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Slowest Ground Speed Record In An RV

Geico266

Geico266

Well Known Member
To build off the "Fastest Ground Speed Thread" I was playing around in the -12 in high winds aloft and was able to get it to fly "back-wards". I was hoping the GPS would show a negative number, but it doesn't know what you are doing and thinks you did a 180 turn.

I don't have pictures to prove it, so the first guy to post "proof" is the winner. A ground speed of nearest to zero (in any RV) is gonna be the deciding factor, with an attitude of standard rate of climb only. No aerobatics, lets be safe about it.

NO HELOS! ;)


Lets be careful out there.​
 
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The proof

Getting a real minus groundspeed is fairly simple, given the wind. The tough part is going to be proving it happened. As Larry said, the GPS just thinks you turned around. Hmmm...

John Clark ATP, CFI
FAA FAAST Team Member
EAA Flight Advisor
RV8 N18U "Sunshine"
KSBA
 
In my "ultra light" days we would fly in 30 MPH+ winds and see who had the shortest roll out. That was fun! Not very smart, but fun!

If I remember right 10-12' was the shortest........... and still being able to take off again. ;)
 
This should be doable....just make sure the pic shows a compass heading and a track..... If they are 180 apart, you are going backward. And no cheating by setting your DG to 180 out....

CDE
 
No pics, and it should be easy to beat anyway, but I saw 27 mph GS once in my 9A. I was indicating about 60IAS. I did fly backward over our county fair once--in a Phantom ultralight. Shortest TO roll was the wheelbase--about 5'--jumping out of an ice pothole at full throttle. Cool in more ways than one. . . Won't try that in the 9A, however.

Bob Kelly
 
Not the slowest but...

... funny just the same. I can fly my 9 pretty slow and had an interesting tower call yesterday while flying Young Eagles at FTG. We had a record-breaking day with 16 planes and 51 kids in all competing for the same airspace. On my second flight, while on final, I had been cleared to land and then had my clearance cancelled. This was to allow someone else to take off. Then I was recleared to land. So I just slowed down to give him some room (still about two miles out). That's when I hear the tower call to the cessna that was following me, "Skyhawk behind the RV, S turns approved to slow down". :rolleyes: Top that one.
 
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It wasn't me but my father told me he flew his Anson bomber trainer 25 MPH backwards during the War. Now they did not have GPS then but it was my Father so it has to be true, Right?

Bob Parry
 
Once I was on final and my ground speed was 17 and I was freaking. I kept looking at my airspeed which was fine but the outside look/feel for forward speed was not there, I felt like a helicopter type landing. My take off was the shortest ever.
 
At an airshow once when I was a kid I saw an ultralight pilot depart for home. On climb out he looked ok....as he cleared the tree tops and climbed higher his GS seemed to slow. He climbed until he started going backward directly over the runway at about 1000ft agl. He backed up the entire distance of the runway, pitched the nose down and descended back to the runway.
 
I went to a fly-in in the DFW area in 2006 and put the CT on static display because it was one of the first new LSA out there. We had a good time and had a visit from a pair of L-39s, neat stuff for a fairly new pilot.

As people departed, most would ask the tower for a low approach and make a high-speed pass over the active. RVs, Cirri, Long-EZs, the usual suspects, making near Vne passes. Since we were in the CT and had lots of people looking, we decided to show everyone what the airplane could do.

Asked for the low approach, about 130 kt about a mile out, leveled off and pulled the power back, bleeding off speed, feeding in flaps. At the touchdown zone, we were at about 40kt indicated (two lightweights and half fuel, about 150lb under MGTW), full flaps, about 3000 rpm and the GS showed just over 20kt. After over a minute of overflying the runway and not having covered the entire distance, the tower called, and over the laughter in the background we heard "1CT, can you pedal any faster?" :)

I have seen single digit GS in flight while practicing stalls and flight at MCA with strong winds aloft before, but at about 4000' AGL, I had no idea whether I was going forward or backward. :D

TODR
 
My first boss in the Air Force, Captain Sparks was a sergeant pilot during WWII flying Piper Cubs on Ascension Island, which is a little more than halfway from Brazil to Africa and a little south of the equator. He talked about taking off, flying & backwards over the runway.

I have no idea what they were doing flying Cubs from a 34 sq. mile island 994 miles from a mainland. Perhaps watching for subs. One sub did attack the island in '41, intending to sink ships in the harbor and shelling the cable station, but it was driven off by the 2 pieces of artillery.
 
I read an article YEARS ago about a lady up in the Northeast near the coast who chose to fly a Cub ahead of a frontal system coming through. The gust front started blowing her towards the ocean despite full throttle trying to go inland back towards the field. She ended up landing backwards on or near the beach because it was either that or get blown out to sea. I wish I could find that article but I read it probably 12-15 years ago.
 
Three yrs. ago at the races at KC. the winds were stout and the bannertows were stationary in the same spot for 45 min. The guys from MRN. who are at every race said they had'nt seen that before
 
My Favorite Cessna 140 Memory

Back when my family owned a 140, I'd fly it up to the local grass strip and do touch and goes with the Cubs and Champ. One day I got up there, and it was pretty windy and pretty busy, so I flew to 3000', throttled back and did slow flight right into the winds aloft. I sat in my perch for about 10 minutes, nearly frozen in place, just watching them beat up the pattern. Good times.
 
