PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - How to calculate top speed of an aircraft
Old 30th Oct 2015, 22:20
  #16 (permalink)  
Pilot DAR
Moderator
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Ontario, Canada
Age: 63
Posts: 5,615
Received 60 Likes on 43 Posts
but you still won't know how fast it will REALLY go until you jump in and fly it.
Or, for the greater of my experience, you don't how slowly it actually goes, until you jump in and fly it!

A retired friend of mine was the lead aerodynamicist for deHavilland Canada. He told me that they had calculated the cruise speeds for the Dash 8-100 to within 2 knots, before it ever flew (and their speeds actually were within the 2 knots). But there was a lot of brain power being applied to that....
Pilot DAR is offline