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Old December 1st 03, 02:38 AM
Drew Dalgleish
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On 30 Nov 2003 14:49:37 -0800, (Jay) wrote:

After reading some of the transcripts from the "Last Words" website,
where the flight engineers were dumping fuel when it became evident
that an emergecy landing was a certainty, it dawned on me that there
might be some benefit for a small plane as well. The less energy you
carry into a crash landing the better off you're going to be. And
since KE is mv^2, you get a proportional benfit from dumping the
weight of the fuel which might be 20% the weight of the airplane, and
the lower weight allows for a slower stall speed which cuts the V
factor, and since thats squared, it counts for a lot. And then of
course you may have a larger glide radius with that reduction in
weight in addition to the reduced fire potential upon landing and
breakup

Maybe a fuel selector switch that ports to a low pressure area near
the tail would act as a light weight solution to draw out the fuel
from the tanks. A safety wire that would have to be broken would be a
good idea so it isn't accentally selected. Like the WEP setting on
the WW2 fighters with water injection.


Probably a lot closer to 10% since most don't take off with full fuel
or have catastrophic failures at that loading. You can keep adding
systems until your plane will never fly.