spin+and+stall+tut



European Air War TM by Microprose**
 * Spin and Stall Recovery Tutorial for

Written by John "Chompy" Masters, 31 / 7 / 2001

Email me at jdmasters@ozemail.com.au

Table of Contents.

1. Introduction 2. Aerodynamic of a Stall 3. Aerodynamics of a Spin 4. Recognising an imminent stall/spin 5. Stall/spin recovery techniques. 6. Avoiding spins. 7. Extra notes and Training.

Credits - I would like to thank SAFEHAVEN for allowing me to use his great new stall alarm sound in this package. Also thanks to Microprose for producing EAW, Markshot for producing his Shoot to Kill, the Sim HQ for providing a great community and giving me the inspiration to write this tutorial. Thanks also to Looking Glass Studios for producing Flight Unlimited. The biggest thanks go to all the EAW fans who continue to produce the greatest skins, terrains, and mods for this ageing but still brilliant flight sim, ensuring that EAW will keep flying on my HDD for many years to come

INTRODUCTION. European Air War was released by Microprose in late 1998, and has established itself as one of the most enduring flight sims ever to hit the shelves. It's recent re-release has brought many new EAW players onto the scene, and one of the things that seems to trouble most new pilots, is how to avoid and recover from the spins and stalls which are modelled so well in the game. Many new Pilots quickly find the Sim H.Q. EAW Message Boards, and post questions regarding the best way to get out of spins, after finding themselves plummeting hopelessly earthwards from 10,000 feet. After seeing a number of these requests for help, I decided to have a go at making a "spin recovery tutorial" that could be downloaded, negating the need to explain everything over the message board. I don't know if it will get used much, but I hope that this bit of documentation comes in useful to you, and has some educational value as well. I have been flying EAW since January 1999, and would hate to know just how many hours have been consumed sitting in front of my computer chasing bandits all over the sky. I have flown just about every kind of aircraft that EAW and ECA have to offer, as well as a few of my own flight models that I made up. I have spun everything many times over, and feel that I have reasonable authority to write a tutorial on this subject. Don't get me wrong - I don't pretend to be an expert pilot, but I think that stall recovery isn't an area where I need a lot more work. One of my favourite "early" sims, was Flight Unlimited, which was basically about flying aerobatic aircraft, and executing precision aerobatic maneuvers. Many of these routines involve stalling one wing to enter a spin or a "snap roll", and then recovering from the snap to end the move. Doing such moves helped build up a good stall recovery routine, and the things that I learned from Flight Unlimited all apply to EAW as well - just in some slightly different ways. The recovery routines outlined in this document should work equally well in any flight sim that covers aircraft of this type, but don't expect it to apply to top end jet simulations such as Falcon 4.0!! The lessons spelt out in this tutorial are based on many things, but borrow a bit from sections of the Instruction Manuals for EAW and Flight Unlimited. This document only represents my ideas and experiences on the subject, and is not meant to be taken as gospel. I expect the some of my statements may appear misguided to some people, but this is how I see things to the best of my knowledge. Please feel free to contact me with any comments, ideas or criticism so that any future update will be even better. Anyway read on and I hope that you learn something!!

The Aerodynamics of a Stall The wings of your aircraft are simply an airfoil, which creates lift when air is pushed past it at the propper angle. The best way to demonstrate this (believe it or not) is by driving down the road with your hand out the window of your car! With your fingers held together and your palm facing towards the ground and your thumb at the leading edge, your hand (the airfoil) hits the wind with an angle of attack of 0 degrees. This doesn't create any lift, but if you increase the angle of attack (rotating the thumb upward), then your hand is pushed upwards (Diagram 1). The force pushing your hand upwards is called LIFT, and the force pushing your hand backwards is called DRAG. The Angle between the oncoming airflow and the airfoil (your hand) is called the ANGLE OF ATTACK (AOA). Note that if we have a low angle of attack, we produce a small ammount of lift and a small ammount of drag. If we increase the angle of attack, we produce more lift, but also produce more drag (Diagram 2).

