ICON Aircraft - A5 Spin Resistance Safety Milestone Demonstration 

Good, so if engine fails you can still land it better than a parachute is it?... N how much it cost what hight it can go upto

Danny NBD

So would longer, more flexible yet sturdy wings

The tail is right behind the prop. The main spin resistance design ques are found on the wingtips, but if the slipstream has something to do with it, adding power should give you full elevator authority.

You got it. They claimed it had never been done but Burt Rattan did it.

Hell, some of the very earliest Aeroplanes were almost unstallable. One example (but not the only one) would be the 1910 Bristol Boxkite. Those used a forward cannard set at a higher angle of attack than the wing. The cannard stalled (and dropped) before the wing would, dropping the nose and increasing airflow over both cannard and the wing. I suspect Siggen (see below) may be on the right treack and Icon have figured some way of doing something simialr with the tail ... that said its has me baffled how you'd do that with a tail.

and the aerocoupe...the 30's?

Patrik Jonsson I have not seen it landing on land why

40 years ago! Burt is bad a$$

look up raptor aircraft

Yeah, it has maybe two thirds of that range, and only two seats, and less of pretty much everything (except water landing and maybe stall resistance, based on their company video) than a Cessna c150. Also, it costs well over 10x as much.

Second effect of yaw is roll. Watch the cockpit video

Fuel is always stored in the wings. The fact that it has fuel should answer your next question.

I left a comment here three years ago, sufficiently impressed by this aircraft. When I saw this in the news today, I was saddened at the loss of two engineers. Seemed like such a cool innovative plane, but I'm curious to know what really happened up there.

mate, the lead engineer Jon Karkow you can see is this video is already dead - crashed in an A5. Not the best track record for this little innovative plane..

+Charles-Etienne Roy They have a parachute -> check on their website iconaircraft.com/a5/safety/

ๅช0จ7765ฟผผฟผผผผหปกก

The icon did hit the right rudder. It looks like he hit it at full right rudder. You can see his right foot push down as far as he could.

yeah i watched that part a few times it it *looks* like there is right rudder applied on the a5.

What bathroom wall did you read that info about pilots not being allowed to fly aircraft that can spin or not?

I digress. It is in fact quite affordable and surprisingly so. So much for assuming.

I suspect that the high placement of the tail elevator is how they achieve it. In a stall, the center of pressure will be above the center of gravity, and the aircraft will subsequently stay upright. The C-150's tail elevator looks to be placed at or slightly above/below the center of gravity, rendering the aircraft inherently unstable in a stall. The A5 acts like a human under a parachute, or like a badminton shuttlecock, they right themselves in a vertical fall, since their centers of pressure is above their centers of gravity

Thats more then ok, if performance suffers for saftey thats fine

Well, yes & no DJ787. How *much* performance is lost in the trade for safety - and where its lost - is a legitimate consideration too. For instance, if the trade was to up fuel consumption that would have a safety negative implication too (you don't want to run out of fuel). Now, you could with some fair grounds argue 'Pilots should have more sense than to run out of fuel'. But then, they should have more sense than to stall too. Reality is the dumber ones do both. That said, what this company is doing looks promising .......... Just hope that if there are drawbacks the 'safety at any price' brigade doesn't get to shove it down everyone's throat.

Siggen, Actually, The T-tail configuration is more susceptible to uncontrollable stall characteristics. Just look at the Beechcraft Skipper and Piper Tomahawk for example. The way the Icon's wing is shaped, With a shorter root chord and longer tip chord, as well as a higher root incidence angle than tip angle, ensures that the root of the wing stalls well before the tip of the wing. It essentially makes it almost impossible (very difficult) to stall the entire wing at once. The loss of lift during the partial stall causes the nose to automatically drop before the tip airfoil reaches it's critical angle of attack. This technique is called aerodynamic twist and is commonplace on most aircraft. It is just utilized much more extensively in the A5.

Ashore4 Interesting to hear, I was just speculating wildly, nice to hear someone with more knowledge explaining it

Whats wrong with spinning? Low to the ground DEAD, small rudder DEAD poor pilot recovery method DEAD any other fuckups DEAD

DXSW Roy halladay dies in a plane crash in one of these icon planes

So does Jon?

carbon fiber and composites can handle alot of fatiguing manuevers

The airframe will have a limited lifespan in hours, to ensure that structual failure does not happen

You do realize most GA aircraft cant really recover from spins? When spinning the effective surface area of your rudder is reduced a huge amount, making it really hard for aircraft to recover from spins. So in most aircraft it is indeed a loss of control

Spin recovery demonstration is a requirement for certification. unless its a Cirrus, then its the chute being fired that is the recovery technique.