redbull air race

[dieselboy]

live from my office window

is it on tv? anyone interested?

[dieselboy]

think theyre practicing but there are 2 hovering choppers as well,

[That Ruddy Squirrel]

Here you go

http://www.redbullairrace.com/races....page=6&lang=en


Trev

[dieselboy]

the building i work in, is in that picture..

apparently the airplanes have 6 cylinder boxer engines (so like porsche) and are 8 litres, fuel injected. you can get them with turbos or superchargers. and they are f.in loud.

they can barrel roll 450 degrees a second.

i wonder if they could vertically hover?

[Sancho]

i wonder if they could vertically hover?

No.

I am going down there to watch it on Sunday. I know some people with their own wharf next to the start line

[Apache]

the building i work in, is in that picture..

apparently the airplanes have 6 cylinder boxer engines (so like porsche) and are 8 litres, fuel injected. you can get them with turbos or superchargers. and they are f.in loud.

they can barrel roll 450 degrees a second.

i wonder if they could vertically hover?

Sorry to be pedantic, but in THIS country they are 'aeroplanes', and the roll you're talking about is an axial roll, not barrel.

[Sancho]

Sorry to be pedantic, but in THIS country they are 'aeroplanes', and the roll you're talking about is an axial roll, not barrel.

Is now the time to mention conveyor belts?

Surely we could be talking about barrel rolls? If I understand correctly, an axial roll is basically a rotation straight around the longitudinal axis, whilst a barrel roll is more of a helical roll, but still along the same axis.

[dieselboy]

Sorry to be pedantic, but in THIS country they are 'aeroplanes', and the roll you're talking about is an axial roll, not barrel.

please explain the difference as im clearly not 'in the know' about that sort of thing.

[dieselboy]

the only information i can find on Axial rotation, is the definition being 'a rotation around its own axis'

a plane does not have its own axis. its not a wheel and it does not rotate like a planet so im guessing barrel roll?

[Apache]

Of course a plane has its own axis! in fact, it has three - conventionally.

Yaw (imagine a line drawn vertically down through the cockpit on this sort of plane)
Pitch (horizontal line through the wingtips along around 1/3rd of the chord)
Roll (line through the prop rotation axis and out through the base of the fin - roughly)

A fast axial roll is easier to achieve counter to the rotation of the prop - effectively the plane spins around the prop using torque to speed it up, hence can be very high rate.

Conventionally, a barrel roll will see the plane moving a few hundred feet in altitude and azimuth in one complete revolution. It is VERY hard to do this in 3/4 of a second!!! Trust me, the roll rate refers to an axial roll.

[Sancho]

Yeah Tony! Pseudo-physics time again!

I'll kick off with 'of course it has its own axis' and we'll take it from there.

Seriously, an axial roll means it just spins around an imaginary line through the middle of it. A barrel roll would mean it follows a path like a rollercoaster going through a 'corkscrew' section.

[Sancho]

Of course a plane has its own axis!

I'll kick off with 'of course it has its own axis' and we'll take it from there.

I can't believe you beat me to exactly the same words Andy.

[Apache]

I predict a post will come along which gets pedantic about how big a barrel is a barrel roll

In aviation terms, a barrel roll of a few tens of feet displacement would be regarded as a scruffy axial roll.

[dieselboy]

ah, so a barrel roll is when the planes pilot pulls back on the stick, and does a complete 360?
eg, like if a person was to do a backflip, thats the direction they travel in?
like drawing a circle, if looking sideways on from the wing tip..

whereas a barrel roll is the plane still travels forward, but if looked from behind its rotating either left or right?

[Apache]

pulling the stick back would result in a loop.

Imagine a barrel on its side, then imagine a plane travelling along its length inside, but moving around the walls of the barrel in a corkscrew fashion. Thats a barrel roll.

An axial roll would mean the plane doesn't deviate from its straight ahead flight path, but rotates around its logitudal axis.

From Wikipedia :-

The barrel roll is so-named because an aircraft executing this maneuver looks as though it were flying with its wheels running along the inside edge of a barrel. A more common modern visualization is to imagine an airplane trying to fly in a horizontal corkscrew around the line of the direction of travel.


[edit] Aviation
In aviation, the maneuver includes a constant variation of altitude in all three axes, and at the midpoint (top) of the roll, the aircraft is flying inverted, with the nose pointing at a 90-degree angle ("sideways") to the general path of flight. The term "barrel roll" is frequently used, incorrectly, to refer to any roll by an airplane (see aileron roll), or to a helical roll in which the nose remains pointed generally along the flight path. In fact, the barrel roll is a specific and difficult maneuver; a combination of a roll and a loop.

Barrel rolling is not used in aerobatic competition. Both the Boeing 707 and Concorde prototypes were barrel rolled during testing. The 707 was rolled just once by Tex Johnston while Concorde was rolled multiple times by her test pilots, including Jean Franchi and Brian Walpole.

But Tony, this is beside the point. You're a lucky git being able to watch from your office!