The Deadly F-100 Super "Sabre Dance" And Other Stalls And Spins | DCS

[00:00:00]Hello valued viewers. I hope you're all doing very well. You guys have asked us to dive deeper into the Super Saber's infamous handling characteristics.

[00:00:08]We're going to first look at the legendary Saber Dance, then low energy stools, then high energy stalls and subsequent spins and anything else we want to look at related. So, first the saber dance. The saber dance was the nickname given to a dangerous and often fatal aerodynamic behavior of the F-100.

[00:00:27]It occurred when the aircraft got too slow while at high angle of attack, usually during landing and sometimes at takeoff. As the highly swept wings approached the stool, the wing tips stalled first. This shifted the center of lift forward, causing the nose to pitch up even more, which deepened the stool. The aircraft would then begin an alarming oscillation, nose high, rolling and yoring unpredictably while barely above the ground. Pilots described it as looking almost like the aircraft was dancing down the runway, nose pointed skyward. Once a fully developed Saber dance began at low altitude, recovery was often impossible because there was insufficient height to regain air speed or eject safely. Remember these are older style non000 seats. One of the most famous examples, as you can see, occurred on 10 January 1956 when first lieutenant Barti R.

[00:01:22]Brooks attempted an emergency landing in an F100C at Edwards. The aircraft entered a saber dance that happened to be captured on film. The footage became a classic Air Force training film because it vividly demonstrated the dangers of getting behind the power curve in the F100. So guys, first we're going to start with the saber dance.

[00:01:41]We're going to do it while landing. I'm going to have a quick go on my own and then I'm going to invite you guys to come in one at a time. Either heavy, you can be heavily loaded or lightly loaded and let's just see what happens. We've not tried it. We've not scripted it.

[00:01:51]We're just going to see what happens, guys. First viewers, when I unpause, I'm going to do just a normal landing. It's going to be a heavy landing. I'm as heavily loaded as I can. All the bombs, all the fuel just to show the heavy landing as possible. Then I'm going to do it again. I'm going to deliberately get too slow and see what happens with the aircraft. Right. So, I'm pausing.

[00:02:10]Wish me the luck, guys. This is actually my second landing. So, that shows how many missions I've survived. So, power on, flaps down, gear down, speed 250 knots. Hopefully this runway is long enough. Head right up so I can see at the high angle of attack. You can see my credentials down the bottom. Viewers, I'll leave that on on purpose. 240 knots. Overshot the radial of course because me. I reiterate this is as heavy as I can make the jet.

[00:02:33]It's probably way above official landing weight. Well, it is.

[00:02:38]But just to show you, I can control that pretty easily. Cut. And I would need a longer runway. This is a short runway or a drag shoot. Whatever. This doesn't have a dra Does this have a drag shoot, guys?

[00:02:49]>> It does. It does. Super cap. Best cap and drag shoot.

[00:02:54]>> Yeah, he did it.

[00:02:55]>> I'm happy. Does have a drag shoot.

[00:02:58]>> I still don't think you're going to slow down in time.

[00:03:00]>> I'm really hammering the brakes, guys.

[00:03:02]>> Got to >> You got to believe. You got to believe.

[00:03:04]But I don't have a 00 ejection seat, so I'm going to die anyway. Boom. Okay.

[00:03:09]Well, that's I guess pretty much how you do it. And the aircraft was stable throughout. I'm going to respawn now, guys. And I'm going to do the Boom. And I'm going to do the same. How undignified. But this time, I'm deliberately going to get too slow. And we're just going to see what happens.

[00:03:20]Standby again. Credentials down the bottom. Angle of attack. All my controls. Rudder blah blah blah blah blah. Wow, that is impossible to get that radio. Never mind. Doesn't matter.

[00:03:27]Coming in slow this time. I got some juttering. Power on. Don't worry about the radio too much. That's not really what we're interested in.

[00:03:38]As you can see all my controls. She's happy at the moment at 200. N. She feels a bit weward. Dancing left there.

[00:03:48]Noses is up. Dancing right. Correcting with right rudder.

[00:03:54]Power on.

[00:03:56]I don't know what that was, guys. Stole the right wing. I'm down. I'm gone.

[00:04:02]Wow. Okay. Well, I wouldn't call that a saber dance, but it certainly was an absolutely terrible landing. I just got too slow. Bang. My face. And too high angle of attack. But h interesting.

