Camel turning characteristics

[HagarTheHorrible]

Follow these threads.  Really interesting talk and videos.

 

http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/showpost.php?p=727549&postcount=8

 

Interesting discussions about gyroscopic procession and also WW1 pilot descriptions and interpretations of flying characteristics compared to modern understanding.

 

Just love this picture, something very powerful and purposeful about it.  A great caption would be " I'm coming to get you"

 

Edited October 11, 2018 by HagarTheHorrible

[HagarTheHorrible]

I found Javier Arango's talk very interesting so I looked him up.  Plank might want to question Kermit Weeks but I would reckon this guy is just as interesting and just as knowledgable.  ( Unfortunetly he died in a flying accident a couple of years ago)  This article was written in 2013, in it it claims he planned to publish some articles in the near future, has anyone seen or read them ?

https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/mr-arangos-aeroplanes-3409154/

 

 

Points that I took away from the lecture included opposite yaw, when rolling the aircraft, caused by drag from the aileron hinge joint which would cause the nose of the aircraft to swing in the opposite direction to the expected turn.  The fact that the aircraft wasn't unusually dangerous to fly, just difficult to learn to fly if the pilot was inexperienced or badly briefed.  Flying the Camel, perhaps like the Spitfire, was actually rather intuitive once it's quirks were understood (after maybe 100 hours), a bit like riding a bike, once you get a feel for it, everything becomes instinctive requiring little cognitive thought. The Camel could be flying, in a direction, up to 30 deg from that in which it was pointing and GP could raise or drop the nose by up to 20 deg in a tight turn ( 160 hp Gnome).  Linked to the last point the rudder was the principle method of controlling a turn rather than aileron and elevator.

 

Given the acres of debate on FM's, particularly with regard to the oddities of the rotaries, I'm a tad surprised that nobody has bothered to reply to points they might have been picked up or learned from the leacture.

 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2018 by HagarTheHorrible

[Guest deleted@83466]

14 minutes ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

 

 

Given the acres of debate on FM's, particularly with regard to the oddities of the rotaries, I'm a tad surprised that nobody has bothered to reply to points they might have picked up or learned from the leacture.

 

 

I meant to comment the other day, but I forgot.

 

I found this discussion very fascinating.  One of the interesting things to me was how he mentioned that a "Roll to the right" mean a Snap Roll to the right, and "turns faster to the right" meant a descending spiral turn, that lets the nose dip lower and lower, as an evasive manuever, which I gather doesn't work so well to the left.  Plane turns level, in our more modern usage of terminology, just as fast to the left as to the right, it just won't snap roll into a left hand turn.  Plane wants to loop itself, and constantly fly in a crab.  I too found it interesting that because of the bottom hinge on the aileron, that a conventional aileron roll to the left would cause so much adverse yaw that the plane actually turned to the right.   Sounds like a total handful of a plane to those used to something more conventional.

Edited October 12, 2018 by SeaSerpent

[HagarTheHorrible]

More interest, but of a more general nature.

 

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2009/march/01/those-magnificent-flying-machines

 

Particularly noted the point that an over rich mixture could flood the engine and cause the engine, rotaries, to lose power for up to 30 seconds.

 

 

Plank,

I flew RoF lots and lots and lots but haven't flown for a long time.  I kind of became disillusioned by it and some of, what I considered at the time, silly FM's.  I have fond memories, high hopes for FC, but maybe a more relaxed attitude to what is possible. (Providing they can sort out the angle of fire from the Se5a and Neuports that is )

One other point that seems apparent from a couple of these articles is the lack of feel on the rudder, particularly but not exclusively, the Fokkers.  We should all be flying around with no centering spring on our rudder pedals.  That would certainly make accurate flying and shooting a challenge.

Edited October 12, 2018 by HagarTheHorrible

[Chill31]

4 hours ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

The Camel could be flying, in a direction, up to 30 deg from that in which it was pointing and GP could raise or drop the nose by up to 20 deg in a tight turn ( 160 hp Gnome).  Linked to the last point the rudder was the principle method of controlling a turn rather than aileron and elevator.

 

This is also a trait of the Dr1, and I suspect it to be the same for other short fuselage aircraft, especially those with a flying rudder.

 

4 hours ago, SeaSerpent said:

 

 Plane turns level, in our more modern usage of terminology, just as fast to the left as to the right, it just won't snap roll into a left hand turn...  I too found it interesting that because of the bottom hinge on the aileron, that a conventional aileron roll to the left would cause so much adverse yaw that the plane actually turned to the right.   Sounds like a total handful of a plane to those used to something more conventional.

I can understand the difficulty in snapping to the left. A snap roll is a yaw rate generated post stall that results in a horizontal spin essentially.  It requires the pilot to abruptly pitch up to stall the wing. In the Camel et al, pitching up results in a right yaw instantly which would be fighting you in accomplishing a left hand snap roll.  The most telling thing about his this aspect is how it compares to ROF...Javier is saying that you can stall and snap roll a Camel AND command the exit.  I think this is the most significant point here as I don’t think it is possible to do it in ROF.

 

4 hours ago, Plank said:

Dear Hagar,

 

Will read info asap. over.

 

Question: have you ever tried to fly the RoF Camel inverted? It's almost impossible.

It feels like the FM has no lift when the wings are inverted. Which is wrong.

As you roll over you feel the plane dropping and no amount of control seems to

counter this. The lift drop off is proportional to the roll. Which makes sense if

no up side down lift has been applied. Yes the wings will have negative dihedral

but the will still generate lift and there are two wings... or maybe not...

 

 

 

 

 The Camel wing is terrible at inverted flight. So much so that I question whether it is possible at all. Look at the lift curve here:http://airfoiltools.com/airfoil/details?airfoil=raf15-il

 

At 0-3 degrees AOA, the lift to drag is 60-80:1. Compared o inverted flight where AOA is negative and only achieves a 20:1 which doesn’t look promising for being able to maintain level flight.

 

 

4 hours ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

 

One other point that seems apparent from a couple of these articles is the lack of feel on the rudder, particularly but not exclusively, the Fokkers.  We should all be flying around with no centering spring on our rudder pedals.  That would certainly make accurate flying and shooting a challenge.

Yes, the Dr1 is too stable in yaw, but I don’t know if it is even possible to model it correctly.  In my experimenting with FSX, the FM did not allow for negative static stability and positive dynamic stability.

[HagarTheHorrible]

Given the discussion about forward stick and level flight, I particularly noted in one of the articles the fact that the Neuports "Bebe" 11 was very tail heavy.  Being tiring to fly, the replica aircraft was eventually fitted with a bungee, fitted to the joystick (?) to  help relieve the pressure on the pilots arm.

 

The only aircraft, from RoF, that I remember being particularly tail heavy was the N28.  Was it so in reality and was it a Neuport trait ?  

 

Looking at the picture of Javier's crashed N28, on the face of it it looks a lot like a classic rotary crash, that you see and hear about from WW1, with the wings wrapped around the fuselage following a spin.  It is a stark reminder of the realities and even though I know very little about Javier,  I will think about him often as I pootle about in FC.