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Experts on flutter are far and few between. In over 30 years in the aerospace industry I have only had one flutter specialist working for me (not that I understood a lot of what he did). What I DO know about flutter is I have seen it tear major components off an airframe is as little as two cycles! It looks like a simple overload failure until you look at the high speed films and see that there actually WAS flutter. The more commonly seen flutter (because the guys that experienced it actually had a chance to survive) is lower amplitude and doesn't diverge as fast. This is the "buzz" you feel in a surface or strut. You DON'T want to feel it more than once! If you EVER feel anything that feels like flutter the best thing to do (if you have time) is slow down and get on the ground. There are a lot of dead pilots from the study of flutter.
If anyone on this group is a flutter expert I would love to talk to them. There is a real need for some instructions to help the homebuilder understand and avoid flutter. I had planned to address flutter in the series of short articles on test flying I want to do, but all I can personally do is write about the standard design techniques used to avoid it. I am not up on the latest math and theory on flutter.
Hank
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