[00:04:14]Right. I'm going to invite you guys uh to spawn in every few seconds and I'm going to come and watch you at the end of the runway. He's heavy, which is going to stall that wing much easier.

[00:04:24]And he's immediately dead. Okay. All right. This guy looks a little bit more sensible. He's got his flaps down. He's got his gear down. He's coming for a landing. Sinking. It's sinking. It's sinking.

[00:04:37]It's dancing left. It's dancing. He's got control of it. Can you save it? So, you're almost sort of entering a dance there, but you've just about he saved it. Well done.

[00:04:50]This I believe this is the same engine.

[00:04:52]That's not quite true, but near enough.

[00:04:54]It made the same amount of power as the original var variant.

[00:05:00]>> Well, that guy looked like he was getting into a dance, but he saved it by I don't know reasons.

[00:05:06]>> Rudder use a rudder, I guess. But yeah, I don't think I was ever really in it.

[00:05:11]Roger. One on push. Next guy coming down. Flaps down. He's in a light configuration, so he's going to have to work to get slower. Now, here's an interesting question, viewers. I'll look at I'll show you in a minute, but the D model is what we've got here. It's got leading edge slats. All versions of this had the leading edge slats, but it also has wing fences 2/3 of the way down the wing. And I wonder if that was added, I don't know this, but I wonder if that was added exactly to stop this problem, the Sabance problem. I don't know.

[00:05:43]This guy's dropping out nicely. He's lost all buoyancy. It was just a classic stoall there. It wasn't really a dance.

[00:05:48]It was just You see those little fences?

[00:05:50]He's got two/irds of the way down the wings. I wonder if that was added in the D model to stop this. I'll have to see.

[00:05:55]Right, this guy's coming in a bit more controlled. He's heavy. It's going to put him into that stool easier or quicker at higher speed.

[00:06:04]It's dancing. It's dancing. It's dancing. And I don't think he can.

[00:06:11]Can he correct it? No, he can't. Boom.

[00:06:14]He managed to save his airframe.

[00:06:15]Amazingly, he wouldn't be able to do that in real life. It would just tumble and rip itself to pieces and blow up.

[00:06:19]But yeah. Okay. So far, we've seen some decent stalls, but nothing like we've seen in in the video where it dances for hundreds of yards down the runway. He's going to struggle cuz as soon as he turns at low speed, it's going to drop that left wing.

[00:06:40]Power on.

[00:06:42]Power on. Power on. Power on. It was the right wing that dropped. That's interesting. All right, we got a lightweight airframe here. Flaps down.

[00:06:50]Gear down. Coming in for emergency landing.

[00:06:53]160 knots. Nice and stable. See, it's a handful to try and keep on on online right now.

[00:07:03]>> Yes, it is. But it still looks That's That's not me pitching up.

[00:07:16]Look at that. You see him have to correct. He goes left, he has to correct right and vice versa.

[00:07:21]Oh, and he's lost it. He's lost it exactly like in the video. Can he get it back?

[00:07:27]Not to yesterday.

[00:07:31]Just just got it back. That shows how bloody close how fine line it is.

[00:07:40]All right. Lightweight, no balance.

[00:07:42]Flaps down, gear down.

[00:07:45]Going past 200. Feeding a little bit of power so it don't just fall out the sky.

[00:07:49]>> You need AOA, Cap. You need AOA.

[00:07:51]>> Yeah, I'm coming.

[00:07:53]>> All right, there you go. Hold. Hold that AOA. Give her more power.

[00:07:57]>> She's shifting left a bit, but nothing major. Shifting right a bit, but nothing major. She can write a bit more.

[00:08:07]Lots of juttering.

[00:08:12]Uh left correcting full left boot.

[00:08:28]still just about making full right.

[00:08:32]Oh my god.

[00:08:35]I can survive that. Yeah, it wasn't as enhanced as it was in the video, but it it, you know, I was losing I was stalling left and so I had to correct right and then it stalled right and I corrected left and it stalled left. And mind you, we're in a static we're in static wind conditions. You know what I mean? Like rarely is the wind ever running in the actual like true direction of the runway. So if you have just the slightest crosswind at 10 15 knots, it's going to exacerbate that that effect. Anyone want to try more saber dancing before we move on to stool classic stalls? Welcome back. Well, that was interesting viewers. Um next we're going to try low energy stall. So basically we're going to fly along in information out of formation doesn't really matter. Information would be nicer. Uh we're going to get slower and slower and slower and see what happens when we stall. And when we do stall, we're going to fight our natural tendency to try and get out of the stall. We're going to let it stall.

