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Tailless Aircraft: How Airplanes Fly Without a Tail

Pilot Institute

Have you ever seen an airplane with no tail and no vertical fin, but with just a sleek wing? They prove that with the right aerodynamic tricks, you dont need a tail to fly. A tailless aircraft may still have a fuselage and a vertical tail (fin and rudder). How does the tail do this? Ever wondered how it stays balanced?

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Flight Test Files: Grumman F-14 Tomcat

Vintage Aviation News

Photo by NASA The impetus for the program came from issues the Navy had encountered with inadvertent spin entries, which were traced back to the aircrafts aileron rudder interconnect system. This photo shows NASA’s F-14 (NASA tail number 991; Navy serial number 157991) flying over Rogers Dry Lake, accompanied by a Navy F-14.

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Mach Number Explained: What It Is and Why Pilots Use It

Pilot Institute

Making the wing relatively flat on top with a blunter leading edge and more curvature on the bottom gives you a supercritical airfoil. The problem is that the tail itself might be in trouble. They couldn’t pull out because the tail wasn’t generating enough force in the high Mach regime. roughly) up to about Mach 5.0.

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Flight Test Files: Convair XF-92A Dart

Vintage Aviation News

The delta wing’s large area (425 square feet), thin airfoil cross section, low weight, and structural strength made a great combination for a supersonic aircraft. It was controlled by a conventional rudder and full-span elevons that functioned as elevators and ailerons. The XF-92A was then used to test the delta-wing concept.

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Wingtip Vortices and Wake Turbulence

Pilot Institute

When air flows over the aircraft wing, the shape of the airfoil creates low pressure above the wing and relatively higher pressure below the wing. As seen from the aircrafts tail, the vortex rotates in the anti-clockwise direction on the right wingtip and the clockwise direction on the left wingtip. How Are Wingtip Vortices Formed?

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The Role of Newton’s Third Law in Aviation

Pilot Institute

They are designed with a special shape called an airfoil, which encourages passing air to turn and deflect downward. This is why the typical airfoil shape has a curved top and a flat bottom, especially in slower-speed general aviation aircraft. Other Designs The tail rotor is not the only way to solve the torque reaction problem.

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The Albree Pigeon-Fraser: The First American Fighter

Vintage Aviation News

The Pigeon-Fraser Model SG was powered by a single 100hp Gnme rotary engine, had a length of 24 feet with a wingspan of 37 feet, 11 inches, and its single-set of wings featured a flat-bottomed airfoil. But the most radical feature of the Pigeon-Fraser was Albree’s all-moving tail design. serial numbers 116 and 117, with U.S.