Subject: Ducted Fan Data
From: Paul
Date: 5/25/1999, 11:11 AM
To: zz

Perry Mick wrote:

Paul wrote:


That is tricky to use that data as you need to be competent
in spherical trig. Plus the lat/long resolution is not the greatest.

Easier way is to sneak out there in the middle of a foggy moonless night
with a 100 foot tape and a spray can of white paint :-)

Or talk to the airport manager and ask him how far apart are the
runway lights.

I see no problem carrying an observer as you don't need to take
off. A simple stop watch will do. Make separate runs to each
100 foot marker so the observer has only one time to record
during each run. Too bad I don't have one of my computerized fifth
wheels lying around like they used on the Rutan Voyager.

Once we have a plot of acceleration up to 85 Kts we can extrapolate
that to 100 Kts or so hopefully things are roughly linear up to
at least that speed. I suspect however as the fan tips approach
mach .8 or above things get decidely non-linear.


It's much simpler than that, you don't need to use spherical
trig because the earth is basically flat within the confines of
the airport.  I already worked out the numbers.  1 minute of
latitude = 1 nm = 6076.115 ft.
1 minute of longitude at 45 degrees, 11.5 minutes north is
6076 * cos (45 + 11.5/60) = 4240 ft.
By my calculations:
Runway 4 is 5305 ft. long, the total length including the
threshold is 6171.  But trying to get 100 foot resolution with this
method may not be very accurate, as you say.


The Aircraft Rotary Engine Newsletter.              Powered by Linux.

http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/            http://www.linux.org