Wind direction and Waco ?

[jollyjack]

Tried with a Waco PLAYER to fly against a heavy frontal wind. This should make it stay longer in the air in a free fight one might think.

Seems to make no difference neither with a tail wind nor a frontal one .....does it work?

Edited February 24, 2024 by jollyjack

[jollyjack]

BUMP

[AndyJWest]

On 2/12/2024 at 8:02 PM, jollyjack said:

Tried with a Waco PLAYER to fly against a heavy frontal wind. This should make it stay longer in the air in a free fight one might think.

Seems to make no difference neither with a tail wind nor a frontal one .....does it work?

 

The wind speed makes absolutely no difference to the rate of descent of a glider at a given airspeed. Aerodynamically, what the ground is doing is irrelevant, as the only physical forces are due to motion relative to the air.

[jollyjack]

One would expect flying against the wind would give you more airlift and thus a gaining height opportunity?

[AndyJWest]

2 hours ago, jollyjack said:

One would expect flying against the wind would give you more airlift and thus a gaining height opportunity?

Not if one understands physics, one wouldn't.

[Jaegermeister]

In unpowered flight I would assume increased headwind would only reduce the distance you travel forward over the ground during descent and a tailwind the opposite

[AndyJWest]

2 minutes ago, Jaegermeister said:

In unpowered flight I would assume increased headwind would only reduce the distance you travel forward over the ground during descent and a tailwind the opposite

 

Yup.

[jollyjack]

Well, i know nothing about gliding it seems ... so then we might need another ME wind setting ... thermals ?

[AndyJWest]

If you want thermals and/or ridge lift, try MSFS. Neither would be anything more than a minor nuisance to a Waco pilot, if they noticed it at all.

[Jaegermeister]

8 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

If you want thermals and/or ridge lift, try MSFS. Neither would be anything more than a minor nuisance to a Waco pilot, if they noticed it at all.

I think you can actually glide better in some of the Flying Circus planes than you can in a Waco. The Albatros will actually land by itself if you don’t hit any trees. They were known to have landed undamaged with dead pilots during WWI and it is modeled in game. You gently stall, the plane recovers and levels out, stalls again and repeats until on the ground.

[AndyJWest]

4 hours ago, Jaegermeister said:

I think you can actually glide better in some of the Flying Circus planes than you can in a Waco. The Albatros will actually land by itself if you don’t hit any trees. They were known to have landed undamaged with dead pilots during WWI and it is modeled in game. You gently stall, the plane recovers and levels out, stalls again and repeats until on the ground.

 

It's very likely possible to eliminate the stalling through careful adjustment of the elevator neutral. As for real-world aircraft landing by themselves, I can certainly believe it for some of the more stable types. I'd have thought that Albatros's were probably rather marginal in stability in roll (no dihedral), but it doesn't sound entirely unfeasible that it happened occasionally. 

 

Regarding the Waco, it's probably worth noting that sailplane-like performance was never a requirement, and would probably be a liability. The sole objective was to place large quantities of troops and/or equipment on the ground with precision. A relatively steep glide angle makes landing easier, which is why sailplanes generally have huge spoilers to counter their 50 to 1 glide ratios .

Edited February 25, 2024 by AndyJWest

[IckyATLAS]

Some in the 18mt class span have even more not far from 60:1. That's just difficult to grasp. If you arrive say on a  hot sunny day at 15 meters height shy from the runway the runway you would need 900meters of runway to land. But due to ground effect and thermals due to overheated runway and if you have a slight tailwind you probably don't land at all and just go on to the other end with no end in sight. You really need those massive spoilers. 

When one looks at distance records of over 2'000 km (back to starting point with three turning points) , it means that basically in a sailplane you never go down. It is the pilot's capacity to continue flying, I mean it is a human limit at this point..