Redbull Air race plane crash in perth

[ManOnTheMoon]

Just read that one of the plane's just went down in the perth river! His winged touched the water in a turn and pulled his plane into the water!! he is ok which is great

[Nesti]

Pretty specy!

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/red-bull-plane-crashes-into-river-20100415-sg9o.html

[marki]

Yes lots of wind gusts outside at the moment and it must be howling up the swan river. I thought they were going to refrain from practice until the weather settled a little.

Mark

[leinad]

Splash One! :lol:

[Inmykombi]

Its great that he is OK after that....
It happened so fast.

[mswhin63]

Plane stalled after a turn and the pilot tried to level out after the turn. Lucky only minor injuries.

[Nesti]

Yeah, looks about right Malcolm. Brilliant bit of flying...corrected just in time to get the wings level...which means it wasn't control failure either.


***Don't mean to patronise anyone***
These types of aircraft trade-off aerodynamic buffers for pure performance. Reducing washout allows a stall to come quite quickly rather than progressively. They can do this because they pull hard in practice so often they get a good feel for it (like drifting a Go-Kart), also their flying weight doesn't change dramatically as they fly for only short periods.

What's Washout?: a twist in the wing from root to tip. Typically positive at the root and sometimes negative at the tip (Spitfire has 2+ to -1/2). The idea being that as the turn gets harder and the wing's angle of attack (A0A: angle with respect to the relative air flow) increases leading eventually to a stall (de-lamination of air cross the top surface of the wing accompanied by turbulent flow) the root will stall first while the tip is still pulling. This allows a stall to be manageable and progressive. Drop the washout down to zero and the stall comes quite rapidly.

The benefit of zero degree washout is that the wing pulls harder at the top of the lift bell curve...and of course every bit of racing advantage they can get, they take.

If you look at the clip, his last turn was to the left, which means the AoA of the left wing is increasing as it is moving downward (the right wing is decreasing the AoA). If you replay it and look closely, you'll see the wing lets-go very fast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rR68OIpcX4

I reckon if he was 10ft higher, he would have got out of that.

[avandonk]

The old Piper 140's had a wing that had no washout. If you were not very careful when landing you would lose the lot if you got to the stall to early. The only thing that would lift a wing was the rudder. These high performance aircraft are even worse as they have higher wing loadings.

These blokes are flying on the edge of the envelope and any sort of gusting wind will put them outside the flight envelope with disastrous results.

Anyone that even competes in this sort of aero sport has to be at the top of their game. I would not or most probably could not even do what they do at 4000ft and I am endorsed for aerobatics with a passenger if you can find them.

Bert

[MikeyB]

Thanks for that detailed analysis, Mark - it's very interesting (to a non-pilot, but with a long-time interest in aircraft. Any mention of a Spitfire and I prick up my ears!)

[DavidTrap]

I've tip stalled my radio controlled glider on landing. Problem was solved by taping a piece of stick under the leading edge of the tips of the wing. Wouldn't look so good on a Red Bull Racer though.

DT

[Nesti]

Rudder input toward or away from the dropped wing? Toward would be like the second half of a wing-over, away might level the wings through side-slip and taking advantage of the Piper's dihedral. Interesting.

I noticed they have a good dihedral; in fair conditions you could probably land on rudder alone.

Cheers

[mswhin63]

There was quite high winds on the day, even take-off's and landing's were cancelled from Langley Park and had to be done from Jandakot. Weather should be good for this weekend though.