Posted: 4/21/2012 5:19:04 PM EDT
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If you are flying an SR-71 at cruise speed and altitude, you are balanced on a knife edge.
My question is "How do you get the damned thing down"? If you drop the nose, you will accelerate, if you back off on the throttles, you will stall. Faster means either buffeting or engine problems or both, plus excessive skin and leading edge temperatures. Do you play a delicate game of "back off and lower the nose" very gradually to sort of mush down to a lower altitude? Or am I making a simple thing complicated? I also gather from reading that they have rather bad yaw control, and to get one sideways is very bad Juju. |
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When an aircraft is trimmed for cruise flight, you are trimmed for an airspeed. Open the throttle, the plane climbs, close the throttle, the nose drops. In both cases, the plane is trying to find that "cruise" airspeed. So if you close the throttle, you will descend. Mike F Edited for clarification. |
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Quoted:
When an aircraft is trimmed for cruise flight, you are trimmed for an airspeed. Open the throttle, the plane climbs, close the throttle, the nose drops to try and find that airspeed again. So' if you close the throttle, you will descend. Mike F Thank you, sir. I should have been able to figure that out by myself, but for some reason, it just wouldn't "jell." |