In article ,
David CL Francis wrote:

David, the issue for me was 1 g down, into the seat. In a steady state

Tony,

I see where you are.

But in your definition it would be impossible to have a flight that
included take off and landing and a modest climb and descent at a strict
'1g' down.

I'm still struggling to think this whole problem through from the
viewpoint of someone who likes to solve "simple" physics problems, but
is absolutely not a pilot.

Let's just take the part of the flight that involves climbing at a
constant upward rate and then leveling off. Seems as if you will never
be able to convert to level flight without reducing the upward velocity
vector, ergo some (negative) vertical acceleration has to occur.

But what if you roll the plane, slowly and gently, about a longitudinal
axis that passes through the bathroom scales, simultaneously applying
control forces so that the plane begins turning right.

If you can roll slowly enough so you neglect the rotational inertia of
the pilot about this axis and simultaneously turn right at the correct
rate, during this time the seat will push the pilot (who's a point mass,
of course) up with *less* vertical force than previously, while pushing
(and accelerating) the pilot to the right with a small horizontal
component of force. If you do this just right, you ought to be able to
keep the total force pushing from the seat into the pilot equal to the
pilot's weight.

Do this carefully enough, keep it up for a while, then roll back to
level, and you ought to be able to bleed the vertical velocity down to
zero and thus be leveled off -- though with a different compass heading
-- while keeping the bathroom scales reading a constant value equal to
the pilot's weight.

Does this make sense?

--"The other Tony"

P.S. -- Takeoff and landing is more easily solvable. You just need a
long enough taxiway that can be curved but eventually feeds straight
into a (potentially very short) runway, with both of these at the point
where they join having exactly the same upward slope as the slope that
you want to climb at after takeoff, and with the runway ending at the
edge of a cliff.

So, all you have to do is accelerate up to full flying speed while
you're still on the taxiway -- which of course doesn't count since
you're still only taxiing -- until you get on the runway part and just
keep going.

Landing is obviously the same thing reversed.