Diagrams 1 & 2



Say you are travelling at 60 kmph and keep the same angle of attack, but increase speed to 100 kmph, what happens? Well more airspeed creates more lift, and your hand gets pushed upwards with even more force, but you also produce more drag. Similarly if you slow down and maintain AOA, lift decreases, and so does drag.. If the airspeed is too slow, the ammount of lift produced is less than the force of gravity pushing your hand down, and so your hand falls. This is not a stall - it is a similar situation to when you are on the runway a bit short of the required speed for takeoff. From this we learn that the more speed you have, the more lift you can produce. What happens if we increase the AOA and keep the speed constant? More AOA creates even more lift, but as you increase the AOA of your hand, it gets to a point where you cease creating lift, your hand drops down, and is pushed back by the force of the oncoming airstream. (Diagram 3) At this point you are creating no lift, but a lot of drag. This situation is what we call a "STALL". Note that if you maintain this angle and increase speed, you cannot re-establish lift, because the AOA is too extreme. A stall situation simply means that the airflow past the airfoil has become very turbulent (Diagram 4) instead of streaming past and smoothly re-joining at the trailing edge. The only way to re-establish the correct airflow and subsequently lift, is to decrease the AOA- it's really that simple. When the airflow is right on the edge of stalling for that particular speed, the airfoil is at it's CRITICAL Angle of attack. If for example your hand has exceeded this critical AOA as in the top of diagram 3, doubling your speed will not create any lift, it will just create extra drag. It is important to realise that your aircraft can stall at any speed. At very high speeds you are more likely to black out before you encounter a stall. (You do have the Blackout/Redout option on, don't you??!!!)

Diagram 3



Diagram 4



A simple stall can be encountered by flying along slowly (160 kmph or 100 mph), keeping the wings level, and then pulling the nose up 20-30 degrees and holding it. As the airspeed bleeds off, the lift generated decreases, and more back stick pressure is required to hold the nose up. It gets to a point where the wings exceed the critical AOA, and bingo - you have stalled the airflow. If the wings are level, gravity takes over and helps recover the stall for you. With no lift, the weight of the aircraft forces you to lose altitude, the airflow over the tail section pushes the tail up and the nose down, and you dive, thus regaining airspeed again. This type of stall is a piece of cake to get out of - you just point the nose downwards (Decrease AOA), open up the throttle and build up some speed, then slowly pull out of the dive. Where you get into trouble, is if the wings aren't quite level, and then it is more likely that you will enter a Spin.

Aerodynamics of a Spin.

Now that we have established what produces a stall, we are in a much better position to comprehend the factors that produce a spin, and what we can do to lessen the chances of entering one. For the moment, we'll go back to the important factor of angle of attack. We know that the more AOA you have, the more lift you have, up to a point where you reach the Critical Angle of Attack, where the airflow stalls and lift is no longer produced. If we made a graph to represent this, it would look something like Diagram 5. We also know that the more airspeed we have, the more lift we produce.

