Linked Questions
12 questions linked to/from Is excess lift or excess power needed for a climb?
56
votes
12
answers
22k
views
Why do airplanes lift up their nose to climb?
Is it right that basically an airplane just needs to accelerate to climb?
Greater velocity of an airplane leads to greater lift - and since its weight remains constant (or even decreases) - a greater ...
- 983
25
votes
9
answers
28k
views
Does lift equal weight in a climb?
This subject keeps coming up in the discussions and questions such as this one, which asks if lift equals weight in level flight. Good answers there, pointing out that upwards force has many sources. ...
- 62.9k
14
votes
6
answers
12k
views
How does an aircraft descend without its nose pointing down?
I have seen many cockpit videos of airplanes landing, and nearly none of them have their nose down for losing altitude. How does this happen? and how does an airplane, such as A320, descend without ...
- 854
6
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Why are trailing edge flaps used for landing? [duplicate]
Why are flaps used when landing? Doesn’t a flap increase lift?
Edited: why are there so many different flaps on the back of a wing? Isn’t one just used when taking off and landing? Are the others ...
- 153
8
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Does an accelerating airplane also start climbing?
Assume that an airplane is flying level. If I understood correctly in this situations there are four forces acting on it: weight, thrust, drag and lift.
Lift depends on air density, airspeed, wing ...
- 81
5
votes
5
answers
4k
views
Are we changing the angle of attack by changing the pitch of an aircraft?
For example:
if I pitch the airplane up, but also increase power and am able to maintain the same speed, then no, the AoA hasn’t changed, although it may have varied in the transition between one ...
- 709
1
vote
4
answers
2k
views
Are there any situations where having high lift but low lift to drag ratio would be beneficial?
From my understanding, high lift to drag ratio could make an aircraft efficient during cruising conditions. This is when the aircraft is in equilibrium, lift is equal to weight, and thrust is equal to ...
- 680
3
votes
6
answers
2k
views
What produces thrust along the line of flight in a glider?
After reviewing discussions and vector diagrams of gliders in flight, the vertical lift component and the vertical drag components seem to produce a steady state, 0 acceleration balance with gravity. ...
- 21.3k
7
votes
2
answers
934
views
'Gravitational' power vs. engine power
A glider gets the power it needs to fly from the decrease of gravitational potential energy associated to the descent. My question is: for the same weight $W$, airspeed $V$, and a prop efficiency of ...
- 11.2k
1
vote
3
answers
544
views
Is "excess thrust" possible in a steady state vector diagram?
Being recently very much sold on the lift-weight-thrust closed triangle (with weight forming the hypotenuse) model for climbing flight, I proceeded to put the logic through its paces (validation) and ...
- 21.3k
1
vote
2
answers
648
views
What is the purpose of downthrust?
Many light general aviation aircraft-- and perhaps many other aircraft as well-- are designed with some of amount of downthrust in the engine mounting, relative to the centerline of the fuselage. ...
- 23k
4
votes
4
answers
2k
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Descending on a given glide slope (e.g. ILS) at a given airspeed-- is the size of the lift vector different in headwind versus tailwind?
We had a discussion with friend and we were talking about if the airplane is on approach and the one is landing with tailwind and the other one is landing with headwind, so both have the same value of ...
- 41