"Step on the ball" confusion

[Nealius]

I think people are missing the OPs point. He's not asking for flight lessons, he's asking if the ball behaviour is correct or needs to be reviewed.

 

Partially, yeah. Also just the physics of the ball movement in general: Which movement is from inertia and which movement is from actual adverse/proverse yaw? If you step on the ball during inertial movement, then it's going to be uncoordinated. This is why I wish we had that yaw string on the Tomcat. It interacts directly with the slipstream and has no real inertia.

 

The problems with all of the "flying lessons" we get are:

 

1. They're for Cessnas, not high-performance fighters

2. They are taken wildly out of context and imply an absolute rule, such as "step on the ball"

 

Clearly the rule is "step on the ball when already established in the turn. Do NOT step on the ball when inertia slams the ball to one extreme of the tube." That kind of context is what I'm looking for.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Nealius

[lxsapper]

1. They're for Cessnas, not high-performance fighters

 

Well if only we could get @Victory205 to chime in some more... He'll know! :smilewink:

[Reflected]

 

1. They're for Cessnas, not high-performance fighters

2. They are taken wildly out of context and imply an absolute rule, such as "step on the ball"

 

 

The same laws of physics apply to Cessnas and Tomcats. When you roll into a turn, more rudder input should be required than once the turn is established. It's because the ailerons are deflected, which causes an increase of lift AND drag on the wing that's going up. That's adverse yaw.

 

Now the Tomcat doesn't have ailerons, but uses spoilers to push one of the wings down. That's a decrease of lift AND increase of drag - opposite of what happens on planes with ailerons. So that might explan this behavior. It's just an educated guess, though.

[Nealius]

The same laws of physics apply, but the ball in the Cessna is literally right beneath the wing, while the ball in the Tomcat is, what, 12 feet forward of the wing? The ball movement is going to be a bit different in some way, like Emmy mentioned.

[Eagle7907]

Nice thread. I’ve been pondering this myself for several months.

 

 

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