Aerobatics in a Warrior

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I used to run a military flying club that had a couple of dozen Cessnas. Two were certified aerobatic category. Or as the FAA says "acrobatic". A CE 150 and a 152. I was thumbing through the maintenance manual and found info on differences between the aerobats and stock 152/150's.
The skins on the tail surfaces were upsized two thicknesses more. Same for the boot cowl and aft fus. skins. The lift struts were the same as a 172's. Engine mounts were heavier. Four point restraints, emergency door releases. A G-meter, a POH that included entrance speeds and the G's you could expect. Just a few of the differences that I recall. Just something to think about.
 
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I watched that video last night, one more reason I don’t share the plane with anyone.
 
RE: letting others fly your plane

**if they're close friends or you know and trust them I wouldn't have an issue with it. A lease back is different, but my best friends are pilots and I'd feel perfectly comfortable with them flying a plane of mine**
 
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EdFred said:
Didn't watch the video, but if you keep everything under 2G what damage and endangerment is there?
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In a Warrior II loaded at GW ~2000# in the Utility Category 4.4+ and 1.76- Gs. Still a reg violation due to AFM restriction.

"UTILITY CATEGORY OPERATION ONLY."
NO AFT PASSENGERS ALLOWED.
ACROBATIC MANEUVERS ARE LIMITED TO THE FOLLOWING:
SPINS PROHIBITED STEEP TURNS LAZY EIGHTS CHANDELLES
 
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Sadly I know someone who did this in the pre YouTube days. Heck, the pre internet days. I didn’t learn about it until years later when it cratered a their career after it was discovered.
 
Tantalum said:
RE: letting others fly your plane

**if they're close friends or you know and trust them I wouldn't have an issue with it. A lease back is different, but my best friends are pilots and I'd feel perfectly comfortable with them flying a plane of mine**
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My close friends are the ones I would worry about. :) Strangers would probably treat my plane better. :p
 
DFH65 said:
My close friends are the ones I would worry about. :) Strangers would probably treat my plane better. :p
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was it Mark Twain who said he'd rather go to hell than heaven so he can at least be in the company of his friends?
 
Tantalum said:
RE: letting others fly your plane

**if they're close friends or you know and trust them I wouldn't have an issue with it. A lease back is different, but my best friends are pilots and I'd feel perfectly comfortable with them flying a plane of mine**
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Agreed! But you'd probably know that since you probably flew my plane more than I did in 2019!
 
Oh God, I became persona non grata on another forum over this video yesterday, for calling it out for being Youtube look at me attention whoring BS for clicks.
 
Can’t watch their videos but I get the gist of what’s happening. Yea it’s sucks someone did this in their plane. Yea probably over reacted a little. I’ve seen flying club landings that probably put more G loads on the airplane than aerobatics. If you care about your plane, don’t do leasebacks.
 
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gsengle said:
Dude that’s 99% of YouTube. That’s the whole point.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Well yeah, but it was against the rules of said forum. However there were guys who evidently didn't realize she's married and were acting like it should win an academy award.
 
Todd82 said:
Oh God, I became persona non grata on another forum over this video yesterday, for calling it out for being Youtube look at me attention whoring BS for clicks.
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Don't worry. You'll be chastised for that here too. Many here love YouTubeHeros. Many here do not.

And them who love them REALLY dislike us that don't. Well, they might not dislike us, but they sure don't want to hear about it.
 
RudyP said:
Agreed! But you'd probably know that since you probably flew my plane more than I did in 2019!
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Ah yes, 2019 was a good year!

Crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains enroute to Mammoth
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Getting setup for ILS 28R at MYF, like a man
upload_2021-1-25_23-6-12.png

Cruising back at night from a steak dinner run to Harris Ranch..
upload_2021-1-25_23-6-46.png
 
Dana said:
Is GPS speed that accurate over the small distances that you'd cover during a botched pullout? I doubt it could have been doing 200 mph for long enough to get a valid speed number... I've analyzed GPS data from a handheld GPS from my own flying, and even during constant speed cruising, the calculated groundspeed between two closes fixes can be way off, while the calculated speed from two fixes farther apart is quite accurate.

What's Vne in a P28?



Hardly surprising. I know I did a lot of stupid things in rented planes when I was that age, probably fortunate for me there wasn't social media back then to brag about it on.
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And who says it didn't have a tailwind as well.

I watched about 30% of it and stopped, because she needs to take her meds. My GF was watching it with me, and her comment "Chicks like her give us all a bad rep, take a chill pill".

Personally I love aerobatics, and they are not hard on the plane if the person has some basic flying skills. Also remember this tid bit of information. The plus and minus G load ratings, are a fraction of the planes strength, not till where it breaks. So if they say 4 G is fine, then it can actually take way more. Its like a cable on a D9 dozer winch. They may say its only good for 80k lbs pull, but it takes 170k lbs to break it. Some people are going to give themselves a heart attack, and they have only themselves to blame. Being that upset over nothing, seems ridiculous. Yet she is willing to rent it to rookies learning how to land, that are smashing it into the pavement 50 times a day. If it was mine, and someone said hey can I go do a loop and aileron roll, or else have 5 students in it today learning how to land doing circuits all day, which is also full power, and then chopping the power, so poor engine is hot, then cold, then hot again 50 times a day which is hard on it. It would be an easy choice for me...go have fun doing those minor aerobatics kid.
 
