A barrel roll is not a fast roll rate manoeuvre.

However, rudder is useful when executing a Derry turn, but one must be very careful at 500 feet AGL, especially when the transition from +6g to -3g must be made within half a second.

One feels that it is now time to retire from this thread.......exit with full loop away from crowdline at 90 degrees until no longer visible.

A-B

The commonest use of the barrel roll in display flying is precisely to realign the axis, particularly useful when one has underestimated the on-crowd wind component. Not that any professional display flyer would ever do that....;)

And here was me thinking a Barrel Roll was something Snoopy used to escape from the Red Baron. :sad:

Another fun ride somewhere in Morocco :)

you can see at the end of the not-programmed display... the guy on ground did draw a plane with thanks written in arabic!

By the way... it's a non Aerobat Cessna!

A classic barrel roll could be demonstrated in the B757/767 Sim but, strangely enough, was never tempted to try it in the aircraft
However, the smoothest barrel roll I ever sat in on was demonstrated by the late Neil Williams (British Aerobatic Chmpion at the time) in a Falcon fanjet. He had two passengers standing in the back drinking champagne but as it was night they never realised they had been upside down.
Wasn't close enough to see whether the direction of the bubbles was affected!

this link seems to describe a barrel roll as I understand it:
Barrel roll - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

not that wikipedia is the ultimate authority out there, but it does have the benefit of being correctable if someone believes they can describe the manoevure better.

the CAA makes the point that barrel rolls and other manoevures flown at low level can be potential killers:
http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CivilAi...eforPilots.pdf

not that I am an expert in these matters - and there are people posting on this thread with far more experience than Lighting Mate gives them credit for, including (ex) RAF display pilots....but the crucial part of the manoevure IMHO is to go through the gate correctly. If you don't see what you expect in terms of the numbers, your energy and attitude, then you need to start thinking safety first rather than completing the manoevure.