| The Joy of Flying |
| 3. THE HAMMERHEAD |

One of the most satisfying maneouvres, the Hammerhead needs tons of practice and involves climbing at exactly 90 degrees, then yawing to the left or right and turning the aircraft as though the inner wing was the pivot point. The knack is to change from 90 degrees up to 90 degrees down within a wing’s length. It is the most elegant maneouvre and deeply rewarding when you know it’s right. The key (in Fly II) is to GRADUALLY introduce the rudder at the top of the climb, and WELL before the speed decays. Start with similar airspeed to the loop, then climb exactly perpendicular to the ground, keeping dead straight all the way up. |
Just before airspeed decays less than 60 knots, and with plenty of power on to assist airflow over the rudder, we apply GRADUAL (in this case) right rudder. You may need a little opposite aileron to counteract roll, even at this slow speed. If the aircraft is not exactly pointing straight up, you will probably either collapse the move into a sort of back flip, or the nose will drop forwards. The key is to know when to apply that rudder. In this example, luckily I was pretty straight all the way up and I was rewarded with a nice pivoting “hammerhead” turn to the right. You need plenty of power to keep sufficient airflow over the rudder. Once the turn has established and the maneouvre assured, reduce power. |
Once we reach this point there is little we can do except wait, for there is no dynamic flow sufficient for us to intervene until the nose has dropped down. It’s pretty satisfying to know that the preparation up to this point was good. By the way I recommend practicing these tricks in spot view as well as from the cockpit. (the best one is the THIRD spot view which fixes the view point and gives the best idea of aircraft movement). You can also use the instant replay in Fly II to see where you went wrong. The advantage is that you can replay several times over all with different views from inside and outside the cockpit. |
The recovery - not perfect in this case as the nose has wandered up a little from 90 degrees, but then as you see I’m doing this a little too near the ground for comfort. As the Citabria flips itself from parallel to perpendicular you will notice a tendency to oscillate in yaw whilst the nose and tail adjust to the airflow - you can damp this out with rudder opposite to the direction of yaw. As with the loop, ease out of the dive with idle thrust then establish cruise thrust and level attitude. By the way,the Hammerhead is often erroneously called the “stall turn”. In fact throughout this maneouvre the aircraft never stalls because the wing angle of attack is never high enough. |

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