Originally Posted by
bearfoil
Technically, and I insist on it, an airfoil has an asymmetric cross section, not a symmetrical one.
As an aeronautical engineer, I totally diagree ; I consider your definition of an "airfoil" to be quite simply
wrong.
A plank can be an airfoil, a lousy one admittedly.
The F-104 has wings that are little more than razorblades, and with a symmetrical profile (with the flaps up). They're still airfoils.
There is a whole library of symmetrical NACA airfoils, and there are aircraft flying with them.
I saw you mentioned a separate subject in TechLog on the subject, so I'll go and look there before any further comment.
As to all these discussions about a detached V/S behaving even vaguely like a wing.... anybody here made up a model with about the same shape and roughly the same mass distribution and tossed it off a 10-story building? If not, why not? It would give you some real ideas about the weird and wonderful things a shape like that can do when falling through the air.
CJ