Pilot Institute

APRIL 12, 2025

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. Newtons Third Law tells us that we need to push air downward to produce an upward force.

Torque

Vintage Aviation News

APRIL 1, 2025

Setting the benchmark for modern airliners, the Douglas DC-3 (1935) a classic in commercial aviation brought all-metal construction, retractable landing gear, and more efficient airfoil designs. Replacing the slower, drag-heavy biplanes of previous years, monoplane aircraft emerged during this time.

Drag

Vintage Aviation News

DECEMBER 7, 2024

It featured a laminar flow airfoil, the Allison V-1710 was fitted with a second supercharger, a four-bladed propeller was installed, and the nose cowlings to access the airplane’s 37mm gun and two Browing M2.50 However, the US Army Air Force was still interested in an improved version of the P-39, and so a new design was drafted.

Airfoil

Aviation Bussiness News

FEBRUARY 28, 2025

In the high-pressure turbine (HPT), the enhancements include an advanced airfoil design with improved coatings. It is fundamentally more durable, with increased airflow in the core to lower operating temperatures and a state-of-the-art hot section to increase time on wing.

Airfoil

Pilot Institute

FEBRUARY 9, 2025

In general, the chord line is used as an easy-to-understand reference when referring to the properties of a wing or airfoil. The Difference Between a Chord Line and a Camber Line The chord line is a straight line that crosses the leading and trailing edges of the airfoil. What Is the Chord Line in Aviation?

Center of Gravity

Vintage Aviation News

APRIL 1, 2025

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 built as a test bed for a proposed interceptor that never materialized. The XF-92A was then used to test the delta-wing concept.

Airfoil

Professional Pilot

JULY 7, 2025

Aeronautical engineers improve continually on that imbalance with better airfoils and powerplants along with aircraft designs and materials to reduce weight and drag. Every pilot knows that aircraft fly because the forces of lift and thrust balance or exceed the weight and drag countering them.

Density Altitude

Flying Magazine

JULY 24, 2025

Air Force ace Chuck Yeager’s historic supersonic flight in 1947, as well as several systems—such as the NACA airfoil—that remain in use. Before its transition to NASA in 1958, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) developed the technology that enabled U.S.

Airfoil

Pilot Institute

JULY 11, 2025

Making the wing relatively flat on top with a blunter leading edge and more curvature on the bottom gives you a supercritical airfoil. Even the wing cross-section can be designed to redirect shock waves. This type of wing redirects the shockwaves further aft on the wing, reducing drag. roughly) up to about Mach 5.0.

True Airspeed

Plane and Pilot

APRIL 14, 2025

The NXT was designed using computer-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD), NASA-derived airfoils, and was tested in the Lockheed wind tunnel to refine the aerodynamics. However, like any overnight success story, the actual journey to the NXT began in the early 1990s with the original Nemesis.

Airfoil

Flying Magazine

JULY 26, 2025

For lift during horizontal flight, they use rigid airfoils such as wings. Certifying Powered-Lift The AC defines powered-lift as heavier-than-air aircraft that use “engine-driven lift devices” or engine thrust for vertical takeoff and landing and low-speed flight.

Lift

Photographic Logbook

MAY 25, 2025

Unlike rime icing that tends to accumulate on the leading edges of airplane parts like wings, windscreens, probes, and landing gear, SLD is a form of clear icing that accretes quickly farther along the wing chord and rapidly changes the shape of the airfoil. This is considered the most dangerous form of icing for aircraft.

OAT

AV Web

APRIL 3, 2025

Photo By Daniel Hardt N33K at rest Fernridge Lake, Lane county Oregon Photo By Daniel Spitzer Pilots in a Yak18T and Beech G36 enjoy a late winter spin’ together, though their props rotate in opposite directions-check the airfoil of the blades. The post Picture Of The Week: April 4, 2025 appeared first on AVweb.

Airfoil

Vintage Aviation News

JUNE 18, 2025

Palmer and his team created wooden models of various airfoils, engine cowlings, and tail surfaces in a rented garage before bringing them to Caltech in Pasadena, where they utilized the school’s wind tunnel to test the designs until they were satisfied with the results.

Cockpit

Vintage Aviation News

MAY 2, 2025

Photo taken on July 14, 1954 From May 1953 until 1957, NACA 150 flew numerous test missions at Edwards, contributing vital data to the evolving understanding of aircraft dynamics. The B-47A represented a significant departure from earlier, more rigid aircraft designs.

Gross Weight

Pilot Institute

JUNE 12, 2025

According to Robert Gregg, Boeing’s chief aerodynamicist , supercritical airfoils help delay shock waves by managing how pressure waves behave at high speeds. Supercritical Wings A significant new development is the rise of supercritical wings. These wings are designed to delay the onset of shockwaves and reduce drag at transonic speeds.

Weight-Shift-Control

Pilot Institute

APRIL 22, 2025

Powered-lift: Heavier-than-air aircraft capable of vertical takeoff, vertical landing, and low speed flight that depends principally on engine-driven lift devices or engine thrust for lift during these flight regimes and on nonrotating airfoil(s) for lift during horizontal flight.

Pilot

Vintage Aviation News

JANUARY 22, 2025

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.

Tail

Flight Training Central

JUNE 30, 2025

When he created his principle of differential pressure, he had no thoughts about its future application to the development of airfoils and lift production. With some imagination this looks a bit like the top of an airfoil. In the case of our airfoil, we’ll assume that the fluid is air and that the air is relatively still.

