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Old August 4th 03, 09:09 PM
Dave Daniels
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In article ,
ArtP wrote:

Keep in mind when working with a program, the programmer frequently
takes shortcuts to produce the desired result. While the AOA may not
change the vertical component of lift will decrease as the bank
increases.


This particular simulator was written during the late 1980s and
early 1990s. The target PC would have been something like a 20Mhz
386 with no floating point instructions then. I do not want to
take anything away from the programmers for an interesting piece
of code, but they were forced to take a lot of shortcuts.

It sounds like you are confusing parasitic drag and induced drag.
Parasitic drag (result of friction) increases as with speed. Induced
drag (result of AOA) decreases with speed (the faster you go the
smaller the AOA required to maintain altitude).


That begins to make more sense. I think that my problem was that
I was assuming that the induced drag decreased with velocity at
any angle of attack or altitude. If the lift is constant, then
higher speeds require a smaller lift coefficient and therefore the
induced drag coefficient is smaller. Am I on the right track here?

Dave Daniels