Diagram 5



In EAW,a spin is usually encountered when you are at low speeds, and turning hard. A number of factors contribute to the spin, and I will walk you through a typical spin. You are on the tail of a bandit, and he is turning hard up in front of you. As you have been chasing him for some time, your airspeed has dropped and you are in a situation where less lift is generated by both wings. You are ususally turning hard with a high AOA, which gives you a good turn rate, but puts your wings close to the critical AOA.- When you execute a banked turn, the inside wing is has a slower airspeed than the outer wing, and therefore produces less lift, so the aircraft rolls slightly more into the turn. Experienced pilots know how to co-ordinate their turns with the rudder, so that the aircraft doesn't "skid" through a turn, and this helps avoid spins, but in combat this usually goes straight out the window, and we tend to use whatever gives us the quickest rate of turn. Most pilots find that the aircraft will turn quicker if you use a a bit of rudder in the directioin of the turn, and this is where you get even closer to a spin. By using the rudder in the direction we are turning (e.g. left rudder while banking and turning left), in effect we are "skidding" the aircraft through the turn. Even if you don't use rudder into the turn, at slower speeds gravity will make the nose want to drop, giving the same effect as using the rudder. This does a number of things that contribute to a spin. Firstly, by yawing the aircraft to one side, one wing is thrust forward and the other wing is pulled backwards. In effect this means that one wing is travelling even slower again than the other one, creating a lift differential - the slower wing produces less lift, the faster wing produces more, and you roll a little bit more towards the slower wing. Secondly, because the aircraft is skidding through the air, the airflow to the slower wing is disturbed by the nose of your aircraft, and in effect part of the wing is "shaded" from good airflow. (Diagram 6) Once again, this means that wing with the disturbed airflow produces less lift, and so you roll a little more towards the slower wing. In EAW,a spin is usually encountered when you are at low speeds, and turning hard. A number of factors contribute to the spin, and I will walk you through a typical spin. You are on the tail of a bandit, and he is turning hard up in front of you. As you have been chasing him for some time, your airspeed has dropped and you are in a situation where less lift is generated by both wings. You are ususally turning hard with a high AOA, which gives you a good turn rate, but puts your wings close to the critical AOA.- When you execute a banked turn, the inside wing is has a slower airspeed than the outer wing, and therefore produces less lift, so the aircraft rolls slightly more into the turn. Experienced pilots know how to co-ordinate their turns with the rudder, so that the aircraft doesn't "skid" through a turn, and this helps avoid spins, but in combat this usually goes straight out the window, and we tend to use whatever gives us the quickest rate of turn. Most pilots find that the aircraft will turn quicker if you use a a bit of rudder in the directioin of the turn, and this is where you get even closer to a spin. By using the rudder in the direction we are turning (e.g. left rudder while banking and turning left), in effect we are "skidding" the aircraft through the turn. Even if you don't use rudder into the turn, at slower speeds gravity will make the nose want to drop, giving the same effect as using the rudder. This does a number of things that contribute to a spin. Firstly, by yawing the aircraft to one side, one wing is thrust forward and the other wing is pulled backwards. In effect this means that one wing is travelling even slower again than the other one, creating a lift differential - the slower wing produces less lift, the faster wing produces more, and you roll a little bit more towards the slower wing. Secondly, because the aircraft is skidding through the air, the airflow to the slower wing is disturbed by the nose of your aircraft, and in effect part of the wing is "shaded" from good airflow. (Diagram 6) Once again, this means that wing with the disturbed airflow produces less lift, and so you roll a little more towards the slower wing.

Diagram 6

Diagram 7



The third thing that puts you right over the edge is that you change the AOA of the wings. Remember that we were already near the critical AOA, with both wings close to stalling. The extra yawing of the aircraft changes the AOA of each wing separately. The wing moving more slowly is actually at a higher AOA to the airflow, since it's horizontal component is smaller, and the wing that moves forward decreases it's AOA. If we take a look at the lift we are generating on Diagram 7, we can see that one wing is creating a helluvalot more lift than the other. One wing has exceeded the Critical AOA, has stalled and produces no lift, but a lot of drag. In contrast, the other wing is below the Critical AOA, and is producing maximum lift. The result? A Spin. The aircraft appears to roll towards the direction of the stalled wing sharply and very fast, but you actually rotate around the stalled wing. This motion is called "AUTOROTATION" and is used in many aerobatic maneuvers. The "snap roll" is one such move where you do a 360 degree autorotation and come out of the autorotation with level wings. Getting out of a spin is quite easily done if you know what to do, and do it quickly. You will notice that if you are slow in executing your recovery moves, then it will take some time to get out of the spin. OK, so that's the physics of a spin, and now that you are armed with that knowledge it should make it the recovery moves a little clearer and easier to understand, but before that, I'll briefly outline a few points about recognizing an imminent stall.

Recognizing an imminent Stall/Spin.

