Galdri,

Interesting that you should draw paralells with Football and F1, perhaps the two most distasteful, exploitative and over-rated money-making rip-offs, masquerading as sport.

I can completely agree with you on the fact that they are over-rated money-making rip-offs. That is how we look at it. However, the fact is that, huge number of people are actually prepared to pay silly amounts of money to get in there.

I believe a ‘Champions Leaque’ ( is that what it is called?) ticket would probably be £50 or more, and I think it is over £100 now to get into a Formula one event. I had to go for work once, and it was one of the most tiresome afternoons of my life. Right up there with watching paint dry.

I do not know about the ´Champions Leaque´, never heard of it. However a quick google could get me these tickets:http://www.1st4footballtickets.com/tickets/SelectEvent.asp?EventId=2651 that´s over 200 for a single game! And guess what, they are probably going to fill up every last one of their seats!
For the Formula 1, my friend google was able to get me these ticket prices:
http://www.silverstone.co.uk/php/rm_britishGP_ticketType.php
40 pounds is just a change! These sports may be tiresome, and right up there with watching paint dry in our eyes, but that is exactly how the fans of these sports will probably look at ours as well. Many of the fans prepared to pay for the admission to these events are just the average Joe Public with no bigger money than you or me. They just swallow the pill:eek:

The difference with airshow pricing is that even at the higher scale, I do not think huge profits are being made, and as an outdoor event, the scope for losses is ever-present. Even RIAT, where many of the ‘turns’ are provided at no charge, the cost of hosting the event, and accomodating the participants eats into the profit.

Which is why we should not bitch about their prices. If they could do it cheaper, they probably would, as most airshow organizers are not out there to make money. If they were, they would be in a different buisness altogether!

Airshows are disappearing because the organizers are loosing money. They are not getting richer by the minute.

My Miles Gemini now added.

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My airliner knowledge is a bit flaky. Dash 7?
Moggy

And the WINNER IS………………………..Moggy:D 😀 😀

DeHavilland Canada DHC-7;) 😉

No memory of a Spit with a Dart, and it almost certainly never happened.

However there was a Piper “Mustang” prototype (mostly Mustang exept for the engine) flown in a USAF fly-off for a COIN aircraft in the 60´s, early 70´s engined with a RR Dart engine. Could you be confusing the two?

For those of us with a less extensive keyboard, would that be ‘Thor’?

Yes it is. Sorry about that, just slipped into writing the name in Icelandic for no good reason:o

I would like to add, that the RAF were also using some strange machines as fighters.

98 Squadron RAF Coastal Command used Battles as fighters against He 111´s in Iceland during the winter and spring of 1941. The only He 111 that came within range during that period escped unharmed because the Battle could not catch it:eek:

Correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I’m aware the slats were primarily an anti-spin device rather than a tool for reducing the stalling speed

Slats are not an anti-spin device. Spinning is perfectly possible in an aircraft fitted with slats. Spinning is the end resault when a wing excceds its max angle of attack, and a yaw is present. Of course it possible to exceed the max angle of attack of a wing with slats fitted.

It´s some ten years now since I was instructing, so bear with me, I´m out of practice:eek: 😀

In laymans terms, angle of attack is the angle at which the air hits a wing realtive to a line drawn from the absolute leading edge of a wing to the trailing edge (the longest line possible to draw between the two) and this is call the Chord line. So the angle between the Chord line and the oncomming air is called Angle of Attack. Most light aircraft, with none symetrical wings, typically fly with about 4° angle of attack in stable, level, flight. But that will depend on the all up weight of the aircraft. As you increase the angle of attack, the wings capabilities to produce lift will increase. But as you increase the angle of attack, the oncomming air will have ever harder time passing over the wing as it is forming a great obsticle in its way. The air will have less and less ability to pass smoothly over the top of the wing, rather it becomes detached from it, and will form a turbulent eddie current over the top surface that will not produce lift. As normal wing profiles (for the experts on here, I´m not muddling the water with the flat plate effect or the delta) require smooth air over the top to produce lift, this is not good news. So what is really happening, is that you are increasing the amount of lift generated by the wing, but at the same time, you are destoying the wings capability to produce lift:eek: All of this comes head to head at a point called the stall. At that point, you reach the optimum trade off between angle of attack and the damaging effects of eddie currents over the wing. Normal light aircraft wing stalls somewhere between 12°-15° angle of attack, depending on airfoil. Any more angle of attack, and the damaging effects of the eddie currents will cancel out the lift increase generated by increased angle of attack, and lift will actually decrease, the aircraft will not be able to maintain altitude, and, depending on airfoil, might become downright nasty to it´s passenger at that time:eek:

