Flight characteristics of a refueling plane
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Hi,
Lately, I’ve read in the Israeli air force bulletin that during aerial refuel the pilots of the Boeing 707 put both of their inboards engines to idle power in order to reduce turbulence and assist the fighter pilots. Does any one heard about similar procedures in other air forces? Moreover, are there any ROLL restrictions/guide lines (deg/sec on the roll axis during transition from a “straight forward” flight to a turn? Is there a restriction on the max bank during a turn)?
I doubt that logic of that kind is currently modeled in the sim - is there a plan for that?Thanks in advance
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I should think that procedural turns are preformed as two minute turns - i.e.; standard rate. That will mean that the bank will depend on airspeed, and I should think that desired airspeed would depend on type aircraft receiving.
I do know that aircraft types selected as tankers are elected with a consideration of trailing turbulence and the effect of such on intended receiving aircraft.
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KC-135s don’t pull their inboards to idle for C-17s. Some aircraft have bank limits that the KC-10/KC-135 must adhere to, like 15 degs of bank for example (when refueling an A-10). For other aircraft, the tanker will limit bank to 15 degs unless the receiver requests otherwise.
AFAIK, tanker crews just try to be smooth when rolling their aircraft if they are hand-flying the AR (most of the time they’ll use autopilot, but they do AP off for training/currency/proficiency). I’m not sure what their AP’s roll rate is or if it can be adjusted (we have two options with the C-17s AP), but as long as they don’t roll wildly, it makes it easier for us to feed in roll input and stay connected. Smooth is good.
The ATP-56B is in the Operational Manuals folder in your Falcon’s Docs folder. It talks about some of the restrictions for various platforms.