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I just took the Commercial Airplane written, and one of the most
annoying parts was the performance stuff. That is, given temperature,
pressure altitude, weight, and headwind, calculate takeoff or landing
distance. In every airplane handbook I've seen, this involves tracing
tiny lines across three different graphs. In the DA40 handbook they
even use a very coarse linear interpolation so the lines are very
unsatisfying.There ought to exist standard analytic formulas for all this, since I
don't think each manufacturer has measured each separate point on each
curve. For example, the first graph in the sequence is always density
altitude which is quite standard. But what is a good source for those
formulas?I have most of the standard flying books including the famous
Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators, but they don't give much detail. I've
looked at a bunch of Aeronautical Engineering textbooks, but they seem
to be designed for undergraduate majors and it would take a long time
to get from basic principles to simple formulas which is all I want.
So can anyone suggest a good source to explain how the manufacturers
generate these graphs?Many thanks in advance.
-- Robert Almgren, June 20, 2009