To start with, the best way of dealing with spins and stalls, is to avoid them in the first place. Although this may sound like an impossibility at first, with a little practice it is entirely possible. Don't disable the stalls and spins on the menu, because they are a huge part of aerial combat, and if you want to play EAW to it's maximum, it is a simple skill that you will have to master. As Markshot has indicated in his STK, it is a moral victory if you can push your opponent to the edge and make him enter a spin, because it simply shows your superiority - that you are in complete control of your machine, and you have pushed your opponent past the limits of his capabilities. In online EAW play, many victories can be racked up when the fight gets down to ground level, and the Pilot who know the least about spin/stall evasion usually finds himself augering into the dirt. This is as good as any guns kill! The best way to evade stalls and spins is to KNOW YOUR AIRCRAFT! Take notice of things like what the best turning speeds are, where you get the tightest turn, the quickest rate of turn, how far you can pull back on the stick without stalling at various speeds, perfecting your joystick calibration, how well your aircraft responds to rudder, and what is the minimum altitude you need to get out of a spin. Get to know your aircraft intimately, and once you have mastered it, then learn the same things about the other aircraft.

There are five main indicators that alert you to the fact that you are nearing a stall or a spin. These are : - 1. The colour cues on the airspeed display. 2. A shuddering sound which indicates stalling airflow. 3. Your rate of turn and decreases and controls become sluggish. 4. Your wing begins drop in the direction that you are turning. 5. Your world is spinning around you, and it is too late!! I will go through all of these conditions with some basic explanations.

1. The colour cues on the airspeed display. These are pretty simple to interpret. If you have the Flight information enabled, (ALT F) you will always have three bits of information displayed in the bottom left corner of your screen. This information is very handy and you should find yourself looking at it quite often. The display gives you your instantaneous SPEED, ALTITUDE, and HEADING. The SPEED display will usually be in green, which indicates that your wings have a stable airflow, - no problem! If it turns Yellow, you are close to the Critical AOA. You will notice that you can hold a turn with the yellow indicator on without the sound cues starting. Turn a little bit harder, and the stall sound starts to play. At this stage you are turning nearly as hard as is possible - you can continue turning like this if you keep your airspeed up and don't increase the AOA, but remember that any more wrong moves will throw you into the final colour. If the display turns Red, airflow has stalled on one wing, and you have entered a spin. At this stage the stall sound cues will still be playing flat out, and you will lose the padlocked view on your enemy. You probably won't notice too much of this, because the world will be rapidly spinning around you, and you will have other things to worry about! Here are a few screenshots of the three stages using EAW V1.2b



Note that the altitude display also changes colours, Green

= greater than 150 M (500 ft), Yellow = 150 M (500 ft) to 30 M (100 ft), and Red =

less than 30 M (100 ft). For some reason, EAW changes flight characteristics when you change between these levels, and it is quite noticeable in landings at slow speeds. When you pass through 30m (100 ft), lift drops right off, and your attittude changes. If you are going slow enough, you can enter a spin without warning, and at 30m (100 ft), this is always fatal! If anyone has any clues on that, feel free to let me in on why.

2. A shuddering sound which indicates stalling airflow.

This sound plays when your airspeed turns yellow or red, and stops when it turns green. The standard EAW sound is that of stalling airflow going past the wings. You should be able to pick this up quite easily in flight, but for those who need a bit more magnification to read the signs, SAFEHAVEN has made a new stall alarm sound, which has an audible beep-beep as well as the stalling airflow sound (snd0055.snd). I found this a while back and it comes highly reccomended by me. Don't leave the hanger without it!! I have included this new sound in the package, and if you unzipped this tutorial into your EAW folder, it should be there already. If you are using stab, skins n more or theme manager, you may want to unzip this to wherever your soundfiles belong. Many thanks to SAFEHAVEN for making this little gem, and for allowing me to distribute it with this tutorial.

