31–40 of 41 posts
I remember this one glider pilot who duplicated all instruments in his glider, so that he would never fail a glider competition day for technical reasons. And yes, he also had two yaw strings, this guy was r-e-a-d-y :)
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According to Denker, the inclinometer ball doesn't actually measure yaw against wind, but something different that can sorta maybe in most situations be interpreted as yaw against wind. (Specifically, it measures the combination of gravity and centrifugal forces on a motion-constrained mass, from what I can tell: https://www.av8n.com/how/htm/motion.html#sec-centrifugal-air... )
It happens to be the same thing, almost always [barring performing aerobatic maneuvers which definitely require special training].
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Aircraft are kind of silly in many ways. The default speedometer doesn't actually tell you how fast you're going, and the default altimeter doesn't actually tell you how high you are.
Not silly at all but quite practical. How do you propose they could have easily measured true airspeed and true altitude before GPS?
This is one of multiple instruments that, according to the author of See How It Flies[1] indicate important readings to the pilot, but don't exist at all in a default airplane. A couple of other examples are an adjustable indication on the windscreen of where "straight in front of you" is, as well as an angle of attack indicator. Angle of attack, pitch angle, and yaw commonly don't have their own indicators, as impor…
Many gliders and helicopters have yaw strings. Airplanes don’t, because they usually have a slip/skid indicator which tells you the same thing. But once you’ve been flying a while, you don’t really need it, you can feel it.
Comment from a glider instructor of my acquaintance: Yeah, and that big fan in front of the yawstring doesn't help.
Might explain why yawstrings are more common in the twin engine case...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aircraft are kind of silly in many ways. The default speedometer doesn't actually tell you how fast you're going, and the default altimeter doesn't actually tell you how high you are.
Not silly at all but quite practical. How do you propose they could have easily measured true airspeed and true altitude before GPS?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aircraft are kind of silly in many ways. The default speedometer doesn't actually tell you how fast you're going, and the default altimeter doesn't actually tell you how high you are.
The speedometer shows IAS which is way more informative of what's happening to the aircraft than GS or TAS. IAS measures "the amount of air that hits the wings". As to altitude there isn't a single always applicable definition of "altitude" hence pilots have to adjust it based on their current task, there simply isn't a way around that. You could try to always use "true altitude" in WGS-84 or something, but that's fa…
If this is so often used, why is it not part of the design of the plane? Yes, I hear what people are saying that there's a slip indicator that does the same thing. But the fact remains that many people still use a yaw string anyway. Wouldn't a plane with a built-in yaw string design sell better? Taping a string to a window seems to be far less robust.
Also, I'm not sure that it'd be even possible to do that much better. You need something light, flexible and visible. Almost sounds like the definition of a red piece of string. And then you need to attach it somewhere useful (where you can see it, ideally without looking at your instruments etc), which in most cases would be the canopy. And then you need to somehow affix it. The piece of tape holds well enough during flight, and anything more permanent could be annoying during maintenance etc or might attack the material of the canopy.
Changing up the design might also be annoying at the least, since you'd have to relearn a bit.
In the end, there's just not much wrong with the string. I works, it works well, and changing it is just not worth it.