wizepilot

I don't know if he was pulling your chain, but he was certainly foolhardy and not very wise about flying jet aircraft. First, anything close to a catastrophic decompression raises the real chance of the structure being damaged--not a situation you would want to be rolling inverting and pulling. Maintain the airspeed at the time of failure and go down slowly. At least one B707 wa lost when it had an explosive decompression due to a bomb and the crew did the classic "high dive" and ripped the tail off.

Second, doing aerobatics like that in a plane not tested or cert'd for them is asking for HUGE trouble. Too many incidents to mention here--several Hawkers have been rolled with nasty structural damage, for one.

Third, I suspect a Lear pointed straight down would not have enough drag not to get into a serious overspeed or get seriously damaged. Overspeeds in Lears are proven killers--loads of examples there.

GF

I'm going to have to agree with galaxyflyer on this. The early Lears had a nasty high-speed mach tuck tendency that has claimed a few lives over the years. They're great airplanes, but not ones you want to be rolling inverted at FL400+ in a possibly compromised airframe.

I'll stick with the procedures established by the manufacturer to meet certification guidelines.

It's not just the 20-series. The 35, 36, and I believe 31 are the same in regards to tuck. Get over M0.82? Good luck.

It worked well in the 727 too,...as long as you wemt about it smoothy.

A rapid descent at any bank angle... Are you flying it in circles or kicking the rudder in to go straight down in a slip ?

In jets I'd presume all rapid descents are in circles because slipping a wing like that could be asking for trouble.

Thanks. I thought he was full of s$$t. He's gone now anyway. Ran into a tree driving drunk.

Speaking for Cessna 182s, you fly in circles doing a full slip with nose slightly above the horizon. So a left one would be, left wing tip on the ground using ailerons, full right rudder to the stop to make a slip. Pull the yoke to adjust g's but adjust ailerons a bit too, no hard rule on that but technically g's go to infinity at 90 degrees according to the math and we don't want that, while an outright dive will overspeed the airframe pretty fast, so you are treading a fairly fine line near 90 degrees of bank. It's a walk and chew gum at the same time kind of a thing and I used to train new pilots to do it with about half of them washing out of this very maneuver. I never thought it was that hard to do personally, and I am not hero pilot either, but many guys would get un-nerved about an extended unusual attitude and they would often screw it up. Since the maneuver was at the limits of the airframe and screwups could not be tolerated we generally had to fire them if they did not get it pretty quick. That said, I know many jump pilots used this maneuver for decades without issue, although from what I hear it is getting less popular to do it at drop zones because the early 182s they use are wearing out and the last few thousand hours can only be extracted by gentle means.

Well, only if maintaining level flight

I don't mean this disrespectfully as I've never flown jumpers, but high load factors coupled with maximum sideslip sound like a recipe for problems unless the pilots have aerobatic experience. Is this technique common?

The maneuver is as good as the pilot and yes, it has been done for ages in C182s. RickT86 or one of the other former jump pilots will tell you. You do this maneuver 30 times a day from 14k down to 1k for years at a time, not a stressed rivet in sight. I worry about pilots who have no feeling for things more than those who do and fly using their experience, knowledge. common sense and intuition. Fly like you love it and know what you are doing. No problems that way, none at all. What are the g's telling you? What are the airframe sounds telling you? How do the flight controls react? How would you feel if you were the airplane right now? What does the science tell you? Does the science agree with your experience? Why or why not? That is the way to think about any performance maneuver. Never fly mechanically.