Rolling a 172 - or not

Dylan

From my good book (Owners Manual Model 172 and Skyhawk)

Normal category

Gross weight --- 2300#

Flaps up

+3.8 G
-1.52 G

Normal category is non acrobatic

You can do stalls (not whip stalls) and are limited to a max angle of
bank of 60 degrees.

Utility Category

Max gross weight --- 2000#

Flaps up

+4.4 G
-1.76 G

No aerobatic maneuvers are approved except those listed.

Chandelles
Lazy Eights
Steep Turns
Spins
Stall (Except Whip Stalls)

From these figures you can see that it would be touch and go if you
rolled the bird inverted. Of course the figures given are not ultimate
so might only bend things a little )

Big John

* Added note. "In the execution of all maneuvers, avoid abrupt use of
controls."



On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:13:29 -0000, Dylan Smith
wrote:

In article , Big John wrote:
On a 172,. I'd do a barrel roll in the bird but not a slow roll or
aileron roll .Either would over stress the bird 99 times out of a
hundred.

Really?

All the eileron rolls I've ever done have been distinctly low-G
manoevres. Dive a little to gain entry speed, pull the nose up to
about 30 degrees above the horizon, then full aileron until the world
comes the right way up again, at which point you'll be about 20 degrees
nose down. The G-meter has never shown more than 1.5G after
an aileron roll for me, and that was done in the initial pull-up.

I thought a C172 in the utility category was good for 4.2G, not 1.5G!

In article , Big John wrote:
From these figures you can see that it would be touch and go if you
rolled the bird inverted. Of course the figures given are not ultimate
so might only bend things a little )

But you'd have to really blow an aileron roll to pull enough negative
G to even reach the limit, let alone exceed it. So I dispute the
assertion that 99 times out of 100, you'd overstress a C172 doing
an aileron roll!

In article , Big John wrote:
On a 172,. I'd do a barrel roll in the bird but not a slow roll or
aileron roll .Either would over stress the bird 99 times out of a
hundred.


--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"