Original Posted By: Ken Beanlands
Danny,I'm forwarding Ken Beanland's letter in case you have not seen it. Heexplains what happens with a deep stall situation: basically, the wakefrom the wing flows backward and upward to render the elevators inef-fective and pitch control is lost. The drogue chute Ken mentions wasinstalled during testing to recover from deep stalls (and spins), shouldone develop.My late friend, Norm, was exploring high angle of attack behavior whenone engine quit and a deep stall resulted. They deployed the chute andthe nose dropped, breaking the stall. Unfortunately, they couldn't get ridof it because the release systems all failed. And they couldn't get the deadengine lit, either. With all that drag and one engine out, the airplane wasgoing down. Norm ordered the two other crewmembers to bail out, whichthey did. He didn't have time to get himself out and was killed. Thesurvivingcrew members tell the whole story and credit Norm with saving their lives.The whole thing was a classic example of multiple failures resulting in theloss of a fine pilot and a valuable prototype. From all accounts, Norm wasextremely unhappy with the condition of the a/c and had reported problems,including the sick engine, previously. Murphy's Law then kicked in.An aeronautical engineer, who knew Norm well, told me that even with twogood engines he wouldn't have had enough thrust to fly with the chuteattach-ed. Perhaps he could have successfully crash-landed on the desert surfaceif he had both engines to bring the nose up some. We will likely never know.Hope this and Ken's letter explain what occurs in a deep stall. ThePietenpolis not susceptible to deep stalls of this sort, you will be glad to know.Graham-----Original Message-----