Scudrunners

How about putting on a show in a Ford Trimotor?


That surface-level loop is a heart stopper!

Nice.

Anyone can fly acro in an over-powered monster, but it takes a really
good stick to fly acro in a normal aircraft (Bob Hoover, John Mohr).

The key to a surface inside loop is the application of GATES.

You need to know what your ENTRY gate is. At the surface - ok, no
atltitude - you need lots of smash. What airspeed do you need, in
that aircraft, on that day? In the Pitts, if you see 100 mph, it's not
going to work, but in a Cub, you're golden.

The ENTRY gate above, tells you if it's even possible it fly the maneuver.
It is useful for a formation, for example - if you can't make the entry
gate, time for an energy-gainer like a wingover, and start again.

Now for what keeps you alive. Any time you subtend a velocity vector
at 90 degrees to mother earth - a downward-looping maneuver towards
the ground - you are betting your life that you got the physics right.

The TOP GATE is what keeps you alive. For a particular airplane on a
particular day, it is the range of airspeeds and altitudes which allow
you to continue the downward-looping maneuver. For a Pitts, with low
density altitude, I'm looking at 1000 feet, and I don't care about the
airspeed, really. The altitude is what determines if you live or die in
the next minute.

If you don't make your TOP GATE altitude - you are inverted, staring
at 800 feet on the altimeter in your Pitts - just let the nose sag, unload
the wing, and with full power allow the aircraft to accelerate and continue
to drop the nose and do a 1/2 roll upright. You will not subtend a velocity
vector of greater than 30 degrees. Nice and safe.

Basically, convert the loop to a 1/2 cuban-eight. It might bother you,
but none of the crowd will notice, trust me. As the Snowbirds say,
"The ice cream lickers don't know the difference".

Amazingly, very few pilots that want to fly aerobatics near the ground
are aware of this. There was a fucking ignorant @sshole four bar that
flew a Hawker Hunter in England that didn't know anything about this,
and killed a bunch of people.

It pisses me off, when people have contempt for sh1t that can kill them.

One of the best airshows I ever saw was in Toulouse France.

I was parked beside a Tiger Cat in the parking area of the airshow and that meant that I followed him out for our display time which meant I was sitting right at the take off holding point at the start of the runway.

He put on a spectacular show and I was close enough to see his face as he went by on his passes.

The Tiger Cat is awesome!

Colonel wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 10:57 pm The key to a surface inside loop is the application of GATES.

Academically, I understand and completely trust all that. Practically, it blows my mind to see such a lumbering beast just haul up from ground level and be upside down just *RIGHT THERE* overhead like that. It’s wild.

There’s something about Younkin’s Beech 18 act where the airplane at least looks like it’s comfortable being manhandled around. Johnson’s Ford on the other hand is graceful yet somehow very reluctant looking. It’s hard to describe but I bet you know what I mean.

It's long forgotten now, but Matt's Dad Bobby Younkin bought an old Lear 23
and flew airshows in it. Matt is a good stick, but his Dad Bobby was simply
supernatural. I couldn't believe it, the first time I saw him fly. You've probably
never heard of Bobby's Dad Jim - an above average EE.

Hey. You can get an old 707 for a pretty good price, I'll bet? What a great
airshow you could do with it! Empty, light on fuel, smoking like an old locomotive ...



See, airshows always provide all your fuel. So, you always arrive on fumes
and after your sequence, choke that mother full of Jet-A before you leave.

I remember one year - I won't mention the airport - doing that trick, we ran
the tanks dry at the FBO. They had to call in their fuel supplier with a tanker
truck in a hell of a hurry.

Just a thought - can you put afterburning engines on a Boeing? There's a
really neat trick you can play, if you can dump fuel and light it off with the
burner. It's spectacular at night. If you do it right, you can light up the 911
call center.



Now in your mind, scale that up to four afterburning engines & fuel dumps.