4. Your wing begins to drop in the direction that you are turning.

For the reasons stated in the previous page, you will find this compounding until you fix it, or until you enter a spin. One wing goes faster than the other creating a lift differential and a dropping wing, Airflow is shaded as you yaw to one side, creating less airflow, a lift differential and a dropping wing. These thing tend to compound themselves until the AOA exceeds critical, and you enter a spin. Note that lifting a dropping wing only fixes a symptom of spins, it doesn't cure the problem, and if your ailerons have gone mushy, you won't have much control to do this anyway. 3. Your controls become sluggish and your rate of turn decreases. As the AOA loads up and reaches critical, the airflow over your wing is already becoming disturbed, and this has a marked effect on lift and your aileron controls. They no longer respond as crisply as they used to, and when you use full sideways movement of the stick to stop a wing from dropping, it takes a long time to do the job. The last warning you get is that your turn rate rapidly decreases. The nose stops pulling up, and you have fractions of a second before the final stage sets in. 5. Your world is spinning, and it's too late!!

Well, there's not much to say here, other than that you should have been more carefull a few seconds ago! Never mind though, because spin recovery is really a piece of cake, and you'll soon get the hang of it in no time. Time to proceed on the the next section to unlock the keys to spin recovery! The section after will deal with avoiding spins.

Stall and Spin Recovery Techniques.

Alright, we are have now entered a dreaded spin at a most inoppertune time. The enemy we were trying desperately to avoid is on our tail, we have lost our padlock view, the world is spinning, we are getting disorrientated, losing S.A.,and we are losing precious altitude without gaining speed - this really is a bad situation! We now know all the reasons why we are in a spin, so all we have to do is reverse them. Remember that one wing has stalled, is creating no lift and lots of drag, and that drag is yawing the aircraft to the side with the stalled wing. Meanwhile the other wing is creating maximum lift and less drag than the stalled wing, so it is constantly being pushed forward, resulting in the yawing towards the stalled wing. There are a couple of things that must be done as quickly as possible if we are to get out of the spin quickly. 1. Neutralise the elevator. 2. Apply full opposite rudder to the stalled wing. These two actions are usually enough to get out of a spin. Here are the reasons why this is so :- 1. We now have one wing over the critical AOA, and one wing under it. By bringing the elevators back to a central position, we decrease the AOA on both wings, so that they both get back under the critical AOA to a stage where they are producing equal lift. Doing this alone will not get you out of a spin in EAW, but it is a must. 2. By hitting full opposite rudder to the stalled wing, we are aiming to yaw the aircraft back so that it meets the airflow straight on. This cures the AOA Differential, gives the "shaded" wing root full airflow, and allows both wings to have the same airspeed. This will cancel out the lift differential between both wings, and will pop you out of the spin. Be patient, as you may have to wait a few spins until you recover. Use of the stick. In the EAW manual it says to push the stick to the side of the stalled wing as well as applying full rudder to the opposite side that you pushed the stick. I have found that use of the stick is not neccesary - the aircraft will soon pop out of the spin without ailerons. Remember that if the airflow has stalled over one wing, then that aileron is inopperable anyway. Also, why would you want to keep the aircraft spinning in that direction anyway? The only reason I can think of for jamming the stick to one side, is that it helps you to quickly co-ordinate which side to apply full opposite rudder. Quick thinking is vital here, but try it without stick, and you will find that it works just as well.

Cutting power. The EAW manual also says that you shouldn't adjust the power setting. I feel that this has some merrit, because you want to build up airspeed as soon as you can, but because one wing is dragging so much, you will not build up any airspeed until you recover from your spin. If you happen to be at full power as you enter a spin, you are really just wasting power and un-neccesarily heating up the engine for no reason. For this reason, I like to cut the power back down to 10% or so until I have recovered from the spin, and then hit full power to build up airspeed.

