• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.70-75
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• 2009

According to the aviation statistics, tail strike incidents and accidents are cyclic. Although many tail strikes occurred during takeoff, these are less than during landing cases. Many cases are related on human factors. In my opinion it is possible to analyze the causes of takeoff tail strikes to some extent. There are major casual factors of tail strike during takeoff such as; (1) Mis-trimmed horizontal stabilizer (2) premature rotation prior to $V_R$ (3) Excessive pitch up rate during rotation (4) Improper use of the flight director. Among these causes improper use of flight director is excluded in this paper because it is recommended that pilot should use flight director after airborne. So I analyzed the other three causes as following. Firstly, because mis-trimmed stabilizer is related to center of gravity(CG), the relationship between stabilizer and CG is reviewed. Secondly, concerned premature rotation prior to $V_R$ I reviewed the background of rotation speed($V_R$) establishment and analyzed theoretically what speed leads to tail strikes. Thirdly, concerning excessive pitch up rate during rotation I analyzed what excessive pitch up rate can decrease ground clearance while using FDR data.