wmuflyguy
flunky
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2004
- Posts
- 2,006
I'll pass on what was told to me in a Winter Ops seminar at the school i teach at by the people from the NASA Glen Research Center in Cleveland. They are the guys that fly the Twin Otter around and look for Ice. It is a neat airplane they brought it up during the seminar and we got to look at it.
I'll try my best to recall what was said but sorry if anything is incorrect.
As i recall, they stated that the caravans wing is like that of a Skyhawk, it produces much of its lift between 25%-40% of its chord. As opposed to some aircraft wings which create lift much more uniformly over the entire length of the chord line.
This wing allows for more stability and control during stalls and lowspeed flight, so it is used alot in trainers.
The downside is that Ice builds up in the front part of the wing(25-40% chord) rapidly causeing the airflow to become turbulent over the portion that produces the majority of lift in the Caravan.
So with a small amount of Ice aft of the boots can cause a drastic loss of lift in an aircraft with this type of wing.
That is how i understand it.
I would really like to fly on still regardless
I'll try my best to recall what was said but sorry if anything is incorrect.
As i recall, they stated that the caravans wing is like that of a Skyhawk, it produces much of its lift between 25%-40% of its chord. As opposed to some aircraft wings which create lift much more uniformly over the entire length of the chord line.
This wing allows for more stability and control during stalls and lowspeed flight, so it is used alot in trainers.
The downside is that Ice builds up in the front part of the wing(25-40% chord) rapidly causeing the airflow to become turbulent over the portion that produces the majority of lift in the Caravan.
So with a small amount of Ice aft of the boots can cause a drastic loss of lift in an aircraft with this type of wing.
That is how i understand it.
I would really like to fly on still regardless
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