UKC

I know there are some fans of the Vulcan on here, so I thought you might enjoy this from Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/benmontgomery/24701048850/in/explore-2016-02-...

In reply to Fraser:

Thanks for posting that. Lovely shot.

Any idea what the thin bars on top of the wings are called and what their purpose is?

In reply to Trangia:

Not a clue, sorry. I'm not really into planes and don't know the first thing about them - I just thought it was a great photo.

In reply to Trangia:

They're airbrakes, they work in the same way as sticking your arms out when you're going downhill on a bike to slow down, in this case probably because the aircraft that the photographer was in was slow so the vulcan slowed down to give the photographer a chance to get a good shot

In reply to Fraser:

A chap I knew started out on de Havilland Mosquito and ended up on Avro vulcan he was a draftsman but now up in the sky with them so can not ask about the flaps good shot shows the size well

In reply to MysteriousCeorl:

Thanks for that. I had wondered about air brakes, but couldn't work out why they were being applied in flight rather than on a landing approach Hadn't thought of the slower photography plane.

In reply to Fraser:

There's some lovely aeroplane porn on that link. That chap obviously had some special access

In reply to Fraser:

Nice, I watched this the other day: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/guy-martin-last-flight-of-the-vulcan-bom...

Amazing plane!

In reply to toad:

You're not wrong. Did you see the Spitfire/Eurofighter combo? What a difference!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/benmontgomery/20489086005/

In reply to Trangia:

The aircraft could fly at a low speed just by setting the engines at low thrust, but it's better to have them at a higher thrust setting with the air brakes deployed. That way, if the aircraft needs to accelerate quickly, they just pull the brakes in, which is much faster than the time it takes for the engines to spool up.

In reply to Andy Long:

...and the Vulcan sounds better with the engines at higher thrust :oD

In reply to Paul Phillips - UKC and UKH:


Sadly I must correct your English to "sounded better...."

In reply to Trangia:


They're air-brakes, they increase drag and decrease lift altering the glide slope. There's a good article out there somewhere on the web by one of the recent Vulcan pilots, it details the conversion process and the unusual characteristics of the big delta wing and how it's flown, IIRC he covers the air-brake use. There's also an interesting bit on the pitch control reversal that occurs during certain flight phases, mostly landing when the pitching action caused by the elevators is briefly overpowered by the change in wing profile caused by the deflection (acting instead as flaps).

I suspect in this picture they're being used either to control speed in descent or to allow a higher power setting to be maintained while low and slow, if there's a problem brakes go away in an instant but idle engines take a while to spool up.
jk

In reply to Trangia:


As it's still allowed to "Fast taxi", I suspect they're still able to give it some welly.

Did anthing come of them beinf cited for barrel rolling on final flight?

In reply to Fraser:

You will still be able to hear her give some welly as she is allowed to do fast taxi runs, but sadly never the characteristic howl we all love.