is vertical only if there is no horizontal speed. The terminal velocity for cw=1 is 189 kCAS at sealevel.

regards,
HN39
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