From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #518 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Wednesday, 22 November 1995 Volume 05 : Number 518 In this issue: BLC Mystery plane refueling See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: George Allegrezza 21-Nov-1995 2221 Date: Tue, 21 Nov 95 22:34:53 EST Subject: BLC Chuck Smith wrote: [snip] > The hottest boundary layer control stuff is not on airplanes, but >race cars. Check it out. Off charter alert . . . Are you talking about sucker/blower systems? Those are probably illegal under most rules packages. There might be experimental R&D going on, but there's no opportunity for practical application of the technology. If you mean multi-element closely-coupled airfoils, yes, that's an active area of R&D in racing, and quite sophisticated. I suppose the short tunnel unskirted Group C/IMSA cars of the late 80s might qualify, kinda sorta quasi maybe. The turbulent downwash along the sides of the vehicle generated by the greenhouse was sucked under the car, accelerated, and blown through the venturi tunnels, then accelerated again by the suction effect of the rear airfoil. Those cars ran over 7K lbs. of downforce at 200 mph, if you could maintain the angle of attack (not always easy, mostly due to pavement quality). George George Allegrezza | Digital Equipment Corporation | "You are a strange, sad little man." Mobile Systems Business | Littleton MA USA | -- Buzz Lightyear allegrezza@ljsrv2.enet.dec.com | ------------------------------ From: "Art Hanley" Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 20:46:23 +0700 Subject: Mystery plane refueling John: With the wings swept aft, there wouldn't be that much loss of control. On the Tomcat for example, roll control at low sweep is a combination of differential spoiler and stabilators. As the wings sweep aft, the spoilers are gradually locked out to the point where only the stabilators are working. Because of the higher speeds, they are more than enough . For an aircraft that doesn't need the Tomcat's agility, there may not even be that many control surfaces on the wing. If we assume the mystery plane was having problems with wing sweep (assuming it's a vg aircraft), that doesn't mean it's unstable or barely controllable, just that it is less efficient than it could be and has a higher stall speed. If the aircraft is sufficiently controllable to tank using flying boom, it's stable enough that the chase planes could come in close to watch the operation safely. If there's a problem, they'd want to be close-in anyway to observe and advise as needed. Alternatively, this could be a test of the mystery plane in refueling ops., and the wings are intentionally kept aft. Again, you'd want the chase aircraft in close. The biggest risk is that the plane would fall off the boom, so this isn't that much more risky than any other formation flight. Conversely, the "refuelee" could really be a delta and nothing's wrong. Art P.S. Maybe the mystery plane has the only map and the F-111s didn't want to get lost! ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #518 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. Administrative requests, problems, and other non-list mail can be sent to either "skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu" or, if you don't like to type a lot, "prm@mail.orst.edu A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "skunk-works-digest" in the commands above with "skunk-works". Back issues are available for anonymous FTP from mail.orst.edu, in /pub/skunk-works/digest/vNN.nMMM (where "NN" is the volume number, and "MMM" is the issue number).