As you might have seen, I´ve never talked about stall speed. That is because wings do not stall because of speed. They only stall because of to large angle of attack! They great myth about the stall speed only comes from the fact, that angle of attack indicators are not installed in normal aeroplanes. This is how the infamous stall speed is found out. You take an aircraft up to altitude and close the throttle. As the speed decreases, the wings ability to produce lift decreases, so if you maintain a set altitude the angle of attack will have to incease to maintain the lift. At the time the aircraft stalls, you take a note of what the airspeed indicator is showing, and that will be you stalling speed from now on. It has nothing to do with the speed it self, but rather the optimum trade of between lift generation and eddie currents. That speed you read out at that time is only relevant to that weight of the aircraft. If you increase the weight, the speed shown will be higher, if you decrease it, the speed shown will be lower. Most of us know what g is, but if someone does not know, it is the force of gravity. As you are sitting in the chair in front of the computer you are experiencing 1g. At 2g you will feel 2 times as heavy as now. The same applies to aircraft. In a 2g turn, a 1000 Ibs aircraft feels like it is 2000 Ibs. And that affects the stall speed. It will go up by the root of the g. So an aircraft that has a publiced stall speed of 60 will stall at 84. Angle of attack will remain the same!

Now for the slats. Basically what they are, is a device fitted to the front of leading edge arranged in such a way, as to re-energize the air passing over the wing close to critical angle of attack. In normal flight, they have no function at all (except, if they are fixed, they will produce drag). Once the airfoil approaches the critical angle of attack, the air will start to pass between opening of the slat and the wing, and in doing so, it will speed up somewhat and the slat is shaped in a way to redirect the flow over the top of the airfoil. That will re-energize the air over the top, and help delay the onset of eddie currents. That will in turn help the wing produce more lift for a given angle of attack. Slat design vary, and the airfoil-slat combination will to, but let´s give an example of an airfoil that will reach it critical angle of attack of 14° without slats. With slats, that same airfoil will reach 18°. So if you want high angle of attack (slow speed, STOL) capability, you will be looking at slats to help you achive that goal.

The slats on the 109 are not there for slow speed operation, as in STOL operation. They are there for a very different reason, that is contolability. The wing profile seen on the 109, has the rather irritating habit of starting the stall at the wing tip, working it´s way gradually inwards with increased angle of attack. That will mean, that you will be loosing aileron control, before you really knew you were in a stall, and loosing a vital control is not good. There are three ways around this problem on a wing of that particular profile. You can build a wash-in into the wing. It basically means that you twist the wing, making that leading edge of the wing droop down (decrease the angle of attack) as you go out the wing. That basically means, that you will not be getting the most efficent wing possible as the outer portions are not developping the lift they could. Second line of attack would be to fit so called stall strips the the leading edge of the inner wing panels. What they do, is to create a turbulent airflow over the top at high angle of attack, fooling the wing into believing it is stalled when it really is not. That will degrade the lift production of the wing, not really what you want in a turning fight at high angle of attack! The germans chose the best thing. A slat covering the span of the ailerons, more or less. That way they hoped to get re-energized air over a portion of the wing that was stalled in relation to the rest of the wing, hoping to maintain aileron control (and lift on that protion of the wing) all the way to a complete stall of all the wing. It works very well. BUT, and there is always a BUT!

The slats on both wings are not interconnected, so one will open irrespective of what the other is doing. In the perfect world, you will be in a totally co-ordinated turn and both slats would open automatically together with no hassel at all, you would hardly notice it! However, in the heat of a combat, I do not think you give a sh*t about the elegant way of flying. You just do what you think you have to do, co-ordinated, slipping or skidding, what ever it takes. And that is where this system will let you down. Picture this. You are in a 109 doing a turning dogfight to the left with a Spit, you have a lead on him in your sight, just about right! Well that was easy, I´m not even pulling as hard as I could, plenty left before stall. Hummm, lousy flying, he is actually loosing hight in the turn, what do they teach these guys in the RAF? In a tight turn how do you correct for that one? Well, you use bottom rudder, you ++++++++. You touch bottom rudder very gently with your feet………..all of a sudden the aircraft rolls sharply out of the turn, approaching wings level, with the Spit way out of the gun sight, and you are very alone. What happened was that as soon as you touched the bottom rudder, the left wing started to stall, the slat opened, and the sudden lift increase cought you out cold. The aircraft rolled to the right, and you lost that Spit.

Waiting for all the “experts” to shot me down in flames.