Originally Posted by
usmc-sgt
FWIW (not much).
He was describing an aileron roll. An aileron roll uses no rudder..raise nose a few degrees and then max deflection as it comes around. Nose will fall through horizon.
A SLOW roll uses rudder as the airplane rolls around a point as the wings lose lift at 90 deg. A slow roll/aileron roll become the same thing in a high rate AC ie Pitts/edge/extra/mx/fighter. With a 720 deg/sec roll rate the nose won't come off its point at full deflection rudder or not.
Barrel roll..1g constant and looks different than both although closer to typical aileron roll.
Thanks USMC-Sgt. I knew it was an aileron roll, but I don't think he's ever flown acro in a Pitts, so I was going to let it go. I'm guessing Hoover probably described it as a barrel roll in his book to dumb it down for the average readers, who don't know what an aileron is. If you watch his video I linked above, it's an aileron roll, but not sticking the nose to a fixed point. Kind of a sloppy aileron roll, or a very tight barrel roll. Call it a Hoover ice tea roll.
A true 'competition' type Barrel Roll is a much larger, longer, +1g maneuver, beginning with the pull to the right, 20 degrees off your aim point, pulling up, rolling, pulling all the way around, scribing a much larger circle with the nose, vs. just pulling the nose up, pause, full aileron to the left, recover....nose low if you don't hold it up while inverted.
That's why you want to start it by pulling the nose up, so when you finish, you're not as far nose down. But you also want to pause before you start your roll, or you will need a whole lot more rudder to get it around.
Like I said earlier, an aileron roll in a T38 (and most fighters) is a flick of the wrist, no flying skills required in a plane that can roll 720 degrees per second. No P factor or torque to fight against.
After a few years in a Pitts I flew an Extra, I was AMAZED at how much faster/easier it was to roll that thing!
But try it in a propeller driven twin, not quite the same! I once talked with a WWII P38 pilot who said that when they wanted to roll away from someone shooting at them, they'd chop power to the inside engine to get it to roll faster. Why didn't I think of that!