A number of stories: Many years ago a Boeing 727 in flight idle over the the Grampians (Victoria, Australia) gained quite a bit of lift in wave lift. The pilot was an experienced glider pilot. The thing with commercial airliners is that they are quite efficient at high speed, and in a clean configuration (no flaps) but drop out the air when they slow down. When I was involved in gliding, I was talking to a fellow pilot who at that time was flying Mirage IIICs with the RAAF. He told me that a dead stick landing in a Mirage was quite possible. Just convert the "standard" glider approach of 800' downwind, 600' crosswind, 400' final to 15000', 10000' and 5000'! At my old gliding club (Balaklava, South Australia) there was a guy called Bruno who regularly thermalled his Cessna 172 with the motor switched off. We would hear this yelling from over the launching area, and look up to see Bruno leaning out of the window of the 172 at 800'. Crazy man! These are the true stories...now for the fokelore.. I also heard that they did dead stick landings in Starfighters as training for flying the lifting body type aircraft at Edwards AFB. Is this true? It would be good to confirm of deny this bit of fokelore. Paul Ferguson Adelaide, South Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
