Here’s an explicit example. I’ve actually done the following experiment:
- I took a Cessna 172 Skyhawk and put a couple of large pilots in the front seats, with no luggage and no other passengers. That meant the center of mass was right at the front of the envelope, so the tail had to produce considerable negative lift in order to maintain equilibrium. There was lots and lots of angle of attack stability.
- I took the same Skyhawk and put a small pilot in the front seat, a moderately large mad scientist in the back seat, and 120 pounds of luggage in the rear cargo area. That put the center of mass right at the rear of the envelope, so the tail had to produce considerable positive lift in order to maintain equilibrium. The airplane still had plenty of stability. (As far as the pilot could tell, it was just as stable as it ever was.)
The easiest way to determine whether the tail lift is positive or negative is to observe the direction of motion of the tip vortices, as discussed in
section 3.14. To observe the vortices, I attached a streamer of yarn, about half a yard long, to each tip of the horizontal tail, at the trailing edge. The streamer gets caught in the vortex, so its unattached end flops around in a circle. When the tail is producing positive lift, the circular motion is in the direction shown by the green “circulation” arrows in
figure 3.29, i.e. downward on the inboard side. When the tail is producing negative lift, the direction of motion is the other way, i.e. upward on the inboard side.
