The cause of the accident? The 36-year-old French winged flight master died in the desert. How dangerous is the jet flying wing?

On June165438+1October 17, 2020, the Dubai Jet Winged Flying Team issued a statement saying that Vincent lafitte, a famous French winged flying master belonging to the team, accidentally missed while training in the desert and died unfortunately!

Vincent lafitte: From basic skydiving to jet flying wing master

Vincent was a free parachutist in his early years, but base parachuting could not satisfy Vincent's appetite for adventure and excitement. After the rise of winged flight, Vincent joined the ranks of winged flight. Vincent's famous saying is: "I believe that if you dream big, if you love what you do, everything is possible."

Later, Vincent joined the private flying organization "Dubai Jet Flyer", which once organized a famous flight with A380***. I believe that 99% of my friends only know that there are "super toys" like jet wings flying through the pictures of Fly with Me.

The speed of jet flying wing is very high, which can reach 400 km/h and the ceiling can reach 6 100 m. This activity gives pilots considerable autonomous control and can fly almost at will, but there are also great risks, so this activity also belongs to one of the most dangerous sports in the world!

How dangerous is jet flying wing movement?

Many friends may not know about winged flight and jet flying wing, but simply understand that winged flight is a soft flight suit with wings attached between hands and feet, which belongs to unpowered gliding flight. On May 12, 2020, An An, a female winged flight student who was filming a short film of extreme sports in Tianmen Mountain Scenic Area, lost her connection during the flight and was found dead a few days later. She is flying with wings!

Wing-mounted soft wing membrane

Jet flying wing is also a kind of personal free flying device, but it has power and adopts semi-hard shell structure design. The image shows that this is an airplane. If the fuselage is removed, only the wing and the engine hanging under the wing are left. The human body is the fuselage of the plane, and it is tied to the back of the human body with a belt, not a hard connection, but a soft connection!

Jet powered carbon fiber wing (jet flying wing backpack)

This translation is a bit troublesome, because direct search of jet Flying Wings can't find relevant information, so it can be published in English. Interested parties can check this information!

Rossi's jet wing

Jet flying wing backpack was first invented by yves rossy in 2006. Its structure is not complicated. It mainly consists of a wing with carbon fiber structure and four model jet engines. It has a wingspan of about 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) and is powered by four Jetcat P400 jet engines.

Centrifugal compressor with left air inlet and right tail nozzle.

Generally, jet engines like this are mostly centrifugal (Jetcat P400 is centrifugal compression), and the fuel consumption is extremely high. Basically, the 5-liter fuel tank has to deal with one of the engines, and the speed of fuel consumption decline is intuitive!

Its wings are two delta wings and two winglets. This is the longitudinal stability, which is equivalent to the vertical tail. The total lifting area is less than 1.5 square. Its strength comes from the angle of attack of the wings formed by the natural downward inclination of human legs. When the high-speed airflow in front hits, it will form an upward component, which is the lift generated by the wing!

Because the wing area is small, it can only generate enough lift at a very high speed, so the speed is very high. As mentioned above, its top speed can reach 400 kilometers per hour, which is equivalent to 1 10 meter per second!

vertical take-off

From the live demonstration, the thrust-to-weight ratio of the four jet engines is very high, and they can take off directly. If there is enough fuel, they should be able to land vertically, but usually, they will be equipped with parachutes. At the end of the flight, when the fuel runs out, they will glide to a low altitude and open their parachutes to land!

How dangerous is the jet flying wing backpack?

Small wing area, high speed and inherent uncertainty. The other is that the flying wing has no control surface and only provides lift according to Bernoulli principle and angle of attack. Its angle of attack is not fixed, and it operates a bit like a paraglider, which controls the flight direction or climbs or dives according to the human body state.

The surface of jet flying wing has no control surface.

Therefore, in the flight process, you may encounter longitudinal unstable rolling, and it is easy to stall or couple oscillation when the angle of attack is too high, that is, pitch oscillation occurs repeatedly, or the engine stops, because there are four engines, and one of them is prone to uneven thrust after stopping (the flight control must be turned off to ensure the balance of the engines at the same position), but it may be very dangerous to appear at low altitude.

The fuel consumption of the other four jet engines is very high, but the fuel tank and other structures are not visible outside. It is generally speculated that the fuel tank will be inside the flying wing. After fuel consumption, the balance of flying wings is also a problem. Of course, fuel leakage is more dangerous. Because the tail nozzle is a high-temperature airflow and the engine principle is human, the left-right power balance ratio is also required to be faster after parking.

In addition, in general, flying wing skydiving is not dangerous. However, when the wind speed is too high, the flying wing is easily entangled with the umbrella rope and falls uncontrollably, which is extremely dangerous. It seems unrealistic to give up flying wing skydiving, because flying wings are expensive and pilots basically don't do it. In addition, it is not known whether there is a design to abandon the flying wing in an emergency.

The statement issued by Dubai Jet Wings Flight Team did not mention the cause of the accident, only that it was an accident during flight training in the desert and was unfortunately killed! We all express our condolences anyway. Have a nice trip, Vincent lafitte, French winged flight master!