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Old 27th October 2002 | 11:39
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John Farley

Do a Hover - it avoids G
 
Joined: Oct 1999
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From: Chichester West Sussex UK
I don’t know anything about the existence or magnitude of the ground effect in question but I may still be able to help.

Once upon a time a ground effect device fitted to a Harrier increased the VTO weight by 1500 lb. Its effect tapered rapidly with height and had vanished by about 10ft wheel clearance.

When doing a normal VL the same device produced a negligible reduction in descent rate. The question is why?

Mr Newton helps us to appreciate what sort of acceleration or deceleration we get from applying a force to a mass. Any ground effect deceleration of the chopper during an autorotation to land (even if the deceleration was say a huge 1 g) would only actually reduce the touchdown rate if it was applied for a length of time. And time is likely to be very short doing a VL through ground effect.

Bottom line is any positive ground effect needs time, and quite a lot of it, to reduce a sink rate. And time is very short in the manoeuvre under consideration.
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