Cutting power to one engine. Another area that people have experimented with while flying twin engine aircraft such as the Bf-110, is to cut power to one engine. This in theory is a great idea, but it requires you to cut the power to an engine on the correct side at the same time as you are doing all the neccesary stick, rudder and throttle movements, and then fire it up again to full power once you've recovered. Unless you can quickly and confidently do all this at the same time, you are probably losing more than you gain. However, if you are in a prolonged spin, or can confidently and quickly do the recovery procedure (Setting a Macro button on your controller would be a good way), here is the way to do it. In addition to the above mentioned routine, you should cut the power to the engine on the same side that you are ruddering to, and apply full power to the other engine. This adds to the effect of the rudder, and helps to swing the stalled wing forward, and push the 'unstalled' wing backwards. The problem here is that once you come out of the spin, if you are too slow to fire up the engine again, the engine on the formerly stalled wing will keep pulling that wing forward, yawing the aircraft too far and putting you into a spin in the other direction! It is for this reason that I don't bother shutting down engines. If your initial reaction is quick enough, then you can get out of a spin before using these extra measures. Feel free to experiment with it, and let me know if you have any success with it. Dropping landing gear. I have heard that some people have found that dropping the gear will bring them out of a spin after a few spins (when coupled to the usual recovery routine). Aerodynamically, I can't see why this should work, but if it does work for you, use it by all means. Be wary though, because having the gear down will drain airspeed rapidly, so retract it the moment you exit the spin. Once again, if your spin recovery routine is quick enough, you shouldn't need this. Flat spins. Flat spins are a peculiarity of EAW that seems to crop up commonly with the Bf-110. Once you get into a spin situation, sometimes the aircraft makes itself spin in a horizontal plane. If your initial attempt at recovery doesn't work, relax the controls, and after a while the aircraft will get back into a more "conventional" spin, and you should be able to recover from there. Be aware that sometimes the aircraft slowly stops spinning, then reverses it spinning motion! Wierd, huh? If this happens, be ready to switch over your recovery technique. Watch the airspeed colours carefully to see if you are getting out of the spin Tumbling spins. I have only encountered these when attempting "hammerheads" or "tailslides", and usually in twin engined aircraft. With the latter move, you climb vertically up keeping the wings perfectly level and your nose straight up, until airspeed stops and gravity pulls the nose down into a vertical dive. Sometimes here you will go into a tumbling spin where the aircraft spins nose over tail, or the nose swings like a pendulum. The longer you can keep the nose straight up before inverting, the more likely you are to go-a-tumblin'. To get out of these I try to synchronise the stick movements with the way the nose is swinging (pull back if the nose is rising, then push forward if the nose is dropping - kind of like a deep stall routine in Falcon 4.0 for those who know it.), and eventually the pendulum motion slows down and a conventional spin begins to take over. Use the usual recovery techniques from here. Recovering from your "recovery" This is an area that needs some attention, because if you don't do it right, you will find yourself straight back into another spin. As you pop out of the spin, you are using full rudder. As you snap out of the spin, you are still near the critical AOA, and if you hold the rudder for too long you will simply yaw the aircraft too far the opposite way and start spinning in the opposite direction. At this stage, you should gently release the rudder, apply full power, and keep the elevators central. You will probably find yourself diving which is a good way to build up speed. Continue flying along with gentle inputs to the elevators and rudder, as you build up speed ensuring that your airspeed display stays in the green. Gently pull out of your dive, and once you have saved your skin here, quickly re-aquire your oppenent in the padlock view, and be ready for his attack, because while all this spinning has been going on, the enemy will probably have moved into an advantageous position, and will be preparing to blast you out of the sky!

So, to sum it all up, here is a quick checklist of what you should do the moment you enter a spin. For an example, lets assume that we are in an anticlockwise spin with the left wing stalled and dropping fast, and the right wing producing maximum lift. The neccesary directions for this example are in brackets. 1. Neutralise the elevators 2. Push the stick in the direction of the spin or the stalled wing (LEFT / ANTICLOCKWISE) 3. Apply full rudder in the opposite direction to the stalled wing (RIGHT) 4. Cut the power to 10% Once you pop out of the spin, then you should: - 5. Slowly release the rudder, and centralise the stick 6. Apply 100% power, keep the nose down to build up speed until the airspeed is green 7. Gently pull out of your dive making sure that you don't pull up and put the airspeed into the yellow. 8. Re-padlock your target and come up with some lifesaving moves!!

On the whole, it is a lot easier to avoid the spin in the first place, and the next section will deal with that.

Avoiding Spins.

