How far you can go beyond VNE before wings are pulled? it lost it’s wings somewhere 40%-50% more than VNE
220 / 163 = 34.9%, wing separation.
242 / 170 = 42.4%, no structural damage.
You are right I forgot VNE of vintage short body M20E is near 170kias (used to mid & long body ones going near 190kias)
Ibra wrote:
How far you can go beyond VNE before wings are pulled? it lost it’s wings somewhere 40%-50% more than VNE?
Definition of Vne is not “x% of minimum speed where wings are sure to separate” but “x% of maximum speed where it has been demonstrated that they won’t fall off…”
but “x% of maximum speed where it has been demonstrated that they won’t fall off…”
Isn’t one required to show that there isn’t flutter taking place?
I know someone who built special hardware for detecting that (proprietary, so I won’t post details).
T28 wrote:
242 / 170 = 42.4%, no structural damage.
I recall a case where a Mooney 201 suffered massive damage (write off if I am not mistaken) after entering a thunderstorm cloud near Salzburg many moons ago. It experienced massive turbulence and up and down drafts exceeding the g-loads and during the event also exceeding Vne several times.
After they left the cloud, the airplane flew on to it’s homebase, with the pilot not noticing anyting wrong in flying. It was however found that the wing was bent upwards and other massive damage had occurred. But it did not let go.
About 2 months before he retired, I had a contact with Mike Miles, the legendary test pilot of Mooney. He mentioned that so far there has been only one break up of a Mooney in a thunderstorm cloud about 30-40 years ago. That is the only Mooney M20 ever to break up in flight. I think that is no mean achievement.
Needless to say I feel VERY safe in that regard with the Mooneys.
