Flat Spin Jet

[Ronald Frison]

SoI have been playing the Simulator Event, and with the Russians I am fairly good. I can pull out of a stall or flat spin by throttling down, rudder against the spin, push nose down, and turn out of the dive...

I have loved the LuftWaffe, and I wanted to use the 109's and fw190's.The 109's I don't care much for since you can't see your Six O'clock. But, the 190's have a beautiful cockpit.

So I have been using the FW 190 A5, but anything I do it goes strait into a flat spin. Once in the spin I cannot manage to get the plane to muscle its way out.

Please help, thank you :)s

Basically, I've done it the same way you would with a LaGG-3, except it's a tad bit harder with German aircraft. It does however, take altitude to be able to break out of it. If you're too low to the ground, chances of breaking out of the flat spin are very limited, but your chances of breaking out of it are higher when you're at a higher altitude.

Because most people fly lower in SB, I recommend watching your speed and turning. Experiment with your plane and it's flight performance in a Test Flight with SB Difficulty to get used to your plane controls a little more before going into combat.

Now, off to the subject - I would think it's best to experiment with your aircraft in a Test Flight with SB Difficulty because not all aircraft perform the same. One aircraft might be able to break from a spin easier, and others aren't so lucky - this is where we can simply select any plane we have unlocked or purchased, test fly with SB game mode and actually TEST the plane.

Test how it performs at different altitudes, what causes spins at certain altitude and the best way to break out of it. Before I enter a battle with SB difficulty, I test the aircraft before going into battle. The results: I make almost 60% of the aircraft I face die from a flat spin.

The first move is to retract flaps if you have them out, immediately cut throttle and apply full rudder against spin. If your plane is trimmed (elevator), untrim it*. Then when the rudder beings to "catch" , and only then, nose down slightly* and apply aileron against spin.**

I was flying the 190 A5 today. I had a Yak on my tail. I immediately started doing a kind of scissors movement. Left, right, left. Half rolls. On the third one the plane did a little accelerated stall, and immediately came out of it simply by neutralizing the controls.

I tell this story just to say that I've never got the 190 into a flat spin. I hardly ever spin. If you experience spins often (let alone the flat variety)...you a flying badly. Don't yank. Make smaller and more purposeful control inputs. Consider taking a look at your joy sensitivity and turning it down a bit.

You can tell when a stall is imminent because the plane will make a hissing sound, the camera will shake a little, the ailerons will get 'mushy' and white vapour will trail from your wingtips. When you have these warning signs you know that you are close to the point where the plane will stall and you should not pull too much harder. With practice you'll learn exactly what the limits are, which will allow you to maneuver a little better.

No doubt you noticed that when the plane stalls it 'lets go' and starts to rotate around the roll and yaw axes, usually in the direction the prop torque pulls you on takeoff. If this starts to happen you must IMMEDIATELY centre the controls. In 99% of cases the plane will then recover by itself. This is the No. 1 mistake I see 190 pilots make. They start to stall but rather than stopping what they're doing and letting the plane recover they keep pulling on the stick, which makes the plane progress from a stall to a spin.

Sometimes you can't react fast enough and you end up spinning. All is not lost! Chop your throttle to idle, apply a bit (maybe 1/3) of down elevator and apply full rudder in the opposite direction to the spin. Time is of the essence: the 190's current behaviour is to start in a normal spin and the progress to a much more dangerous flat spin. If you can catch it before the flat spin starts the plane will usually recover in 2-3 rotations. As soon as the spin stops centre the controls and let the plane settle for a moment before beginning to pull out. If the spin progresses to a flat one apply the same procedure, only using full down elevator along with the rudder. The plane will with a little luck recover after about 5 rotations. Once again, as soon as you stop spinning centre the controls, otherwise you might end up spinning the other direction (or upside-down).

You'll need at least 1000m to stop the spin and pull out of the dive you end up in after recovery. To safeguard against being unable to pull out before slamming into the ground, I recommend avoiding hard maneuvering below 1200m altitude where possible.

