Pet Peeve- "Tip Stall" (Please excuse me for being a jerk)

[earthsciteach]

I acknowledge that I'm being a jerk, here. But, can we please eliminate the term, "tip stall," from the RC vernacular? All airplanes will stall when the airflow is inadequate to provide lift. Some have gentle characteristics and will simply "mush" as they drop. Others, pretty much any high speed/high wing loaded aircraft, will have nasty stall characteristics where one wing drops before the other. Additionally, any plane with gentle stall characteristics can be made to drop a wing and possibly enter a spin. A stall is a stall - period. There is no such thing as a tip stall and the term needs to go away so it stops annoying me. Please help end my annoyance by stopping the use of this false term. Its like using the term, "centrifugal acceleration." Doesn't exist. Centripetal acceleration, on the other hand, does.

Whew. Feels good to get that out.

Next - Can we please eliminate the term, "drone?"

 

[CrashRecovery]

TIP STALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[earthsciteach]

With friends like these...

 

[nerdnic]

Others, pretty much any high speed/high wing loaded aircraft, will have nasty stall characteristics where one wing drops before the other.
This is what I think of when someone says tip stall. It's not that all aircraft don't stall, it's that they don't all stall the same way as you've pointed out. A tip stall just calls attention to the behavior of the stall where one wing drops dramatically and begins the spiral instantly vs a plane that just noses over in a stall and is very easy to recover.

 

[nerdnic]

And I agree that mostly high wing loaded planes have the nasty stalls but not always. The FT Storch has a nasty stall that is hard to recover quickly, which would seem unexpected from such a low wing loaded plane.

 

[earthsciteach]

The phrase, "… has a tendency to tip stall," does not bother me. The phrase, "It tip-stalled and crashed," does. It stalled. The airflow over the wing ceased to provide adequate lift.

 

[joshuabardwell]

I think of a tip stall in two ways. The first is when someone says, "This plane has a tendency to tip stall." What I interpret that to mean is, "When the plane stalls, one wing stalls first, it does so suddenly, and the plane spirals or flips dramatically, with not much ability to easily recover." There are some planes that are designed so that, almost no matter what you do, a stall will be self-righting. I used to try to spin my Bixler, and it was kind of impossible. I could get it to do a kind of downward spiral, but it wasn't really a proper spin. And you could bank that thing over at very low speeds without worrying about rolling over.

The other thing I hear is people say, "I had a tip stall and crashed." In that case, they're describing what happened, vs. an inherent tendency of the airframe. They're saying, "I banked too hard at too low a speed, resulting in inadequate lift on the in-board wing, and the plane crashed." This wording distinguishes the situation from, "I stalled on landing and crashed," which I would interpret as saying that the wings were level and they put in too much up elevator at too low a speed, resulting in either porpoising or an early flare that resulted in a crash.

So, yeah, "tip stall" is just a special case of, "stall", but not all stalls are identical on all airframes.

 

[earthsciteach]

Nails on a chalkboard...

 

[nerdnic]

Nails on a chalkboard...

lol!

 

[Jaxx]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stall_(fluid_mechanics)#Tip_stall

Tip Stalls happen when the aircraft loses lift at the wing tip before it loses lift at the wing root. As we have seen, one wing tip will drop before the rest of the wing. I saw my buddy's FT-22 do it when he ws checking out the glide characteristics. It was very sudden, caught him completely off guard.

 

[earthsciteach]

I submit this as evidence to support my position:
http://www.pilotfriend.com/training/flight_training/fxd_wing/stalls.htm

 

[CrashRecovery]

Please stop replying to this........... you are going to get him on a tangent and it will never end

 

[CrashRecovery]

ROCKS FLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[earthsciteach]

Sigh. Rocks do not fly. They follow a path of projectile motion.

 

[kwak]

Tip Stalls happen when the aircraft loses lift at the wing tip before it loses lift at the wing root. As we have seen, one wing tip will drop before the rest of the wing. I saw my buddy's FT-22 do it when he ws checking out the glide characteristics. It was very sudden, caught him completely off guard.

:applause: We have a winner.

This is the correct definition of "tip stall". R/C plane designers counteract this by adding washout at the wing tip. This reduces the angle of attack of the wing tip. The idea is to move the location of where the stall first occurs from the tip to more inboard on the wing.

 

[earthsciteach]

Tip stall is very misused in the RC community. It puts the blame on the airplane when the fault lies with the pilot who failed to understand and maintain the aircraft within its operational envelope.

 

[RAM]

No . You can't have it your way. It has a definition.

Page 45 Figure 2-4
http://www.cnatra.navy.mil/pubs/folder5/t45/p-1287.pdf

 

[earthsciteach]

NO! I want it my way!!! I want it I want it I want it!!!!

I'm going to hold my breath until I turn blue, now.

 

[RAM]

Take a deep breath.

Someone even filed a patent for a solution to that which shall not be named.

Means of controlling wing tip stall in airplanes
US 2549045 A

 

[RAM]

He's going to need oxygen. Even birds do it.

http://www.wfis.uni.lodz.pl/edu/Proposal.htm
Pointed-Tip Wings at

Low Reynolds Numbers

The peculiar feature of the pointed wing tip in pelagic birds sets these birds apart from their man made counterparts – performance gliders. As seen in Chapter 2, a pointed wing tip will be deleterious to the wing’s aerodynamic performance. Due to the small surface area of the tip, local lift coefficients will be very high leading to tip stall (