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Calculating airspeed with pitot tube only!

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Aircraft Systems

Hello everyone!

Whoever wants to dig in to this - I have found little explanation elsewhere.

Is it possible to calculate air velocity using only a pitot pressure aka total air pressure aka stagnation pressure? Which means having no static pressure / static port. Which means no substacting static pressure from the total pressure to get dynamic pressure.

I know the book answer is: as we go higher - the static pressure drops, so to get an accurate reading you need to have it measured. However, one can argue that in the current case of total pressure minus static pressure you STILL get an innacure IAS reading at higher altitudes (IAS < TAS) which then bring me to ask: why cant we just go with the total pressure and calculate our IAS from that.

 

Thanks in advance!

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1 Answers



  1. Mark Kolber on Jun 09, 2021

    How do you know what the total pressure is without something to measure it?

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