HaS A Delta-Winged Airliner Ever Been Built?

[astro]

Good (and fairly understandable by the layman) discussion of the engineering issues with flying wing designs.

Flying Wings - What happens without a tail?

[mcbiggins]

Hey Padeye,
Where did you take those pics? And is it open to the public?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@MonkeyMensch

I have to go with Padeye on this one, QED. I used to fly balsa wood flying wing gliders that were inherently stable. They flew quite well in defiance of your cited reference.

Just 'cause you can find it on the web don’t make it true, in spite of the bona fides of the quoting source.

Well, I’m sure your miniature balsa-wood passengers were happy with the flight, but scaling the design up to something that can carry 350+ humans introduces a few minor problems.

[Padeye]

@mcbiggins

Hey Padeye,
Where did you take those pics? And is it open to the public?

The USAF museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton Ohio. Open to the public and free. The XB-70 is housed with other experimental aircraft and presidential planes apart from the main collection. For now it’s a short bus ride away but I expect those aircraft may be moved when an additional hangar is completed. It’s well worth a visit for aviation buffs and takes a full day to get a good look at everything.

Thanks for the link astro, that’s very informative. I was suprised to find no mention of spoilers for roll control which have less tendancy to induce adverse yaw compared to ailerons. Both the A-6/EA-6 and F-14 (when in low speed configuration with wings at 20º sweep) use them for roll control as those planes have full span flaps and no ailerons.

Bryan Ekers, no one was saying that full size aircraft don’t have issues that aren’t apparent in small models but that the blanket statement that “flying wings are inherently unstable” is probably false or at best very misleading.

[Q.E.D]

@Padeye

Bryan Ekers, no one was saying that full size aircraft don’t have issues that aren’t apparent in small models but that the blanket statement that “flying wings are inherently unstable” is probably false or at best very misleading.

Alright, I’ll buy that. Still, I’ll assert that a stable flying wing configuration is much more technically difficult to design than more conventional wing configurations. Better?

[fortytwo]

@Ale

…
In any case a backwards facing seat would feel really weird at take-off, the Vulcan climbed quite steeply, and passengers would have ended up hanging from their seats facing down the fuselage.

In my RAF days I flew on a RAF VC-10 which had no passengers and a very light fuel load. We were returning to base after an air show and the skipper decided to show off its take off and climbing ability. It’s exactly as you described, and not something a fare paying passenger would be too happy about. We enjoyed it though.
V