Subject:
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Re: Secret Agent Theme for 2001? (was: Re: New S@H Catalog)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 18 Sep 2000 14:42:04 GMT
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Viewed:
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932 times
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Mark Sandlin wrote:
>
> Land from what altitude?
>
> I doubt if you'd be able to glide all the way in while staying beneath
> radar... unless these planes have phenomenally good glide characteristics.
While the following is almost absolutely useless, it's sort of
amusing...
Many years ago, we were playing with MS Flight Simulator, and were
playing the WWI battle game. Someone decided to see how high they could
fly the plane before running out of fuel. I forget how high it went. We
then decided to see if we could land. After several minutes of gliding,
we got bored, and put the plane into a dive, then we got bored with that
(I suspect there was a real problem with the dive speed - it really
shouldn't have taken much to dive into the ground). Eventually after a
LONG time (like more than half an hour), we glided back into the play
area, glided almost completely around it, and finally set down for a
safe un-powered landing.
Probably on the other side of the safe landing coin, I remember the
lunar lander simulations (especially for the HP calculator), which would
have you crash if your speed on touch down was anything other than 0.
Sorry, those landing struts just can't take any load more than the
weight of the lander on the moon... What did they make them out of? Tin
foil?
On a more serious note: other than issues of lower air density at high
altitudes, and air craft with a decent glide ratio should be able to
land from any altitude. All the glide ratio does is determines how fast
you come down. There may be issues of how easy it is to control the
craft (the harder to control, and the longer you glide, there is
probably an increased chance that you will put it into an unrecoverable
dive or something).
Of course this is a disadvantage of helicopters, most (all?) have the
glide ratio of a rock.
Another type of craft which can be interesting in this aspect is an
auto-gyro.
I agree with Lindsay, ultra-lights have some real interesting
possibilities. One nice thing about them is that if you want to be able
to leave later, they are pretty easy to hide in a barn or garage (heck,
you could even stash them up in the hayloft, or in the middle of a
haystack in the field [gee no one would be able to take off from this
field, all them haystacks are in the way...]).
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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