Old 10-10-2013, 02:12 AM
  #3  
AviatorAston
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Joined APC: Oct 2013
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Thanks for your reply, Knotcher. Very much appreciated. Haha that's exactly how I was thinking of it! As a never-ending cycle. Funny that you put it that way. I was thinking of it in a "linear" fashion. Meaning if I were to put lift as a numerical value, what was happening in my mind was basically the following. As an airplane in level flight slowed down, lift decreased by a value of say "10". To compensate and maintain level flight, the pilot pitches up and increases lift by "10", balancing out the previous decrease of the same value. However, because airspeed was reduced further in the act of pitching up, lift was again decreased by "10", so you're back where you started when the airplane first slowed. There's the "never-ending cycle" haha. I see that it doesn't work like that when taking into account the effects of parasitic and induced drag. Basically what I'm getting from what you're saying is that while lift is decreased as an airplane slows, its parasitic drag is greatly reduced. When the pilot pitches up to compensate for the decreased lift, lift is increased due to an increased AOA, however induced drag is only increased by a small amount. So in the end lift is re-established to equilibrium while you still basically had a net loss in drag since parasitic drag was greatly reduced in the slowdown while induced drag was only increased by a little while pitching up. Therefore while lift is re-established to where it was before the airplane slowed down, the airspeed was not greatly affected by pitching up. Am I getting that right? Anyone else who reads this thread and would like to chime in, please feel free to do so. Any input is greatly appreciated.
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