Thanks everyone, :D

I try to use the 190 as an energy fighter, but maybe this video will help you guys understand what I am talking about... Me and this 190 just don't mesh... I can fly Yaks, Chikas, La-5's to a brutal effect, but this 190 hates me!

Stall happens around 3:30

This is different from what you learn about regular spins, where pushing the stick would be a better recovery method. In a flat spin, the forward fuselage dominates the aerodynamic forces, and we all know there are no control surfaces which could influence this flow. Wings and horizontal surfaces are fully separated, and elevator deflection is mostly useless. As others have pointed out before, a flat spin can only be stopped by shifting the center of gravity forward or deploying a spin chute. The F-14 was an exception.

Early on, the Navy lost several F-14s due to flat spins. They then studied the phenomenon at Pax River, and in the end Bill Bihrle found out that the elevator shields airflow from the two vertical tails of the F-14 when the stick is pushed, but moves out of the way when the stick is pulled full aft. You have to know that the elevator of the F-14 is a full-flying surface, and the movement range is from -20 to +70. At +70 it is almost in line with the airflow in a flat spin, and now the vertical tails are no longer in the wake of the elevator. They now can reduce the high yaw rate, which in turn reduces the high pitch-up moment of the rotating fuselage. With the lower inertial pitch-up moment, the elevator then has to be moved back to neutral, and the drag from wing and elevator is enough to pitch the aircraft fully down and out of the spin.

I guess I now need to explain the inertial moment which causes the high pitch attitude in some aircraft. The axis of the spin rotation is close to the aircraft's nose, and the tail has the biggest distance from this axis. In a flat spin the axis of rotation is even more back, close to the center of gravity. All parts of the aircraft rotate with the same yaw rate, and the centrifugal force from this yawing motion grows linearly with distance from the spin axis. This difference in centrifugal force along the lengthwise coordinate of the aircraft pulls the aircraft in a near-horizontal attitude.

Watch this movie of the spinning XB-70 to get an idea how it looks. Depending on elevon settings, the spin axis is somewhere between the cockpit and the forward tip of the wing triangle. With the damaged configuration (watch without sound for no distraction) you get a typical flat spin with the spin axis close to the center of gravity since there are few suction forces acting on most surfaces - only drag and the nose vortex (more on that below) remain.

If you have a configuration which is prone to flat spins, you need to change the shape of the fuselage tip. A rotating fuselage tip at high angle of attack will produce vortices at its side, and the yawing moment of these vortices will grow stronger with increasing yawing motion. This is why a flat spin is self-stabilizing. One way to suppress these vortices is the placement of small spoiler strips along the nose (which fixes the vortex position and reduces this self-stabilizing effect), and another is to make the nose shape flatter.

Regarding the "Top Gun" scenario: If the F-14 is at high angle of attack and the jet wash hits it asymmetrically, the airplane could enter into a spin. But from there it is still some way to the fully developed flat spin, and I would expect that a skilled pilot could recover from this momentary upset.

It's interesting to note how one enters such a spin: first you enter a regular spin, and let it develop fully, then you do everything wrong: add full power, pull back on the sick, and depress the "soft" rudder in the direction of the spin.

What happens is very interesting: the spin starts to accelerate as the point of rotation moves from somewhere in front of the nose, backwards until it's inside the plane and the nose is moving one way (EG port) and the tail moving the other (starboard). It rotates a few times per second.

The key to recovering from a flat spin is partly in the aircraft's design (aerobatic aircraft are built to handle "flatter" spins than normal aircraft and recover more readily), partly in the loading (specifically the location of the center of gravity), and partly in how "flat" the spin actually is.

There is going to be a point for any aircraft where you simply don't have the control authority to recover though (absent something extreme like mounting JATO bottles to the wing and firing them opposite the direction of the spin to stop the rotation).

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