Airfoil

Flight Training Central

MAY 7, 2024

The term 'angle of attack' is defined as the angle between the airplane's longitudinal axis and that of the air striking the airfoil. Air traveling faster over the curved upper surface of an airfoil causes lower pressure on the top surface. Aircraft power, pitch, bank, and trim. airplane's center line and the relative wind.

Longitudinal Axis

Vintage Aviation News

OCTOBER 7, 2024

During these years, he concluded that the inner surface of the venturi tube needed an airfoil shape to achieve the greatest efficiency. The duct, as predicted by Stipa, had a profile similar to that of the airfoil, with a fairly small rudder and elevators mounted on the trailing edge of the duct. The Stipa-Caproni in flight.

Airfoil

Vintage Aviation News

AUGUST 16, 2024

It will be coupled with a wind tunnel and a few different types of airfoils to demonstrate the effect of airflow at different angles. The airframe itself never flew with the military – being put into storage immediately after being built – but was eventually sold to civilians.

Horizontal Stabilizer

Flying Magazine

MAY 1, 2024

The majority of the lift generated by an unstalled airfoil is always concentrated near the front, and moving a trailing-edge flap up or down changes the flow conditions at the leading edge.

Aileron

Plane and Pilot

MARCH 28, 2025

A more modern airfoil helps performance as well. According to the company, the prop at a median pitch setting yielded improved take-off and climb performance with better cruise speeds and fuel flows. Moreover, the new prop and carbon-fiber spinner combination results in a 13-pound reduction over the standard fixed-pitch metal prop.

Density Altitude

Simple Flying

JUNE 14, 2025

Hinged panels at the wing’s trailing and leading edges transform a sleek airfoil into a low-speed lift sail. One of the most influential cockpit levers on a jet’s take-off is the flap handle. Increasing camber, flaps propel an airliner to lift off at lower speeds, trading a little drag for a lot of lift.

Camber

Flying Magazine

MAY 30, 2025

That combination of requirements was incompatible with very thin wings, and in the early days of aviation it was widelythough not universallybelieved that thin birdlike airfoils were best. A notable later finding was that the drag of a round wire is equal to that of an airfoil 30 times as thick.

Drag

Vintage Aviation News

SEPTEMBER 21, 2024

However, by the mid 1950s, the desire to increase the range and speed of large airplanes led to swept-back wings of high aspect ratio, thin airfoils, and fuselages with high fineness ratios (i.e. long and thin).

Airfoil

Learn to Fly

JULY 11, 2024

An angle of attack (AOA) indicator can determine the aerodynamic health of the airfoil (wing). More simply, an AOA indicator displays the margin between the current AOA of the airfoil, and the AOA at which the airfoil will stall (critical AOA), providing the pilot with a visual and sometimes audible indication.

Airfoil

Inspire

APRIL 1, 2020

He performed a lot of the build himself, including installing the landing gear, airfoils in the tail, and most of the tedious portions of construction. Richard Kampeter, EAA Lifetime 1128617, began constructing his Kitfox approximately four years ago.

Airfoil

AV Web

JULY 23, 2024

For the experimental market, Hartzell has added its Carbon Blended Airfoil propeller (the company has a re-naming contest for this propeller, with a goodie bag for any AirVenture attendee who comes up with a better name) that maintains the same performance gains as its all-metal prop with a savings of 20 pounds in weight.

Airfoil

Pilot Institute

FEBRUARY 9, 2025

In general, the chord line is used as an easy-to-understand reference when referring to the properties of a wing or airfoil. The Difference Between a Chord Line and a Camber Line The chord line is a straight line that crosses the leading and trailing edges of the airfoil. What Is the Chord Line in Aviation?

Center of Gravity

Fear of Landing

MARCH 22, 2024

Supercritical Airfoil During the 1960s and 1970s, NASA scientist Richard Whitcomb led a team of researchers to develop and test a series of unique geometric shapes of airfoils or wing sections that could be applied to subsonic transports to improve lift and reduce drag.

Wind Shear

Pilot's Life Blog

FEBRUARY 11, 2025

The wings are designed with an airfoil shape, curved on the top and flatter on the bottom, creating a pressure difference when air flows over them. Each rotor blade acts as an airfoil, and as it rotates, it moves air over its surface, generating lift. This pressure difference produces lift, allowing the aircraft to ascend.

Torque

Vintage Aviation News

OCTOBER 18, 2024

This was a characteristic of the Mk II and Mk III Bulldogs, but was eliminated in the Mk IV when the airfoil was changed, enclosing the tanks entirely. .” When looking at the Bulldog, notice that the wing is very thin over the cockpit, but bulges to port and starboard to accommodate the 33 Imperial gallon gravity feed fuel tanks.

Crosswind

Pilot Institute

NOVEMBER 1, 2024

Remember that wings, propeller blades, and tail surfaces are airfoil-shaped. Ice build-up on the airframe changes the airflow pattern around these airfoils. If you don’t act quickly, you’ll soon feel its effects. They’re designed with precision to utilize the airflow around these surfaces.

Pitot Tube

Aerotime

FEBRUARY 14, 2025

It came to the market with Rolls-Royce AE 3007 high bypass turbofans, large engine intakes, and a highly swept wing with supercritical airfoil. After a few delays, the Citation X was certified in 1996, with the first aircraft delivered to Cessna fan and golfing legend Arnold Palmer.

Jet

Aerotime

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Neither large commercial nor small private aircraft are designed to endure such stresses.

Pilot