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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. |
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