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Message
I don't mean to butt my nose in where it doesn't belong, and I don't
know much about those RV-thingies you guys are flying around in, but
didn't you say you were up against a Vne of 210 in the last race? Have
you added some duct tape since then, or have you 're-rated' your
airplane?
In the old builders/flight manual, Van used to suggest
that everyone test their Vne speed to something like 20 kts beyond
Vne. The concern seems to be control flutter, so the test was to
go to a nice safe altitude, in calm are, and establish a speed well below
Vne. You then took your hand off the stick, and gave the stick a sharp
bump with your hand in each direction (left, right, up, down). The idea
was that this would induce flutter if it was going to happen. You then
repeated the test at very small speed increments, until you made it to something
like 20 kts above Vne. The idea was that you should be able to stop
any flutter that occurs by slowing down, but only if you were just barely in the
speed range that allowed it to
happen.
At
some point, Van realized that this test scares the crap out of people, and
there were enough planes flying to prove that his Vne numbers were safe for any
reasonably well built plane. From then on, he stopped recommending that
the flutter test be performed.
I
would like to be able to fly my RV-3B above the stated 210 mph Vne, so at
some point, I may do the flutter test. The scary part about the RV-3
is that it's the only RV without counterbalanced elevators. One of my
eventual plans is to add counterbalances similar to the
RV-4.
Cheers,
Rusty
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