Originally Posted by
megan
You don't have to remain in level flight. Rolling inverted and maintaining the pre roll power setting and airspeed will see the aircraft accelerate into and establish a fixed rate of descent due to increased drag (symmetrical airfoils aside). Once the steady state inverted descent is established -1 "g" will be experienced. Accelerating to the steady state descent will see >-1 "g", -.8 as an arbitrary example.
Not really true if we are using the aircraft as the basis of what is up or down re g.
As the angle of descent increases, the g relative to the plane of the aircraft's usual up or down drops to zero as the aircraft reaches the vertical.
ie gravity will be pulling directly towards the nose once vertical so zero g relative to gear going up or down.
Sorry, that is badly explained, but I hope you understand what I mean.
I am told that test pilots sometimes do test in an angle of descent for specifically this reason to get less than one g with respect to the aerodynamic surfaces etc despite being in a steady state.
Despite the drop in negative g experienced by the undercarriage due to a descent, you could bring that negative g back up to -1g by throwing in a turn.