[00:09:22]You'll see our control. all my controls down the bottom there and just see what the plane does cuz well we don't really know yet but it's going to be useful data guys. I'm going to pause in 3 2 1 now. Just make the deceleration nice and slow please so we've all got plenty of time to react.

[00:09:37]>> All right, I'm flying steady and level.

[00:09:39]>> All right, when you're ready, just stop bleeding that speed slowly off. There's no no rush. You see the angle of attack down at the bottom view is AOA. Uh and the speed, that's all you really need to know. We keep roughly at 14,000 ft. Uh, looks like we're in a light configuration. So, I'm going to guess still would be about what? 140 >> high. It should be a higher speed, right?

[00:10:01]>> No.

[00:10:02]>> Air speed is air speed. Do >> air based on pressure, isn't it?

[00:10:06]>> Air speed.

[00:10:07]>> Yeah.

[00:10:09]>> 275 shot.

[00:10:13]>> Angle of attack 7°.

[00:10:17]>> Keeping it, boys. Keeping it. Angle attack 10°.

[00:10:22]200.

[00:10:24]>> Oh, it's coming.

[00:10:26]175.

[00:10:27]>> Let's take a third back.

[00:10:30]11 12° angle of attack. Buffered incoming.

[00:10:35]Mine's going 180 knots. Mine.

[00:10:38]>> It's going full rudder right full stick back. 20° angle of attack. Mine went to like 170 knots. Sticking in it. Sticking in it. Left wing's fully dropped.

[00:10:50]What's going to happen with it? What's going to happen with it?

[00:10:55]>> Okay, releasing controls.

[00:10:58]>> I've lost it.

[00:10:59]>> Right. Let's see what happens with you.

[00:11:00]Mine was Mine was pretty uh unexciting.

[00:11:02]Right. Simba's got right installed here.

[00:11:04]21° angle of attack. What's he going to try and do? He's trying to use his rudder. Left right wings dropped.

[00:11:16]He's It's He's not unreoverable.

[00:11:18]Completely recoverable. Better back on the power. Did anyone not manage to recover?

[00:11:24]>> H interesting.

[00:11:25]>> Pretty doily.

[00:11:27]>> It really seemed to Did seem very dosile, didn't it? I'm going to try again. I intended to recover it. So, I immediately >> yawned and rolled into the direction of the nose so that I could feel like I was getting myself pointed in the direction.

[00:11:41]>> Yeah.

[00:11:41]>> Of get positive air flow. Uh like controllable positive air flow. But if I just let it completely go to the jet doing what the jet wants to do.

[00:11:53]I'm just going to go full after stick really and see what happens. The critical thing is there is no one. Yeah, we all stalled. We all stole our wings and none of us crashed. So that was interesting. I'm going to do the same again. Angle of attack is 11°. Feed on a bit of power. PSI is neutral 14°.

[00:12:08]Buffering rudder static 13° angle of attack. 14° angle of attack. BSI neutral near enough 20° angle of attack. Um that's full off stick now.

[00:12:29]It's almost like Cessnaes. It's dosilely rolling to the left, but it always keeps a nose down. Even on FAS, it keeps nose down. So it seems to be a nose heavy jet, which is good cuz it means I can just keep full control of this where I will be able to. Let's just keep it off and see what happens out of interest.

[00:12:51]So, I've not really got enough power to stay airborne.

[00:12:57]Just gone full after sick. No other controls. Hasn't rolled over. And we're right off the power and see what happens.

[00:13:05]Well, bearing in mind in about half an hour we're doing dog fighting. Uh that's actually I've got full control. Good. Um it just what we've seen there is just almost Harrieresque. The real Harrier I mean the real sea Harrier was famous because you could put the nose up like that come off the power and it would not go into a spin which a lot of aircraft would Tomcat or something. This just dosilely rolls over. But the critical thing is it goes nose down. It doesn't go into a flat spin. He says no. Yeah.

[00:13:33]Completely recoverable. Just be careful.

[00:13:35]Get an air spin. I should be able to recover up this. No, cuz I haven't got my G limit turned off with a knob. But if I did, I'll probably be able to save myself out of that. No, I did save myself. That was kind of sexy. I can't crash it, right? Well, how are you guys getting on? One thing also remember, Cat, this is still back in the design phase where airplanes were designed to be neutral. Like, it wasn't until the F-16 that they intentionally designed an unstable airplane.

