Guys all those interested in flight modelling need to read this... it's blowing away a lot of my misconceptions and I'm only on chapter 8 !!
it's written for pilots, so if you're interested in sim flying it's a must read on it's own.. but what it's not written for is aerodynamic engineers and as such it's absolutely fantastic in that there are no massive equations to get your head around.
Simon
this is mind blowingly obvious yet jsbsim believes wrongly that p-factor is to blame....
Initial Takeoff Roll
There are quite a lot of myths surrounding P-factor. For some reason, P-factor gets blamed for the fact that typical aircraft require right rudder on initial takeoff roll. This is impossible for several reasons.
• Nearly everybody these days learns to fly in nose-wheel type aircraft, which means the propeller disk is vertical during the initial the takeoff roll. Since there is no angle between the relative wind and the propeller axis, P-factor obviously cannot occur.
•Now let’s suppose, just for sake of argument, that you are flying a taildragger, in which the propeller disk is actually non-vertical during the initial takeoff roll. Common experience is that the most right rudder is required at the very beginning of the takeoff, before much forward speed has been achieved. The FAA Airplane Flying Handbook (reference 16) says this is because P-factor is worst at low airspeeds. This is clearly nonsense, because real P-factor is proportional to airspeed. In the initial moments of the takeoff roll, there is no relative wind, so there can’t possibly be any P-factor. Of course, if you are taking off into a headwind, there could be a little bit of P-factor — but does that mean if you take off with a slight tailwind there will be a negative amount of P-factor, requiring left rudder? Don’t bet on it.
The real reason that you need right rudder on initial takeoff roll is because of the helical propwash, as discussed in section 8.4. P-factor exists in some circumstances, but it cannot possibly explain the behavior we observe during initial takeoff roll.