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Decreases the stall speed? How does that work?


Things that can influence stall speed include weight, power, center of gravity, flaps/landing gear configuration, and more.

Why? Well, stall speed isn't a real thing. There isn't a speed at which you stall, that's not how it works. It's a convenient short-hand that we use for the more complicated reality. The physical reality is that stalls happen at a particular angle of attack (AOA) into the apparent wind. That is, the angle of your wings relative to the airflow. Up to the critical angle a higher AOA means more lift to counteract gravity. As you slow down you generate less lift because there's less airflow over the wings. So as you slow down, in order to generate a similar amount of lift you have to increase your AOA. If you keep slowing down and adjusting your AOA to compensate, you'll reach a speed that's low enough and therefore AOA high enough that adding more AOA no longer adds more lift (the air no longer flows smoothly over the wing). That's the stall speed, the speed at which more AOA no longer generates more lift. But it's the AOA that's the problem, not the airspeed.

In addition to lower speeds needing more AOA, you also need a higher AOA if you weigh more. A wrong but illustrative way to think about it might be that you need the engine's thrust pointed more towards the ground the more you weigh. That means that as you burn fuel (lose weight) the AOA that will stall you doesn't change, but the excess AOA available due to your weight-change does so in effect the air speed at which you would be near the critical AOA to stay airborn does change.

Stall speed is still a useful concept especially while landing but it's misleading outside of landing and when anything else is remotely unusual like weight or modifications to the plane. For this reason the FAA has been trying to get AOA indicators installed in planes and to train pilots to look at those instead of thinking about stall speeds https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-01/Angle%20of%2...


This is a good resource:

https://ciechanow.ski/airfoil/

Useful to think of the airplane as standing still while the engine accelerates the air around it. To fly, you need the air to move over the wings quickly and in the right direction.

You can sort of trade how fast you need the air to go for how ideally the air is flowing over the wings. If you angle the wings just right against the air flow, and/or you bend them out of shape just right with flaps, you can slow down a lot while relying on the air itself to carry your plane. If you're flying against the airflow, you need to go faster.

This is usually done during take off and landing. The pilot lowers the flaps when approaching to land and flares the aircraft before touchdown, all to make the air flow efficiently into the wings, thereby allowing the aircraft to slow down without falling straight down like a stone.

That's why weather is so important for flights. Pilots need to be ready to call TOGA and go maximum thrust at a moment's notice just in case some crosswind or heat wave or something screws up the direction of the air flow just as they're about to land. Many an admiral cloudberg article has been written due to that sort of thing. You angle the plane just right, slow it down just to the edge of stalling, then some phenomenon happens and increases your stall speed past your current speed...


The Robertson STOL mod droops the ailerons with flaps, changing the effective angle of incidence of the wing. A friend had a Robinson-equipped 182 and we could quite comfortably operate in/out of Marlboro Airport (1650' paved with trees at one end and a fence at the other).


That's not TERRIBLY impressive, considering a stock 182P has a 50' obstacle take off distance of 1350' of at max gross on an ISA day


The published speed is at maximum takeoff weight, with the most unfavourable center of gravity (usually most forward) and idle power

If the conditions are better (not at max weight, rear center of gravity, engine power adding more airflow over the wings) you can fly below the published stall speed number.


Yeah I was thinking backward. Lower stall speed is better, not worse behavior.




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