Forum: General F-16 forum

Ok, here's the deal. My boss and I are at work and discussing the recent events about the cessna flying towards the white house.

The cessna was said to be flying about 120mph.

He was stating that the F-16 (if they were F-16 that were alerted) would have to fly by the cessna and continue to make fly by's because the F-16 could not maintain flight at 120mph and would stall if they tried.

I disagree with his statement but can't find proof to back it up.

So the question is, can a F-16 maintain flight @ 120mph without stalling?

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They have very well thought out and practiced procedures for this type of mission. The F-16 does not attempt to fly that slow. I saw the pics from today and it was F-16s.

My guess will be no, even with the flaps extended. 120 mph are around 104 knots. AFAIK, the Take-Off speed of the F-16 (in normal configuration) is somewhere around 120-130 knots (138 - 148 mph).

Just my 2 cents Wink

and I don't see a 150 making 120 kts, unless he was going balls-to-the-wall; why go full-throttle to an airshow, as they claim? A 150 might cruise at 80-90, I would guess, but I haven't flown in a 150 so I have no idea. It just doesn't seem like a fast airplane, since 172/182's generally cruise around 120-130 or so. A newsman on "fox" news just said the F-16 has "a stall speed around 250 mph" Smile

Anybody hear of any Customs Service Blackhawks involved in the escort? One of the live helo videos showed one on the pad at the airport the Cessna landed at. They certainly would be able to hang with a Cessna if the Vipers couldn't. And a door-mounted 7.62 minigun pointed at me would be incentive enough to land! Wink

EriktheF-16462 wrote:

The F-16 does not attempt to fly that slow.

Wellll...it can actually. But unless you're Thunderbird 5 or 6 doin' the High Alpha Pass it's not done very regularly except to land. I've seen instructors show studs how to stay level at 110 knots at somewhere 'round 20 degrees AOA with very little effort once ya get it all trimmed out. This was with a clean config, tho.

VPRGUY wrote:

A newsman on "fox" news just said the F-16 has "a stall speed around 250 mph" Smile

Somebody sack the teleprompter guy!

my bad, that was actually on MSNBC. Fox knows better Wink

My point is they don't fly around hanging on the horn. That is a silly way to fly a combat loaded jet over a huge city. They do ensure the bad guys are always under a gun though.

I think it was CNN that said the c-150 was doing 150mph. I would gladly risk my life to be the first person to get a one-filthy above 110!!!! (j/k) And I do believe they got an airshow! Smile

no kidding, how many other places do you get to see F-16's dropping flares and flying formation on a cessna??? Talk about a "heritage" flight...

Note that there is a six-page thread on the F-16 stall speed on this forum: <a href="f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-243.html">Stall speed of F-16</a>

The 16's will work as a pair using a scissors move, that way there is almost always one on his "6"

Purple

Thanks for the info guys Smile

LinkF-16SimDude wrote:

Well...it can actually. But unless you're Thunderbird 5 or 6 doin' the High Alpha Pass it's not done very regularly except to land. I've seen instructors show studs how to stay level at 110 knots at somewhere 'round 20 degrees AOA with very little effort once ya get it all trimmed out. This was with a clean config, though.

Yeah, the computer in the F-16 won't let you go above 29 degrees AOA... Once you try to go any further, the flight computer decides that you are not flying the airplane anymore and takes over.

The airplane that has an impressive High Alpha performance is the F-18; Especially the way the Canadian Demo Team flies it. They put it into a High Alpha slow speed pass (right above stall speed) and then put a little roll into the airplane. It ends up doing a 360 degree circle pretty damn close to a spin , all at about 200 feet. The Navy demo team allows the pass, but only at 500 feet as you still have some time to throttle into afterburner, put the nose down and recover if you lose an engine, but at 200 feet, you only have time to reach for the handles. They also do it when they are at the end of their show and pretty low on gas.

Salute!

OK, let's go look at the page one of the Janitors pointed out- the thread about stall speed.

Second: THE FLCS IS ALWAYS IN CONTROL!!!

the 29 deg alpha came from the pitch override doofer back in 1979 or so. As the FLCS limited the jet to 25 deg alpha (more or less, as pitch rate came into play), you could only get into a deep stall is AOA was way up there- like 60 degreees or more. So the pitch override thingie wouldn't work unless AoA was above 29 deg. Then, we could actually manually command the tail planes to move where the stick did. Same as when sitting on the ramp.

Third: no 'real' stall in the Viper. The Hornet can get away with it's high AoA pass because it doesn't have the same flight control laws, and is not fully FBW.

Fourth: We used to intercept Cessnas over the desert in Utah. Sometimes the pilot was clueless, other times the pilot was taking a shortcut across the restricted area.

We could get down to about 140 knots using manual flaps (gear up/flaps down). So we would cruise past the guy and let him know we were there. Would also try to get tail number.

Fifth: The Viper can fly under control at 90 knots or so, if you call descending like a brick while rolling and bringing the nose about with low-speed horn blaring. Only way to truly 'depart' the sucker is to have assymetric load and get nose moving fast at slow speed, then try to roll into the heavy wing. Inertia rules, and the FLCS cannot compensate quickly enough. The Cat III doofer helped here, but who flew with it in that position?

lastly: Saw a HUD tape of an IAF Viper trying to hose a Sov chopper during the Bekka Valley campaign. After several aborted attempts with the cannon, next HUD sequence is the missile reticle!!! BAM! Pesky AIM-9L is really good.

out,

Gums brings up another awesome point from some experience that none of us have.

I remember talking to a guy whose final at test pilot school was to make an F-16 stall out. (He also said something about being on the discovery channel while there too, I've never seen the show he's talkin about, but hey, you never know) He said that he and his partner had to move some balast back in the airplane (read: Add a lot of weight to the aft section) and also change the FLCS so that it would let him fly above 29 alpha. He said he had to do some other things too... not sure what, It was a while ago. I remember he was in a B model... But he said he got an f-16 to depart from flight and recover it.

Forum: General F-16 forum

Stall speed of an F-16