From reading the section on Recognizing an imminent stall you will now have a good grasp on the indicators that let you know when you are about to get into serious trouble. By knowing your limits and backing off when you get close to them, you can avoid stalls altogether, but this is made hard by the fact that you are usually turning hard for a good reason. If you are chasing a bandit and need to pull hard on the stick for just a few moments longer to put a burst into him, then it is extremely difficult to discipline yourself to fly within the limits of your aircraft when you only want "just a little bit more" than the airframe is willing to give. The bottom line is that you must know the limits of your aircraft, and never exceed them. If you are pulling back hard on the stick and your turn rate starts to drop, you simply have to ease off the stick and decrease the AOA. This may mean that you miss a chance, but is was after all only that - a chance. By going too far that chance is likely to swing the other way in favour of your enemy. Having said that, there are a couple things that you can do to increase your turning performance and avoid entering a spin when you are already "running on yellow" Use of Flaps. Flaps are essential in most turning fights, because they lower the stalling speed of the wing. This allows you to turn for a longer peroid of time before the AOA becomes critical for your particular airspeed. Imagine two identical aircraft are turning at the same speed and the same AOA, one with full flaps, the other with none. As the turn continues and airspeed bleeds of both aircraft, the one that doesn't have it's flaps lowered will fall out of the sky first, while the one with its flaps down can continue turning hard at a much lower airspeed. There are a few things to beware of while using flaps though. Flaps may give you a benefit in reducing the stalling speed, but that comes at a cost. The price you pay is extra drag, so make sure that you have the flaps retracted whenever you don't need them. Also make sure that you don't damage your flaps by leaving them out while flying at high speeds. If your flaps are fully extended and you forget to retract them in a serious dive, they will get stuck, and will create extra drag which makes it extremely hard to get back up to the high initial speed that an energy fighter needs. It is a good practice to use flaps whenever you get into a tight turning fight, but get into the habit of retracting them as soon as you don't need them. Note that flaps cannot be extended above 415 kmph (258 mph), and will become damaged or stuck if you exceed 550 kmph (341 mph). If your aircraft is equipped with combat flaps, they can't be damaged, but 2/3 flaps or fully extended flaps at high speeds will still create damage. Use of the Rudder. When you are turning hard and are near the critical AOA, but just need a little bit longer and don't want to ease off the stick too much, if you press gently on the rudder on the opposite side to the wing that is about to stall, you will give yourself some extra time in the turn. In effect, here you are executing a spin recovery by yawing the aircraft out of a spin situation. Once again, this doesn't come without a price. You won't be able to turn as fast as you were before, but is still beats the hell out of going into a spin and losing the plot altogether. I find that I do a lot of rudder work on instinct, and with some practice, it all comes together quite naturally. You will have to experiment with just how much rudder is required to keep you out of a spin, as too little doesn't do the job, and too much will seriously affect your turning rate/radius.

