Is a controlled stall ...

[Butters 0]

... considered flying?

"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

[mccordia 73]

I think the dictionary names everything where you have control over your trajectory 'flying' so even falling straight down, but in control would be flying.

I think any discussion stemming from this question will mostly be one about language.

If two people fly their wingsuits past a cliff, pull into full stall, straight down into a cave, then speed up, and exit from a tunnel on the side. Half of that jump is in a stall, and not getting any forward motion in. But damn right ANYONE watching the video would call it flying.

Quite an insane example..but flying is 'skilled controll of your freefall' as far as Im concerned. Be it flying Mach 2 with you hair on fire, or doing other funky shit. But control is the key...

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[kallend 1,623]

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... considered flying?

Many military aircraft and aerobatic aircraft are fully controllable in a full stall, as is seen on a regular basis at airshows around the world. We still consider them to be flying when doing such maneuvers.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[VectorBoy 0]

Ask Wayne Handley.

[pilotdave 0]

I think most wingsuits are always flying stalled... except when going head down.

Dave

[Butters 0]

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I think most wingsuits are always flying stalled... except when going head down.

Dave

You think this or this is flying stalled?

"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

[pchapman 261]

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I think most wingsuits are always flying stalled... except when going head down.

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You think this or this is flying stalled?

Yeah it is stalled, in one sense.

Like the original question, it is a matter of definition, and neither "flying" nor "stalled" has a single precise definition that fits all aerial vehicles.

For a normal airplane, anything above lets say 18 degrees angle of attack from the zero lift angle of attack is probably getting into stall territory, depending on the wing etc.

But for a very low aspect ratio wing, like a delta or a wingsuit, there isn't an easily identifiable stall point, and lift vs angle curve isn't going to show a sharp stall break, where lift suddenly drops off and drag keeps increasing, as angle of attack goes up. The changes in lift and drag are more gradual for a low aspect ratio wing. Vortex related lift becomes an important factor.

So you can say wingsuits are stalled -- especially when countering people who think they are flying fully in the "normal airplane wing" sense. They aren't in that magical region where a normal wing is making a massively high amount of lift relative to its drag, the thing that distinguishes a wing from a barn door. The angle of attack is too high to be in that range, even if they were using a normal aircraft wing.

(I haven't followed any recent discussions on best glide angles, so I can't say much about exact angles of attack by the best pilots in the best suits.)

But you can also say wingsuits are flying, as that's the way low aspect ratio things fly.

For the original question in this thread, there is also flexibility. Aerobatic aircraft are still flying when stalled or spinning, and we consider skydivers to be flying even when then are going almost straight down -- especially when maneuvering relative to each other in a controlled way. Who cares if the angle of attack relative to the body axis is 80 degrees or whatever.

Yet at the same time it is normal to say that a plane "stopped flying" when it pitched down at a stall. So it isn't "flying" in the normal sense.

So we do need to distinguish between flying that is any motion in general through a viscous gas where aerodynamic forces are being applied, and flying that is "flying like a normal airplane (in normal flight at smaller angles of attack, outside of a regime of significant amounts of wing stall)."

[Butters 0]

Nice post.

"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch