F

fireandfly

Member
I have a "purchased" 6. It was the builders 4th RV he put together and was a quick build.
I was fortunate enough to have a well respected retired airshow pilot give me acrobatic lessons in my plane and in his Extra 300. Now it's practice time.
Do any of you have reservations on stressing the wings with loops year after year? I am fairly young (43 :D ) and hope to enjoy the light acrobatics the plane has to offer for some time, but I'm also the kind of pilot that is amazed a plane stays together in moderate + turbulance.
 
No

Hi Fire (Please give a name :D )

As you probably know, a well done loop shouldn't pull more than 3 gs, half of the design load. Snaps are probably more hurtful if you do them too fast and pull over 4 Gs.....but they're not graceful, smooth maneuvers like Cuban 8s and Immelmans. I haven't seen or heard of a life limit on the 6 spars but call Van's.
Regards,
 
In an early '90's RVator, Van's calculated that anodizing the RV-6 spars reduced their fatigue life to roughly 12,000 hours of aerobatics.
 
Careful

Terry,
If you stall the airplane in an extremely high nose-up attitude, the wing is unloaded during the stall and there are no excessive G's unless you recover in a steep dive and then pull the Gs. If you're talking about going vertical and doing a tailslide into a hammerhead stall, you stand a serious chance of elevator and stabilizer damage. If I recall correctly, its verboten by Van.
Regards,
 
Technically a "hammerhead" is not a stall. It is a turn. You need to kick the airplane over BEFORE it stalls. If you stall it in this attitude, you risk a tail-slide. You DON'T want to do this. I have done extensive rear fuselage and empennage work on a -3 that experienced this. The rudder stops wrinkled the fuselage skins badly. It wasn't pretty.
 
Thanks Mel....didn't know the maneuver was actually a turn??? Not going to be doing this one regardless...wouldn't want to bend up a perfectly fine tail.
 
The other risk to a botched hammerhead is an inverted spin. Suppose you get a little past vertical on the upline, then wait a little too late for the rudder input. Instead of a nice little u-shaped pivot around the yaw axis, the airplane starts going over backwards. To compensate you push in some forward stick. Consider the inputs. The airplane is now about 45 degrees nose high, inverted, with "up" elevator (holding the inverted high AOA) and full rudder. The perfect spin entry, and likely to continue if the pilot, disoriented by the unusual attitude, doesn't recognize what is happening.

Dan Horton
 
When in doubt, power to idle and let go! Most of the time it's the monkey at the controls who's making things worse... :rolleyes:
 
Let go..

Just curious about what most pilots think on the 'power back - let go' approach, Is it true that most RVs will return to wings level if the pilot releases the controls? (given substantial altitude). If so, aerobatic 'training' might best be practiced at 9000' AGL.. ;)
 
aelkins said:
Is it true that most RVs will return to wings level if the pilot releases the controls?
Click to expand...
Wings level, no. But what I was implying is that it won't stay stalled if I "just let go" from pretty much any attitude I've thrown at this airplane.
 
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