New answers tagged aviation-history
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German fighters used the BSK 16 (Ballistische Schussmess Kamera [Ballistic Shot Measurement Camera] 16mm) which was mounted in the wing root in case of single-engine aircraft. Twins would carry the camera usually in the fuselage nose. It contained black&white film material for a maximum of 200 seconds of filming.
Activation was either together with the ...
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It was a small 16mm film camera usually mounted, in single engine fighters, in the inboard area of the wing, within the leading edge behind a little window (the P-38's is also about the same location between the center pod and left engine) or in the nose in twins.
Look carefully at a lot of gun camera film on something like a P-51 when the sun is lighting ...
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The Wright brothers were not aware a glider or plane could be steered to the left or to right by rolling it to the left or to the right
The two inventors did not discover the method of turning a plane by banking it to one side or the other.
In their patents, what they had in mind was the classical steering with the vertical tail rudder (not invented by ...
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"1) Various sites like this one: Orville and Wilbur Wright, The Inventors of the 3-axis Flight Control System, 9
Months before their powered flight at Kitty Hawk say that the two brothers invented the three-axis control system.
Is it true?"
Matthew Piers Boulton proposed the combined use of ailerons, a pitch control surface, and a rudder well ...
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Yes, it is generally more efficient to enter a turn by using ailerons and rudder together than by using rudder alone, even if the poor performance of the aircraft requires the bank angle to be kept rather shallow in order to maintain altitude.
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Yes ailerons would help turn more efficiently, although likely not enough to help with an airplane with such marginal power it can't get out of ground effect.
To the extent that it does bank, an airplane loses altitude because of the bank, and it doesn't matter how the bank was induced. When it banks the lift vector tilted means the vertical vector is ...
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I would first check to see if the car in the background was actually pulling him along in 1908, or maybe the aircraft engine was a bit better.
Banking does indeed reduce lift, but not as much as we may think:
If vertical lift at 0 degrees bank was 1000 lbs, a 20 degree bank at the same AOA and speed still produces: $$cosine 20 degrees × 1000 = 940 lbs$$ of ...
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if he lost altitude on turn is probably because the rudder would slow down the plane before sliding it into a turn. I believe he flew very close to stall speed.
if he used ailerons as we know them, then given the already prestall speed, I believe the first effect would be to slow the plane down, followed by a bank angle. I guess a bank stall would have been ...
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"Naked Pilot" by David Beaty suggests that this technique was introduced by engineers following Foote's accident.
Behind the scenes, BOAC and de Havilland were worried too. The manufacturers had been doing further tests and a new take-off technique was introduced. The nose-wheel had to be lifted off the ground at 80 knots, but afterwards it had to be ...
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No, the Wright brothers did not invent the three-axis control, at least in their Patent No. 6732, A.D. 1904 (They might have other patents which cover: roll, pith, and yaw control together. I do not speak for them if they exist.)
In No. 6732 the two brothers do not have a clear explanation about steering the glider in the horizontal plane. The Wrights do ...
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The 1952 takeoff accident you read about was piloted by Captain Harry Foote. The technique got its name after the accident, which Captain Foote was blamed for (Comet! The World's First Jet Airliner, page 125).
Pushing the nose down is not standard though, rather a corrective measure to over-rotation past 6°. The article quoted below covers the proper ...
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At the time of the Comet disasters, Vr did not exist. The standard takeoff technique was what was used on all previous airplanes - line up, release the brakes, apply full power (derated thrust did not yet exist), accelerate, apply some back pressure to take the weight off the nose wheel, start feeling the airplane off the ground.
The problem was that the ...
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No, it would not have helped by itself.
What could prevent a stall or recover the aircraft from an incipient stall would be a counteracting movement of that canard surface, but that would need to be commanded by the pilot. It makes little difference if that control surface is ahead or behind the wing as long as it has enough lift potential left to produce ...
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NO, the Wright British Patent No. 6732 appears to deal with post stall control of the aircraft.
Though 1904 A.D. is a long time ago, a modern wings center of lift still shifts backwards to the center of the wing after it stalls. Even their curiously proto laminar/Davis design thin undercambered wings had a center of lift further forward at lower AOA "...
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What they had was a further called canard configuration with the horizontal stabilizer ahead of the wing. They stated that the stabilizer is angled negatively and not loaded in normal conditions.
The center or pressure is located 1:3 of the wing cord towards the leading edge. For this reason in flight the wing has a tendency to tilt up, pitching the nose of ...
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They are describing the Flyer's canard configuration. The canard surface is the "horizontal rudder". The wing airfoils they and others were using at the time had very strong pitching moments at stall AOA (due to the constant curvature or arc of the profile as you can see in the sketch), that would overpower the downforce of a horizontal tail, or even cause ...
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The patent lawyer is explaining things quite correctly and this applies to modern aircraft. The rudder does in fact have nothing to do with steering the airplane. Its job is to keep the tail lined up behind the nose (or to move the tail out of alignment with the nose if you wish) mainly overcoming adverse yaw caused by warping (or later, ailerons).
The ...
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From Michael O'Leary's "United States Naval Fighters of World War II", "Extensive testing had taken place between the Corsair and other types of Allied fighters... The Corsair was tested against just about every fighter the Navy could get their hands on...it was concluded that the Corsair, which outweighed the Mustang by almost 3,000 lbs., was superior to ...
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The accompanying text clearly describes an application of the Bernoulli effect. However the resultant backwards airflow shown in the drawing is given no explanation, other than that implied by the fact that the device is drawn forwards. So there is no evidence of the Coanda effect, in which the airstream clings to the device skin, being understood.
Would it ...
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