YKA said:
Personally I love aerobatics, and they are not hard on the plane if the person has some basic flying skills. Also remember this tid bit of information. The plus and minus G load ratings, are a fraction of the planes strength, not till where it breaks. So if they say 4 G is fine, then it can actually take way more. Its like a cable on a D9 dozer winch. They may say its only good for 80k lbs pull, but it takes 170k lbs to break it.
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Yes and no. The required safety factor is 1.5, so a plane rated to 4g must not actually break until 6g, but it may bend and stay bent at 4.01g. Designers don't go much above the required safety factor because it adds weight.

Also it's a design safety factor, intended to cover variations in material, build quality, etc., so it might not actually reach 6 without breaking.
 
Obviously a lot of single guys on responding to this thread. Me, I don't get emotional about stuff like this. I get even.
 
YKA said:
It would be an easy choice for me...go have fun doing those minor aerobatics kid.
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I'm assuming you're serious. It sounds like you don't have enough aerobatic experience to understand what a bad idea that would be, and all the inventive ways budding acro pilots find to screw up. An experienced aerobatic pilot will have little interest in doing acro in a plane like this, so you'd be handing the keys to an under/untrained pilot in a plane with much less design margin, and would just say "go have fun"? Your perspective will change with experience.
 
Salty said:
I think she said FlightAware recorded a ground speed in excess of 200 knots. I’d say that’s reason to believe the maneuvers may not have been “benign”. But, in general, I still agree with you.
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Maybe. Maybe not. You do know that a tailwind can make the ground speed look pretty high, right? I have a screenshot of my RV-12 doing over 200 MPH ground speed. The guy flying it wasn't doing aerobatics at the time.
 
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DaleB said:
Maybe. Maybe not. You do know that a tailwind can make the ground speed look pretty high, right? I have a screenshot of my RV-12 doing over 200 MPH ground speed. The guy flying it wasn't doing aerobatics at the time.
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Flightaware ground speeds aren't accurate. Hell for that matter I saw a C208 at 45,000ft on there a few days ago too.
 
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YKA said:
Personally I love aerobatics, and they are not hard on the plane if the person has some basic flying skills.
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I take it you do not have an understanding on metal fatigue and the cumulative effect of stress on aluminum. Your typical four place tin can was not built with aero in mind, it was built for hours and hours of use at 1g. While the ultimate fail point can probably tolerate a few extra stresses, you are accelerating the fatigue on an already old airframe. The Arrow in Florida that lost its wing was simply climbing after takeoff, probably at 1g, when the wing departed the aircraft. The people that died were more than likely not the ones responsible for the failure.

And as I and others said, the ones that are out attempting aerobatics in these trainers, aren't the ones that have "some basic flying skills" as you said. They are the ones that will get inverted and fall out of the loop or roll then overstress the aircraft when the ground fills the windshield. If they are lucky the plane stays intact until the next person flies it. If not they pull the tail or wings off themselves. https://generalaviationnews.com/2009/11/30/unauthorized-aerobatics-kill-three/
 
midwestpa24 said:
Your typical four place tin can was not built with aero in mind, it was built for hours and hours of use at 1g.
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Since the warrior's wings support almost all of the plane's weight even sitting on the ground, I hope it can handle 1G indefinitely. And since it's certified in the utility category, it's designed to sustain 4.4gs (at max weight for the certification in that category) in flight without permanent damage.

That's not to say doing acro in a warrior is ok. There's no excuse for what this pilot did. But the reaction by the owner in the video, after it was known there's no damage to the aircraft, seems overwrought.
 
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b/w my POH says ... "Approved maneuvers for bank angles exceeding 60 degrees" under utility category . the verbiage is kinda odd, does that mean i can go to 90 degrees? i have no interest in even trying it, but i do find it odd. it does say max positive load factor 4.4G under utility and no inverted maneuvers approved.
 
The airplane doesn't know if it is inverted or not? Well the fuel and oil system might. :)

wpWiKy3.jpg
 
Here is what happened when an experienced pilot tried to have fun in his last flight in a Lear 35.

At about 3:30 a.m. on January 10, the pilots flying a cargo-carrying Learjet 35 from Jacksonville, Fla., to Columbus, Ohio, for Airnet Systems attempted an aileron roll, according to the NTSB, but the maneuver wasn’t entirely successful. “The crew reported they did an intentional roll,” said NTSB investigator-in-charge Todd Fox. “There was substantial damage. The elevators were bent, and there was some stabilizer damage. Major damage was to the left wing; there was a large crease in the stainless-steel leading edge.” Fox was told that this was the last flight for the Learjet captain before he was to move on to a new job flying passengers for a Part 121 airline. Fox’s Chicago NTSB office will release, probably this week, a data-collection report on the incident. Data-collection reports are a new short form that is a combination of the typical preliminary and factual reports, Fox explained.

https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-...o-pilots-aileron-roll-attempt-damages-learjet
 
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