[00:14:06]>> Yeah. Cuz you need to follow by wear and whatnot to keep it stable. Absolutely.

[00:14:08]So yeah, it is neutral plane. Anyone see any other ideas of low energy store? I don't there's much you can do. You fly straight forward until you get to full arick and then it it will eventually depart. But interesting thing, no spin.

[00:14:19]So that's good.

[00:14:21]>> Go try to go over top.

[00:14:22]>> Over the top and then we'll do high energy. Roger. Let's work on that individually, guys. Right. I'm going to go after burner.

[00:14:31]Right.

[00:14:33]Coming over the top on 100 knots.

[00:14:36]Controls are going light. 80 knots. 70 knots completely out of control. Now, what's going to happen? It looks like again because it's quite stable, it's going to go down nose first. The engine stalling up. Doesn't matter. As long as it goes down nose fast, it's it's always going to be recoverable, even if you store your engine. That's good, guys.

[00:14:53]Anyone get any other results going over the top other than it puts it dips its nose down?

[00:14:58]>> Nope. Puts it nose down and then >> ease forward on the stick a little bit and it comes out.

[00:15:03]>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean you're going to >> you're going to have to actually kick in a bunch of rudder when you're stalling to get it to go spin.

[00:15:08]>> Roger. Yeah, understood. So, you're going to need to have some some lateral movement then as well as um >> yeah, >> it's vertical. Yeah. Yeah, it seems quite stable as long as we're not again.

[00:15:18]I'm coming down on a tail slide. It looks like it's going to happily pop over at 45 knots.

[00:15:27]L sticking it. Yeah, I can recover that easy. All right, I'm going to go over the top again, but this time it's going to be a bit more of a realistic situation where you might be, you know, having to turn in a dog fight as well.

[00:15:36]So, see what happens. Okay, up we go.

[00:15:41]Let's make a mistake. Got to turn.

[00:15:46]What's going to happen now?

[00:15:50]Okay, that might be a loss of control coming up.

[00:15:54]Uh, fighting it.

[00:15:57]Oh, I reckon I'm going to get control.

[00:15:59]Is he going to put his nose back or go into his spin?

[00:16:02]Trying to fight fire left rudder and left stick. I reckon that's about to be No, it's controlled it. All right. It start mine started losing control, but then at some point it unloaded itself and I've got control again.

[00:16:13]>> Just tried one with full right rudder at stall and it basically recovered itself as soon as I let go of the controls.

[00:16:20]>> All right, all looking very do so far, uh, viewers, which is probably for the best to be honest. Uh, next I'm going to try high energy departure. By which I mean I'm going to go into turn a turn max rate turn and keep bleeding off speed until it just, you know, something something bad happens basically. So I'm going to go full power with after burner on. I'm going to turn it.

[00:16:41]It's loaded up. I need to put the G limiter off. Uh, G limiter off. Oh, we should have maybe tried with the G limiter. No, it wouldn't matter because we were going slow. It would make any difference, would it? So Jeep M limit only, you know, it's only when you're going fast obviously it's going to actually do anything. Maybe not quite a max rate turn, but full power full after sticking turn is what I mean.

[00:17:00]Speed is slowly decreasing, but she seems pretty dosile. She's not trying to drop a wing, which is really useful.

[00:17:07]>> Not losing a whole lot of speed either.

[00:17:09]>> Yes, it's just slowly coming down.

[00:17:12]>> Yeah, it is. But >> slowly that might come in handy as well.

[00:17:16]I'm assuming I've got full control of the jet with the G limit off. I don't know, but I assume we are. Feels like we have got full control. Yeah, it seems it's it keeps rising, which means I think that means the right wing's starting to go, but I can correct it with a load of rudder and then it just gets back on task. So, it's almost not foolproof, but almost foolproof. As long as you got full power to to bully your way around. Yeah, that looks good. Okay, I'm going to turn the off burner off now and continue. Now, I don't have that power. What's going to happen? It almost certainly will stall the wing, but we'll see. I realize I'm on right wing going again. That's going to be problematic.

[00:17:50]I'm having to go left rudder and full left stick to correct that. It might might be okay. It's probably going to be okay without after burner on. Oh, no.

[00:18:01][ __ ] I'm good.

[00:18:05]>> Yeah, I'm just doing circles at 200 knots.

