Re: In Flight Breakup of N75654 - CAUTION: crash photos
Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2013 10:11 am
kmacht wrote:One thing that still sticks in my mind a bit is what about the conventional tail Sonex? ... The Sonex uses a very similar piece of angle to hold the front of the horizontal stabilizer down. It looks like they issued a service bulletin that beefed up the angle in that area by using a piece of solid block but they didn't do the same for the Sonex.
Yup, but the conventional tail does not suffer the buildup of loads from two axis that the above describes is subjected to V-Tail designs.
The following buildup presents a simplified example of loading to a V-tail structure while maneuvering. As can be seen, increasing the angle of attack (AOA) will increase the up load on the stabilizers. The up deflection of the ruddervators necessary to increase the AOA would decrease the up loading on the stabilizers. A yaw to the left would decrease the up loading on the left stabilizer and increase the loading on the right stabilizer. Pushing the right pedal would further lower the up loading on the left stabilizer and further increase the up loading on the right stabilizer. The step inputs incorporated into the calculations result in slightly higher than actual values since the AOA and yaw angles would be responding immediately to the start of the movement of the flight controls.
The build-up below follows a simple maneuver – pull the stick aft to increase the AOA, yaw left, followed by moving the stick forward and depressing the right pedal. In this case, the yaw and pedal input approximately double the load to the right stabilizer.
And this is entirely speculation, but the airplane was documented to have been in a climbing, left hand turn when the engine quit. I could at least understand how a pilot would make just the inputs that the above describes to stop the left turn and get the nose down (right rudder and stick forward in an already high AOA condition).