aerobatic flight

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Route

We define the routing individually according to your wishes. You can see an idea at the bottom of the map. We follow the aerobatic code of the SAA (Swiss Aerobatic Association) to keep noise abatement above a certain location as low as possible.

Program

Example (times according to the above slots with a 45 min flight)
08.30 Arrival| Welcome Coffee at restaurant (individually)
09.00 Welcome at Birrfeld | greeting by the pilot
09.10 Briefing with the pilot on the biplane | Equipment emergency parachute
09.40 Briefing aerobatic program
10.30 Boarding the biplane | Warm up engine
11.00 Take off aerobatic flight
11.45 Landing at Birrfeld | Fotosession on Tarmac (with own cameras)
12.00 By by with pilot & biplane

When & Where

Booking Select a main date and time period as well as 1-2 alternate dates/times (weather/available slots) when requesting. You will receive an inquiry/booking confirmation.

On site We meet in front of the AIS Birrfeld (entrance to the flight school, at blue automatic sliding door)

Flugplatz Birrfeld | CH-5242 Lupfig

Weather

The flight takes place under favourable visual flight conditions (VFR). More information on the status bar at the top of this website. No instrument flight (IFR) is possible on this route.

Amount of participants

1 Person per flight. Groups are possible..

Price

CHF 1160 airfare 40 min in the biplane (7 min ground|33 min air)
CHF 250 rental fee emergency parachute, assembly and disassembly of control units
CHF 17 landing fee Birrfeld
CHF 1430 total price for 1 Person

The flight times given are indicative. The effective operating time is calculated at CHF 29 per minute according to the operating hours counter (HOBBS Time). For aerobatic flights a higher price per minute applies due to higher engine power (consumption/wear). Due to weight limits, the aircraft may only be occupied by one passenger. For aerobatic flights the control device is mounted in the aircraft before the flight and dismounted after the flight. The wearing of emergency parachutes is mandatory in aerobatic flights. Landing fees, passenger or customs fees according to the regulations of the airport. The flights are on a private basis, non-commercial and at cost price. Airfare is payable in advance. Final payment on site in cash or credit card. The credit card fee is not included in the total price.

Details

Looping

The figure belongs to the easier to fly aerobatic manoeuvres. The goal of the competition pilot is to fly the circle as round as possible. The looping begins in a fast horizontal flight. In order to fly the figure in a plane, it is necessary to check that there is no lateral position, e.g. by looking sideways to the wing tips in front of the horizon. By coordinated pulling of the elevator the vertical circle is executed. At the apex the elevator is released for a moment, otherwise the circle would resemble an egg in the upper part. The g-load remains positive during the whole flight manoeuvre, i.e. the pilot never hangs in the harnesses. Then the elevator is tightened again to intercept the biplane. The difficulty of the looping is to fly it really circular. In this case (as with all aerobatic figures) it depends on how it looks to a spectator on the ground. Since the aircraft flies slower in the upper part of the looping, the rate of turn must be lower there. Furthermore, the pilot must compensate for any wind by adjusting the rate of turn in the various phases of the figure accordingly and even by deliberately pushing it in crosswinds. Since the pilot has no direct clues what the figure looks like from the ground, it requires a lot of experience to be able to fly the loop really cleanly in all situations, as any uncleanliness would be immediately visible. The loop is therefore one of the easiest, but also one of the most difficult aerobatic figures.

Roll

A slow roll is an aerobatic figure from the Aresti catalogue, in which the aircraft is rolled once around its longitudinal axis while maintaining the direction of flight. The controlled roll is often also simply called a roll. Although it is part of the basic training in aerobatics, it is not a simple manoeuvre. It must be remembered that the wing has the angle of attack in relation to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft. In inverted flight, simply put, the longitudinal axis has to be pushed up by twice the angle of incidence so that the angle of attack, airflow, is opposite the wing chord so that the aircraft continues to fly in the desired direction. In lateral flight the fuselage must provide the lift and be adjusted accordingly.

To fly a controlled roll cleanly, it is not enough to simply put the aileron in the desired direction and wait until the aircraft has turned. Especially in less powered aircraft and gliders the nose must be lifted before taxiing and during taxiing the attitude and direction of flight must be constantly corrected with well controlled elevator and rudder deflections. The controlled roll can be flown not only on horizontal, but also on vertical and 45° lines.

Even many of the more complicated figures contain rolls. A well known example is the Cuban 8, where only a part of a roll can be flown, e.g. half a roll in inverted flight. If the roll is divided into several sections in which the rolling is briefly interrupted, this is called a time roll.

Also the term set-off roll is common among aerobatic pilots. A whole roll which is flown as four quarter rolls is then called a four time roll. The controlled roll is called this because in this figure the aircraft is controlled "normally" at all times with the current in the air, in contrast to the snap roll, in which an autorotation is triggered by a deliberate one-sided stall. The normal, simple roll is initiated by pulling up slightly (by about 30°) to increase the angle of attack, and the aileron is set in the desired direction. Now the glider will wobble into the supine position. By pulling up the aileron, the angle of attack is now more or less correct for straight flight. The airplane will continue to overshoot to the normal position and will take up approximately the normal angle of attack.

Hammerhead

The aircraft is brought from a horizontal to a vertical flight attitude upwards at high speed. Gravity reduces the speed; at a speed dependent on the aircraft, a 180° rotation around the vertical axis is initiated by means of the rudder. The aircraft rotates about its vertical axis (which at this moment is parallel to the ground) almost at a standstill. After the rotation it flies vertically downwards and recovers speed. In powered flight, the turn is one of the simpler aerobatic figures to fly. The Turn is one of the figures required for the aerobatic rating test. During the vertical phase of the manoeuvre there is no aircraft weight to prevent the wings from lifting, so even if the speed decreases, the airflow does not break off at any time: At zero g (G-force) lift, the stall speed is zero.

Spin

An airplane starts to spin when the airflow on one side of a wing breaks off at a large angle of attack. As a result, the lift on this wing collapses while at the same time the drag increases sharply, causing this surface to tilt downwards and the aircraft begins to spin downwards like a corkscrew. The flow at the inner wing remains torn off, while at the outer wing, depending on the type of aircraft, it can at least partly continue to touch the wing or even break off completely. In any case, the angle of attack of the two wings and thus their air resistance is different, so that the outer wing flies in a circular path around the inner wing.

Even if the sink rate in a spin is high, the actual airspeed as well as the g-load remains low due to the high air resistance. The stall does not depend on the speed, but on the angle of attack. Only the condition of constant lift provides a correlation between speed and angle of attack, therefore in relation to normal flight it is normally referred to as (1g-)stall speed.

In aerobatics, the spin is initiated intentionally by increasing the angle of attack at low airspeeds by pulling the elevator further and further, and initiating a rotation around the vertical axis by deflecting the rudder, which causes the flow to stall on one side.

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