[00:18:08]>> Yeah, I mean I I can sort of get in some weird oscillations. Don't know what I'm in now. Viewers, trying to get out of it. See what happens. Go with this and see what happens.

[00:18:20]Oh god. Just release the controls. Let it unload. There you go. It was me that was making that problem. Unloaded it.

[00:18:26]And that's God. Hang on. Still loaded.

[00:18:29]Unload. There we go. Done.

[00:18:32]>> Well, that's kind of promising, guys. It does indeed. Yes.

[00:18:36]>> Do try to do that full power band radius and then put a once you get to 250 knots, put some uh takeoff flap in.

[00:18:44]Watch >> out. Off burner on or off.

[00:18:47]No, it's on. Uh, is your G limiter off?

[00:18:52]Yes, G limiter is off. A little wayward.

[00:18:54]A little wayward. It's quite promising how controllable it can be at 200 knots, to be honest. I'm going to lose it now.

[00:19:01]That's going to be recoverable. Boom.

[00:19:05]Yeah, but that was sort of my own fault. But yeah, interesting, guys. I thought I assumed because it was an old plane it was going to be just unstable all the time and it's just going to go into spins and and stuff like that, but it seems pretty stable. Has anyone managed to get it into spin by accident thus far? I mean, if you haven't, then that's pretty proof of concept that it's a pretty stable plane. I >> think I might have got it into spin when I first started flying it, but uh I can't get it in there now. So, >> so I'm guessing that the center of lift is right along the center of the cord of that wing, which is right in the middle of the plane. So, I'm guessing that what is what makes it stable. But if you look at an FD, it's like 2/3 back. I'm going to start summarizing what we found so far. In terms of Saber Dance, we just came in for landings at various um speeds at various weights and stuff like that. And um yes, once you get slow and relatively controlled, i.e. not too much moving, so basically a realistic landing. Then it gets that point where it starts like this guy did, drifting left. Finally, we got spin. No, it's recovered. It drifts left and you correct and it goes right and you correct and it goes left and you sometimes you might recover and sometimes you might not. I didn't manage to recover mine. I think managed to grab his. Uh so it's there but it's it's you know it's it's avoidable as long as you're not flying absolutely crazy, right? Cuz you have to be right on the edge of stall. Uh then we did what did we do then? Then we did low energy stalls and it stalls obviously because it's an airplane and he drops a wing either left or right. Um, but it always seems to be recoverable as long as you're not absolutely crazy. Then you just let go of the stick. It goes nose forward. Probably because it's quite a balance like the guys were saying rather than say a modern jet and then it just pulls down and you recover.

[00:20:43]>> I lost that.

[00:20:45]>> Oh, hey, you certainly did. What was that? Uh, let me reset and get get another one. I was doing a So I was in a a hard left turn and then I used I used rudder and like like basically if I'm in a uh a scissor fight >> and I'm trying to get my nose to the other side as quick as possible. But generally speaking, I'm not going to see too many problems in the dog fight hopefully based on this unless we find some little area where it really does struggle.

[00:21:16]>> Yeah. I just did what Simba described and I watched it.

[00:21:19]>> Yeah.

[00:21:21]You can see his rudder there. You see what he's doing.

[00:21:27]He's going to work for it though. So, I'm not too worried.

[00:21:42]Yeah. So, it's almost like you get that that rocking momentum going and find it will go over. So, we might see that later on in the dog fights. Once it's gone, it's gone. Obviously, nothing, you know, it's not flying anymore.

[00:21:53]So, at least what it looked like is like you're kind of forcing it on that twisting motion just enough where, you know, it goes out of control. And that's a bit rudder and aon, I suppose, isn't it? And just putting it out of whack.

[00:22:04]So, yeah, you absolutely can get it out of control. So, we be a little bit careful, but generally speaking, it looks like it's be going to be moderately benign. Uh, which is probably for the best, to be honest, cuz we've also got to worry about our engines, guys. Um, that was that. Not too many exciting spins. I thought there was going to be more, but it's probably for the best. Any thoughts you guys?

[00:22:20]>> Oh, very stable. Like flying a Cessna almost, >> except I can get a spin.

[00:22:25]>> Cessnable of £80,000 or 80 horse 80,000 horsepower. Yeah. Uh, all right. Nice bit of fun, viewers. Nice to test the limits. Um, we'll see you soon. Hello, value viewers. I have to pay some bills.

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