Hi again,

thank you Gary and porterjet, my question was really meant as a brain stimulator for myself and anyone who chose to participate. Gary, your numbers are right where I would have expected them if i was to guess, but I am certain, if you were logging those turns on equipment you could drastically tighten them up... and that's why I was questioning the 1-3 wing lengths... For the record, I don't believe anyone is going to turn an airplane 180 degrees, in 1 wing length, getting out of a shitbox... not with a hammerhead, split, cuban, hell I don't care what you throw at it... In the distance it takes to do one of these maneuvers, the wind alone will have moved you more than a wing length... None of it's important so long as you know what the sight picture of you're airplane doing a 180 is going to look like. Sight picture is what will keep me from doing a hammerhead in a pickle, unless it's the last resort... Because deep in a canyon, a hammerhead is going to be a world more disorientating, than out in the big wide open. If you don't believe that try doing one, or better yet 10 in a row, from a heading to its reciprocal, at night... let me know how that works out for you... No...I was being facetious, it's a brain exercise, don't go out and try a hammerhead at night, just imagine the procedure!
porterjet, thank you for that tidbit of info. but... as someone else pointed out, true radius is less meaningful than your ground track. I wonder if you have cool formulas that would relate to groundtrack effects in respect to speed and wind?

Take care, Rob

Well, what about the new plane?

shortfielder wrote:Well, what about the new plane?

I will send you an email It's a good start and a flying project... straight, early robertson with the cuff, really light. Almost as slow as my cub landing . I will bring everything else up to par through the year, with the hopes of upping to the pponk after next summer.
Although she ain't much to look at she's faster, and slower than the late model 180 that gave me a lift to go get it...
BTW... I think I remember you had a polished 150/150 or something? would you do it again? this one was polished, and could be again, but I'm not sure if I wanna deal with that, or pay the 15k for new paint? It is bare right now.
Take care, Rob

this is a great brainteaser. I'm getting to think about things I haven't had to think about in years, decades even....Don't get into many box canyons in a G2.

TAS was in the article I had to dig up, GS would be in the real world formula. I suppose if you wanted to calculate the exact radius you would have to figure out the wind factor for each point in the turn, not something I would want to do in a canyon. Since the no wind formula ends up with "doubling the TAS yields quadruple the radius" the point becomes s l o w and steady. Most of us don't have aerobatic aircraft, so in addition to no IFR hammerheads we of course would never go over 60 degrees of bank. right?
I would suggest for those of you with the inclination to go out and report your test results we need to have the bank angle, wind and TAS to be able to apply your results to our particular airplanes. And thanks, now go forth and have fun.

Rob wrote: Sight picture is what will keep me from doing a hammerhead in a pickle, unless it's the last resort... Because deep in a canyon, a hammerhead is going to be a world more disorientating, than out in the big wide open. If you don't believe that try doing one, or better yet 10 in a row, from a heading to its reciprocal, at night... let me know how that works out for you... No...I was being facetious, it's a brain exercise, don't go out and try a hammerhead at night, just imagine the procedure!

Take care, Rob

I've done a hammerhead 3 times in a row using a road for ground reference and I have done a hammerhead at night, but not 3 in a row at night. Scared the piss out of me on my first night aerobatic ride...it is an entirely different sight picture, but with a full moon it's not so bad. Don't try it over smooth water though or you will be completely confused on which way is up. That is a no, no!

You point is a very valid and should be taken as such...

porterjet wrote:Semantics, me thinks. I see the windward side of the canyon as the left side in your example. I get it from sailing, although I haven't done that in a while. Being blown onto a lee shore is not a good thing, windward is where the wind is coming from, lee is where it's going. I see where it could be confusing. I'm thinking the windward or leeward side of the canyon while you are thinking about the lee side of the ridge. I wholeheartedly agree turning into the wind gives the smaller radius.

The TAS quote would also apply to GS, obviously the slower you can get the better. I just wanted to show that the speed/radius thing is not 1 to 1.

I think we are talking about two different things. The lee side of the boat/plane compared to the lee side of the mountain, valley, or Island.

The comments in the "Flying Low" thread reminded me of this thread when I chimed in with my negative comments. So, I'll apologize for being one of the ones that should have kept my mouth shut and move on to another thread.

Been reading up on this topic since watching that Bruce Meadows video yesterday. Not really the same scenario, but I found this older thread. I saw on another site where someone mentioned the hammerhead canyon turn, and I laughed. Great read, with a few chuckles. Thanks.

Well i'll just through this out there.

I can do a 180 degree turn in 100-150' without hammerheading it and i can do constant 360 degree turn inside a 200' circle while climbing out.

Course that has very little to do with me and a lot to do with my plane but still.... just sayin

Don't have an arguement there with you Blu, but just cram 3 more souls into that machine of yours and then go play.
I too love the performance of my machine with just me in it...but even with the power and lift I have I got my eyes opened up one day on grass, 3300ft elevation on a hot day..thought I was going to have to abort the takeoff with just me in the plane! If this video doesn't make you think again about DA and PILOT ERROR..well you know what I mean.
By the way Blu, love to watch you and your machine perform.
Ernie

http://youtu.be/DDvBoQUdw9s

Check out the canyon turn around 4:25. Good stuff. I ended up watching all five parts of the series.

JC

Blu wrote:Well i'll just through this out there.

I can do a 180 degree turn in 100-150' without hammerheading it and i can do constant 360 degree turn inside a 200' circle while climbing out.

Course that has very little to do with me and a lot to do with my plane but still.... just sayin

I saw you practicing at caveman, very impressive airplane!

Repost video... just for grins....

Hahahaha

That's great!

robw56 wrote:

Blu wrote:Well i'll just through this out there.

I can do a 180 degree turn in 100-150' without hammerheading it and i can do constant 360 degree turn inside a 200' circle while climbing out.

Course that has very little to do with me and a lot to do with my plane but still.... just sayin

I saw you practicing at caveman, very impressive airplane!

Damn impressive pilot also , I saw you at caveman too!