Hamid: That statement came from at least two people at Lancair when I
was questioning whether the issue was not so much takeoff GW, but
landing GW. I don’t know the configurations they were talking about, but
I suspect they do all sorts of things to their own airplanes while
testing. Anyway, that’s where the comments came from.

Scott/Gary/Mike: You are still talking circles around me (not hard to
do!). Gary states that there are two types of effects of wing loading
which have nothing to do with each other. Structural and aerodynamic
effects. But then he says, "How strong the wing is has no effect on the
flying qualities and vice versa." My intellectual death spiral got
tighter. Isn't wing loading a measure of strength? Mike says wing
loading relates to stall speed and turbulence. Getting closer. Scott
says it’s Vno and Va related. Hmmmm. Scott also talked about "ride".
Isn't this more a function of how the wing is built than its structural
strength? Why do I keep hearing knowledgeable pilots talking about how a
plane flies in the same breath as "wing loading"? "Man, that sucker was
HIGHLY wing loaded!" Sounds more like something a design engineer might
brag, rather than what you would hear from a pilot. As I said, I flunked Engineering. If I make a wing out of solid steel,
it is going to have “wing loading” of probably a million pounds. If I
throw 5 million horsepower at it so it will actually fly (?), how does
the fact that I have the highest wing loading in the history of flight
have anything to do with flight characteristics. That plane is going to
be a "lead sled" because it IS a lead sled! Someone questioned what I
mean by “flight characteristics”. There are many, but if I could just
understand the relationship of wing loading to stall speeds, I'd be
happy. We had a model airplane once. It crashed and we fixed it. In
doing so, we made the wings stronger. Did we change the stall speed?

I'm not trying to prolong an academic discussion. My only objective is
to understand IF and HOW the static "wing loading" test limit of the IV
wing (12,000 lbs.) relates to critical flying characteristics when
increasing actual GW. Does the fact that it's "highly loaded" make it
more or less flyable at advancing GW's? I'm just not making the leap
from a structural calculation to flying aerodynamics; from strength to
shape, if you will. Sorry.

Thanks for all the feedback. I hope I'm not totally alone in my
confusion.

Brian Barbata

BTW, is the relevant load 12K or 24K? Kind of important!