MajorTomski

The artist of the little sketch has an airplane with amazing performance! At point 3 it has managed to do a 180 flat turn from its original path then do another 180 flat turn to resume the original path at 4.

Steve Percifield

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here's another version of the Immelman turn from Rickenbackers book

foodstick

Yeah Immelmann basically came up with the whole Zoom and Boom strategy right there..Dive and attack ,climb to save the energy.. AND REPEAT..

abufletcher

The diagram I was working from looks the same as this going over the top but only does a single rotation before continuing in the same direction as before. I performed this by doing a slight dive then pulling up at perhaps 60 degrees then giving full right rudder. The model rolls very quickly (much quicker than with ailerons). I still don't have my brain completely around it, and I can only do it going in one direction.

abufletcher

It may be that the (WWI) French sense of "spin" wasn't quite what it is now. Keep in mind that many WWI pilots wee deathly afraid of entering a spin and for a long time it was believed that there was absolutely no way out of a spin. What's illustrated is certainly a "twisting turn" and is that so far from a "spin?"

Regarding the Immelmann, the modern aerobatic version (1/2 loop and a moment of inverted flight at the top before rotating and flying off in the opposite direction) is just ridiculous and not at all a combat maneuver...although I have see it referred to as a method to "escape from the enemy." Back when Immelmann lent it its name it was simply pulling up into a sharp climb and than at the top rotating to dive back down in whatever direction seemed desirable.

abufletcher

What's shown on my diagram and what I was practicing is more like a rudder-only barrel roll.

MajorTomski

abufletcher what you're describing in 104 sounds a lot like a 'snap' roll, which if the rudder and elevator are held up and hard over will drop into a spin.

vertical grimmace

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A true spin is essentially a maintained snap. One wing completely stalled. I thought I had read at one point the Sopwith Camel was really bad about snapping out of a turn and entering a spin. Often times unrecoverable. I am sure the spinning engine did not help.

radfordc

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The maneuver shown in the drawing is called a "wing over" today. Notice the control inputs shown below the picture. First a steep climb with the ailerons and rudder centered. At the top of the climb, but before losing all the airspeed the rudder is moved hard left and the aileron is countered to the right to keep the plane from rolling. The plane does a 180 degree turn pulls out of the dive and exits the maneuver going in the opposite direction that it started.

geezeraviation

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According to Google translate (so it must be true) the literal translation if vrille is gimlet. Couple of them'l get ya in a spin.lol
In a book I have by Doug Campbell his description of what he referred to as a vrille sounded a lot like a spin. I believe his words went something like "the world was whirling by at a tremendous rate and there was a rapid loss of altitude". I have read a lot about the 94th Areo Squadron and have several books with (supposed) first hand accounts of combats and the vrille was used as a break away maneuver when one needed to shake a foe that had the advantage.
Doc

abufletcher

Etymology

The name "gimlet" comes from the Old French guinbelet, guimbelet, later guibelet, probably a diminutive of the Anglo-French "wimble", a variation of "guimble", from the Middle Low German wiemel, compare the Scandinavian wammie, to bore or twist; the modern French is gibelet. [SUP][1][/SUP]

*****

Nevertheless, when I look up vrille in French wikipedia what it describes is clearly a spin. Later I'll post the diagram I've been looking at.

radfordc

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It also says the name "vrille" is derived from the word for "tendril"....a twisting vine, which the maneuver resembles.

[h=2]Origin of VRILLE
French, literally, tendril, from Old French veille, from Latin viticula, diminutive of vitis vine —[/h]

vertical grimmace

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Then if you are inclined to fly scale competition, here is what the expectation would be. http://www.nasascale.org/maneuvers.htm

geezeraviation

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So, it's a spin.
Doc

vertical grimmace

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Or maybe a spiralling dive. The difference being that the wings are not stalled.

abufletcher

Interesting. But those are quite clearly NOT WWI combat maneuvers. Instead those are the sorts of moves that pattern flyers might use.

vertical grimmace

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Well, many of them are specific to full scale aircraft. And many were war maneuvers. Look at the circle of death.

Competition is a tricky beast in scale. I am amazed about how many misconceptions there are by those that have never done it, by the comments they make in the forums.

A WW1 model is considered aerobatic, but you can tell the judges that certain maneuvers will be flow a certain way. Like a slight climb before a roll, and an egg shaped loop etc.

I had the Immelman turn in my program when I first started, but my Fokker DVII could not perform it. The ailerons were dead at the top of the loop and would not roll. So I substituted that for a split S. This kind of issue is why I installed a bigger engine. The original, a G38, was not enough for the schedule I wanted to perform. It is a much happier Fokker now!

radfordc

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I've competed in a Scale Master's contest with my N-28. I presented the judges with descriptions of the "non-standard" maneuvers such as Vrille, Renversement, Virage, etc. and got their agreement as to how the maneuvers should be performed. I did manage a 3d place.

If I were a judge and the contestant was flying a Fokker Eindecker and did an "Immelmann turn" as modern aerobatic planes do it, I would be very disappointed.

radfordc

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Here is some info from the Scale Masters competition guide:
The intent of the flying portion of the contest is to determine the pilot’s ability to match the model
aircraft's flight performance to that of the full-size aircraft in the most realistic manner possible.

The contestant is encouraged to brief the flight judges when handing them the score sheets by
going over each maneuver and explaining exactly what the judges are to expect. This is the
opportunity to clarify the particular maneuvers the contestant has chosen. The information
provided to the judges is what they will inspect for. If the contestant says nothing, the judges
have no choice but to judge according to what they understand a maneuver should look like
based on this guide and other guides such as AMA and FAI Competition Guides.

Diagrams in the guide show that "vintage" designs should perform maneuvers differently from modern types. For instance, loops should be "egg shaped" and rolls should not be perfectly axial.

vertical grimmace

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You are correct, but keep in mind (for those interested) that you cannot just make up your maneuvers. There is a list of them, and as far as I know, the Scale masters follows the AMA which is NASA, the link I added. And then there is little difference to Top Gun as well.

So you are free to choose maneuvers from the list, and then fly them to suit your plane, considering that you communicate the variance to the judges. But, if you wanted to fly a Vrille or retournement, It would not be in there.

abufletcher

All good points...and I would like to try having more "defined" moves in my flying routines.

Here's that diagram I've been referring to:

abufletcher

It's interesting that use of the Immelmann began to decline when more powerfully engined WWI aircraft (such as the DVII) could "chase" an lower-powered enemy aircraft, which made an easy target at the top of the loop. The original DVII was famous for being able to "hang on its propeller."

Steve Percifield

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You are referring to the "Horizontal Vrille" which is a snap roll.

vertical grimmace

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I am wondering if that "hang on the prop" maneuver is a bit of a wives tale. By the time the DVII was in service, the tactic was mainly to zoom down from altitude, making a firing pass and then zooming back up to altitude utilizing the gained energy in the dive to get back up. The swirling dogfights of the mid years of Albatros and DR1 were over.

vertical grimmace

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This is an amazing video. This DVII has an original, lower powered engine. It looks really powerful to me. No wonder this airplane has such a legacy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZZ8...62DJow&index=3