F16 departure
 

In Military Aviation there's a thread about an F-16 test flight.
High subsonic.
35,000ft
Assymetric weapon load (more on left wing).
Rolled 90deg right and pulled.

A/c departed to the right.

I thought, at first, that it should have gone left.
Would the right departure have been due to Mach shock on the right wing?

The real "insight into the daily life of the test pilot" would have been the hours of meetings and report writing about it, not to mention hundreds of graphs being pored over.


Thinking out loud - my total F16 knowledge is mostly from various presentations at SETP and SFTE conferences, so please take this all as interested conjecture....


stores on left wing --> asymmetric drag similar to having asymmetric thrust on an ME

The AFCS will act in lieu of the pilot presumably, but the actions will be the same - rudder to create a balancing yawing moment away from the stores - that is to the right.

This creates sideslip from the left, presumably with all that sweep the F16 has positive lateral stability so she'll try to roll away from the store.

To compensate for that, the AFCS will apply aileron so as to roll towards the store - that is, to the left. So, up aileron on the left, down aileron on the right.

So we have sideslip and aileron (or equivalent depending upon what you call the controls on the particular jet).


Exceed the critical AoA and you are going to get something we can reasonably call a stall.

High speed subsonic stall with crossed controls will induce a flick roll?

The wing with the down aileron (the right) will stall, and on the left won't - so that would be a flick roll to the right.


I think.

This is wild conjecture, but seems to work.

G

Genghis the Engineer, Thanks for that clear explanation.
TF people like you looked at all my aircraft before I was let loose on then ;)