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  Ashley Carlton

  7 years ago

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  Closed on Sunday for NASCAR

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  Matt Kyle

  7 years ago

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  Totally agree with Frank Farance but I approached this from the point of view "takeoff".
  You're trying to take off and approaching lift off speed.  The outer wing is high and is moving faster than the inner wing (outside of a turn).  It starts producing sufficient lift to let the wing fly.  The outer wing goes up causing the inner wing to drop. The inner wing,  which still was not producing sufficient lift for flying, is now  producing less lift than before so is even less likely to fly.
  With only one wing flying the aircraft cannot get off the ground before the inner wing touches the ground. 
  GAME OVER
  

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  Frank Farance

  7 years ago

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  Obviously, airport designer has never flown a plane. Let's debunk this thing with a touch-and-go or balked landings. With a 1-mile radius and typical touchdown speeds of 140 knots (about 161 mph) for commercial aircraft, essentially this circular runway is the pattern of a standard rate turn (assuming left turns for all my illustrations here). Flying 50 feet above the runway, but tracking its centerline, the plane is in about a 25-degree bank turn. Thus, there is enough horizontal lift component to cause the turn (as coordinated by the rudder). Now bring that flight down to ground level: assuming left turns on the runway, the pilot lands the plane with the left main touching first, which quickly slows the plane down. But the plane needs to continue to track the circular pattern and maintain the horizontal lift component and, because the plane is now going slower, the bank angle must be significantly increased to compensate deceleration: the pilot adds more bank angle and clips the left wing (assuming a low wing or a mid wing), and crashes the plane.
  
  I also point out that at touchdown, in order to track the circular pattern and because the main wheels are non-steering wheels, the turning can only come from the horizontal lift component of increased bank angle ... in other words, the right wing is flying (producing lift) but the left wing is not flying (because the left main wheels are supporting the plane) ... this condition is known as a Spin, it's very very very dangerous, and spins are never performed at low altitude (maybe 10,000 AGL). So this circular configuration is really deadly (and that's ignoring the side loading on the higher speeds of take-off and landing).
  
  Now let's pretend the pilot did not crash, but decides to abort the landing (e.g., seeing runway ice/water ahead). At that point, the airport designer is expecting the plane to be taking off in a spin condition (one wing flying, the other not, all to get enough horizontal lift to support the curved runway). First of all, no one purposely gets into spin configurations near the ground. And, second, the only maneuver we are trained on for getting out of a spin is Nose Down immediately (to get air over the wings so the plane is flying again), use the rudder to stop the spiral, and then to pull up from the dive. There are NO OTHER standard maneuvers in response to a spin condition for these categories of aircraft ... you don't just add more power and fly yourself out of it (as this airport designer would have pilots do) because spins are uncontrolled and unpredictable aircraft flying regime.
  
  And every aircraft would have to be re-certificated because "Spins At Ground Level" would need to be added to the Normal and Transport category of aircraft operations.
  
  This airport designer should take flying lessons and learn to do landings in light aircraft on runway conditions where the crosswinds are at the maximum crosswind component for his/her aircraft (the point where you're worried about crapping your pants and thinking Can I Make This?). And when that airport designer is doing crosswind landings precisely with (say) left main touching first, right main next, and nose wheel last ... well that will be the moment when he will know in his bones why circular runways make no sense. And the instructor is not going to a student pilot experiment with adding another 25 degrees of bank to see if he/she can make the plane follow the circular track ... the flight instructor won't allow it because he/she wants to go home alive that day.
  
  Oh, and did I mention bad weather and instrument landings? Assuming night time and fog, the airport designer is expecting the pilot to follow the track (which means looking down), while the other side of the plane is up in the air and hiding airport/obstacle/horizon visibility at night? With no visible horizontal reference for the pilot during takeoff and landing, at that point the pilot is in IMC (instrument meteorological conditions), but at ground level, not 3000 AGL ... and if you're in IMC, you need to be flying the plane via instruments, not visual references ... but all this is happening at ground level when you need to use visual references for take-off and landing.
  
  This circular runway is a horrible and very dangerous idea.
  

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  G G

  7 years ago

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  very interesting, so the future looks

  
   

  artificii

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  Shaun Fogarty

  7 years ago

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  What an embarrassment.
  

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  Charles Gordon

  7 years ago

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  Is it April 1 already? The list of problems is too long to even start.

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