Don't know if I was flying backward but I watched a guy mow his whole front yard while overhead in my Airbike Ultralight.:D
 
robpar said:
It wasn't me but my father told me he flew his Anson bomber trainer 25 MPH backwards during the War. Now they did not have GPS then but it was my Father so it has to be true, Right?

Bob Parry
Click to expand...


There's a TV documentary I've seen that tells the story of B-29s during WWII unwittingly flying backwards over the Pacific during raids on Japan. They were in the process of discovering the jetstream - something the Japanese already knew about and used successfully a few times to deliver small bombs all the way across the Pacific to the US on balloons, resulting in one fatality in Oregon (I think).
 
Backwards in the Doll

Jamie said:
At an airshow once when I was a kid I saw an ultralight pilot depart for home. On climb out he looked ok....as he cleared the tree tops and climbed higher his GS seemed to slow. He climbed until he started going backward directly over the runway at about 1000ft agl. He backed up the entire distance of the runway, pitched the nose down and descended back to the runway.
Click to expand...

I did that in a J-3 Cub over 52F a few years back.


I can't prove it, but I flew the Doll at -21 mph several winters ago near Denton Texas. I slowed to Zero on the Garmin, and then slowed to -21 mph with intermittent stall buffet. Then I accelerated back to zero. This happened at 3000 AGL with surface winds of around 20 knots. That was one strong low level jet stream.
 
Today I beat my own record of 12 kts. I flew 11 kts for one minute or so. Could have done less but Skykingbob was already worried. :)


 
Captain John just reported from Phase One he has the slowest PROVEN record - 2 kts GS. :D





All you guys flying backwards prove it or it never happened.
 
It depends...

Vlad said:
Captain John just reported from Phase One he has the slowest PROVEN record - 2 kts GS. :D


All you guys flying backwards prove it or it never happened.
Click to expand...

Vlad,
When you think of defeating an adversary in aerial combat, you never think 2 dimensional. Exploiting the pure vertical decreases your forward speed relative to your adversary, pure vertical being the most effective. Therefore, any flight in the pure vertical relative to the earth is ZERO airspeed over the ground, hurricane force winds notwithstanding....

Pure vertical with zero airspeed at zero wind would be the slowest speed attainable, unless of course you are parked in the chocks...:)
V/R
Smokey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgrVhdZde5U
 
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smokyray said:
Vlad,
When you think of defeating an adversary in aerial combat, you never think 2 dimensional. Therefore, any flight in the pure vertical relative to the earth is ZERO airspeed over the ground.

Pure vertical with zero airspeed at zero wind would be the slowest speed attainable, unless of course you are parked in the chocks...:)
V/R
Smokey
http://youtu.be/LgrVhdZde5U
Click to expand...


That's a nice clip Smokey! You surely can fly this toy with permanent grin.
Here we are talking pure sustained horizontal sorta defeating 200 kts Club. Bombers thing you know... :)
 
Flight training in the Cessna 150, fighting a nasty headwind to get back to the field, tower called "57U.....are....you guys OK?"

Apparently our groundspeed was unimpressive.
 
Vlad said:
Captain John just reported from Phase One he has the slowest PROVEN record - 2 kts GS. :D





All you guys flying backwards prove it or it never happened.
Click to expand...

I just noticed that my headwind component matches my TRUE airspeed.

I suppose technically I got zero???

lol funny stuff!

:D CJ
 
A few years ago, a friend took off from KAVL Asheville to go to KTYS Knoxville (75nm) in a 172. After takeoff and noticing that Pisgah mountain was on his left wingtip for a really long time, he calculated his fuel and realized he would not make it to Knoxville. !!!! :eek:

Obviously his groundspeed was astounding when he turned around to come the few miles back home
 
How slow can u go?

rzbill said:
A few years ago, a friend took off from KAVL Asheville to go to KTYS Knoxville (75nm) in a 172. After takeoff and noticing that Pisgah mountain was on his left wingtip for a really long time, he calculated his fuel and realized he would not make it to Knoxville. !!!! :eek:

Obviously his groundspeed was astounding when he turned around to come the few miles back home
Click to expand...

During my banner towing days we routinely flew our tow planes at 50-55 mph tow speed. A twin pilot once saw me refueling between banners and commented that "you sure fly slow". I told him that I recently saw a lady hang her clothes on the line and after flying a while I looked down and she was taking them in! He laughed and said "maybe one day you'll fly a fast airplane like mine"...

"Maybe...:)"

V/R
Smokey
 
Danny King said:
I did that in a J-3 Cub over 52F a few years back.


I can't prove it, but I flew the Doll at -21 mph several winters ago near Denton Texas. I slowed to Zero on the Garmin, and then slowed to -21 mph with intermittent stall buffet. Then I accelerated back to zero. This happened at 3000 AGL with surface winds of around 20 knots. That was one strong low level jet stream.
Click to expand...

Any GPS I have used won't show negative ground speed numbers, it thinks you did a 180, but we get the idea. ;)
 
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