Leading Edge Slats on the Me-109

[VO101_MMaister]

You are amazing guys... How the hell did you end up on the spit`s high speed stall characteristic in a thread about the leading edge slats of the 109?????

There are no spinproof airplanes, there ones which are hard to put in a spin. The wing is stalled when the airflow become turbulent over the whole upper wing area and so it looses its lifting effect. The slats ensure a laminar flow over the outer wing around the ailerons at low speed so you have some more control before the wing stall. No magic here. It can postpone the stall but it won`t eliminate it.

The spin is when only one of the wing is stalled due to the assyimetrical flow. The slats could open independently, so they could prevent a spin by opening only on the wing which was just about the stall. But again it was only postponing the spin in this case and gave you more control.

On the other hand the slats could make a fuss, when only one of them opened due to some mechanical failure, and it resulted an assymetrical lift and so an unpredicted spin at low speed. Also they raised the drag when they were open, what meant quicker de-accceleration.

I have never flown an aircraft with slats, so no practical experience here, but as I understand Crumpp did, and he gave a quite good description about the acting of such an airplane.

I also feel that the 109 in the game is a bit sensitive, but hey, I can`t tell if it is right or not. Can you? I have never flown one, and I have never read a review of the current flight modell by a real life 109 jockey. Have you? There are quantitive specs what can be measured and checked in numbers and graphs. And then there are the sensations. It is quite hard to translate a pilot`s story into an accurate flight model. In these stories you can only get what that particular guy felt in that particular situation, and then how he can recall it after maybe 60-70 years. Well it is not bomb proof for sure. Now translate it into a computer game for guys who are flying in an office chair, and they pull as hard as they want without feeling the punishment of the real G-forces or the physical exhausting of an aerial battle. So we can have a depute on it for 1000 years and we never gonna agree.