Extra notes and training

A.I. pilots and stalls/spins. Put simply, AI pilots don't have any stall or spin recovery techniques, so if you see an AI plane spinning, don't even bother wasting ammunition on it. They are doomed from the start and will never recover. It is worth noting the way different versions of EAW work their pilots. In EAW 1.2, it is rare to see pilots spinning, as they nearly always fly within the limits of the airframe. Occasionally you may see some of the more "spin prone" aircraft such as the Bf-110 in a death spiral, but the single seat fighters are quite good. EAW 1.2a is a modification by DAVE S which gives increased AI agression and makes them use their cannons more. The extra agression means that the pilots will fly their aircraft a lot closer to it's limits, and the occurence of spins is a very common thing. If you are fighting a staffel of Bf-110's, you have to be quick to shoot a couple down, because the rest will more than likely spin and crash while engaging the rest of your squadron. Also, AI pilots can't hold a plane at low speeds with high angles of attack. I was flying low enroute to my base with the rest of my squdron in formation, and decided to see how slow I could approach the airfield without stalling. With gear down, full flaps and full stick back, I could hold around 130 kmph (81 mph), using my throttle to keep "out of the yellow". Suddenly I heard eleven loud explosions as all my AI buddies spun into the ground within one second of each other. I can't think of any instance when this would be of use in battle, but it is interesting... Also, AI pilots are not good in high speed dives. They have not been educated to cut throttle when the controls freeze up or reverse at high speeds (compressibility), so if you hot up a plane using EAW Aircraft Edit as I have, and it is capable of some freakishly outrageous velocities, you can expect that many of your squadron will encounter compressiblility and dive into the dirt! Once again, this is unlikely to happen with most flight models, but could perhaps be used to get rid of an AI bandit on your tail if you had enough altitude to get your airspeed up to the stage where compressibility is encountered. While this topic is not directly related to stalls and spins, it is related to AI pilots and their knowledge of aerodynamics, so I included it anyway. Strange things EAW does with spins. EAW does suffer from a few imperfections, and yes, there are a few in the stall /spin modelling. For some reason, if you try to get into a clockwise spin, it is damn near impossible! Turning hard to the right and applying full right rudder puts you into an anticlockwise spin. This is the reverse of what you would expect, but I guess a spin is a spin. The flat spins mentioned in the previous page are something out of the ordinary too. I'm not sure if the real Bf-110's would do this move, but I could be possible - Tom Cruise did it in an F-14 in "Top Gun"! Tumbling spins also fit into this category. Things to try in the air. Here are a few things that you may want to try out. They help you familiarize yourself with your aircraft's capabilities, and it's stalling and spinning characteristics. Take a single mission up to a high altitude and have a go. 1. Level turns in the green. With the throttle fully open, enter into a 70 degree banked turn and pull back hard. Try to keep the aircraft at the same altitude. Keep turning and watch as your airspeed bleeds off, pulling back harder making sure you keep your airspeed indicator in the green. If it gets into the yellow, stick forward a bit, and continue. Note the speed you are at, and time yourself to see how long it takes to complete a 360 degree turn. Here you are in no danger of stalling. 2. Level turns in the yellow. Same as above, pull back a little harder until your airspeed indicator is just in the yellow. Note this speed, and use the stick to try to keep it just in the yellow. Note that when you are just in the yellow, the stall alarm doesn't come on - increase the AOA a little more and it will start sounding.Time yourself how long it takes to complete a 360 degree turn at this speed (If you push it too far and spin, recover and try again.). The purpose of this exercise is to improve your ability to turn on the edge of a stall. 3. Hitting the red. Turn as above, but pull back even further. How far into the yellow can you go before your turn rate dramatically decreases and you slip into the red? There is a decent sized band between yellow and red, and the closer you get to the red, the tighter your turn will be. Practice releasing the stick when you are right on the edge of a spin, and note the speed when you hit the red. 4. Level turns in the yellow with flaps. Same as 2. above, but this time drop full flaps. Take a note of the airspeed as you continue your turn. Where do the yellow and red speeds cut in now?? How long does it take to complete 360 degrees now? 5. Turning with opposite rudder. Try the above lessons but use opposite rudder (as in a stall recovery) when you get in the yellow. How much rudder do you need to use in the different depths of the yellow area to keep you out of a spin? How much effect does this have on turning performance? What is the speed now when you go into the red while using full opposite rudder? 6. Minimum recovery altitude. Start at a known height, execute a level turn and go into a spin. Proceed with your recovery routine and take note of your altitude as you level out of your dive. How much height have you lost? Can you enter a spin at low altitude and confidently recover from it above the ground? At what height should you become extra vigilant about entering spins? These few exercises only deal with level turning, so you may want to experiment some more with maneuvering in the vertical plane and the stalls encountered there. I have just used level turns in the above examples because it allows you to keep airspeed constant, and read the "colours" more accurately for reference.

Hopefully by now you have learned a few things about the complexities of stalls and spins in EAW. If you haven't, then you could probably give me a few lessons on the finer points of aerodynamics, and I guess you really didn't need the extra information anyway! Feel free to disagree with any of my opinions. Anyway, I wish you all happy flying, and may EAW continue to give you many more hours of flying pleasure!


 * The END**