Slowest Ground Speed Record In An RV

[Danny King]

Originally Posted by Jamie

At an airshow once when I was a kid I saw an ultralight pilot depart for home. On climb out he looked ok....as he cleared the tree tops and climbed higher his GS seemed to slow. He climbed until he started going backward directly over the runway at about 1000ft agl. He backed up the entire distance of the runway, pitched the nose down and descended back to the runway.

I did that in a J-3 Cub over 52F a few years back.


I can't prove it, but I flew the Doll at -21 mph several winters ago near Denton Texas. I slowed to Zero on the Garmin, and then slowed to -21 mph with intermittent stall buffet. Then I accelerated back to zero. This happened at 3000 AGL with surface winds of around 20 knots. That was one strong low level jet stream.

[Vlad]

Today I beat my own record of 12 kts. I flew 11 kts for one minute or so. Could have done less but Skykingbob was already worried.

[Vlad]

Captain John just reported from Phase One he has the slowest PROVEN record - 2 kts GS.





All you guys flying backwards prove it or it never happened.

[smokyray]

Originally Posted by Vlad

Captain John just reported from Phase One he has the slowest PROVEN record - 2 kts GS.


All you guys flying backwards prove it or it never happened.

Vlad,
When you think of defeating an adversary in aerial combat, you never think 2 dimensional. Exploiting the pure vertical decreases your forward speed relative to your adversary, pure vertical being the most effective. Therefore, any flight in the pure vertical relative to the earth is ZERO airspeed over the ground, hurricane force winds notwithstanding....

Pure vertical with zero airspeed at zero wind would be the slowest speed attainable, unless of course you are parked in the chocks...
V/R
Smokey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgrVhdZde5U

[Vlad]

Originally Posted by smokyray

Vlad,
When you think of defeating an adversary in aerial combat, you never think 2 dimensional. Therefore, any flight in the pure vertical relative to the earth is ZERO airspeed over the ground.

Pure vertical with zero airspeed at zero wind would be the slowest speed attainable, unless of course you are parked in the chocks...
V/R
Smokey
http://youtu.be/LgrVhdZde5U

That's a nice clip Smokey! You surely can fly this toy with permanent grin.
Here we are talking pure sustained horizontal sorta defeating 200 kts Club. Bombers thing you know...

[knievel]

Flight training in the Cessna 150, fighting a nasty headwind to get back to the field, tower called "57U.....are....you guys OK?"

Apparently our groundspeed was unimpressive.

[Captain_John]

Originally Posted by Vlad

Captain John just reported from Phase One he has the slowest PROVEN record - 2 kts GS.





All you guys flying backwards prove it or it never happened.

I just noticed that my headwind component matches my TRUE airspeed.

I suppose technically I got zero???

lol funny stuff!

CJ

[rzbill]

A few years ago, a friend took off from KAVL Asheville to go to KTYS Knoxville (75nm) in a 172. After takeoff and noticing that Pisgah mountain was on his left wingtip for a really long time, he calculated his fuel and realized he would not make it to Knoxville. !!!!

Obviously his groundspeed was astounding when he turned around to come the few miles back home

[smokyray]

Originally Posted by rzbill

A few years ago, a friend took off from KAVL Asheville to go to KTYS Knoxville (75nm) in a 172. After takeoff and noticing that Pisgah mountain was on his left wingtip for a really long time, he calculated his fuel and realized he would not make it to Knoxville. !!!!

Obviously his groundspeed was astounding when he turned around to come the few miles back home

During my banner towing days we routinely flew our tow planes at 50-55 mph tow speed. A twin pilot once saw me refueling between banners and commented that "you sure fly slow". I told him that I recently saw a lady hang her clothes on the line and after flying a while I looked down and she was taking them in! He laughed and said "maybe one day you'll fly a fast airplane like mine"...

"Maybe..."

V/R
Smokey

[Whitman]

Man I bet you would've loved to buzz him in the Viper years later!