A little thread-hijack here: still considering wingloading, what would you consider to be a "safe" and somewhat comfortable speed for switching from about 38° AOA flight during reentry to normal, wingborne flight?
Transitioning from "stalled" flight at high AoA re-entry to lift producing AoA (0-20 or so) creates a hefty shock on the wing structure.
At the angles I usually re-enter I sometimes need to do this transition at hypersonic velocities, so as to try and maintain as much forward velocity as possible.
What I notice is that if I re-enter the craft and roll it sideways I can use rotational RCS and/or rudder control to kick the nose down a bit. Once I get the required nose down angle I can roll the craft level without causing wing shock as normal airflow resumes over the wing. With some practise this "unloading" maneuver becomes part of initiating the first S-turn.
My most audacious flights have involved powered re-entries with 110-180 degrees AoA, hover thrust all the way, and also once in an XR2 re-entering at 120 degrees AoA sideways (which means one wing facing forward).
I simply got the speed down to Mach 10 or so, rolled straight once I got the right angle and no alarms rang as atmospheric lift came on.
Suffice to say we can't do any of these in RL or in present day air/spacecraft as Orbiter does not model G load on the pilot
---------- Post added 02-10-11 at 04:22 ---------- Previous post was 02-09-11 at 17:07 ----------
I just did a test flight in OMP and what I concluded was within jet speed (mach 0.5-0.9) the XR1 is more agile than the XR2 especially in post-stall and high alpha maneuvers, due to its short length and light weight.
Just get used to the different airfoils, XR1 is really forgiving even when flying at 0-100m/s but the XR2 excels at higher speeds due to its higher wing sweep.