Airfoil Airplanes Drag 
Pilot Institute
JUNE 4, 2025
Have you ever seen an airplane with no tail and no vertical fin, but with just a sleek wing? A tailless aircraft is a fixed-wing airplane without a horizontal stabilizing surface. A tailless airplane is one where everything needed to fly, like lift, control, and stability, is built into the main wing. Why does this matter?
Pilot Institute
MARCH 28, 2025
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. This horizontal component of lift is called Induced Drag. Its called induced drag since it only exists as a consequence of lift. Increased Drag Moving air around is hard work!
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Vintage Aviation News
APRIL 1, 2025
Early airplane lessons for engineers on low-speed aerodynamics and stability control By using wind tunnel testing to improve their wing designs, the Wright brothers established a standard for contemporary aeronautical research and demonstrated that even basic tests may provide revolutionary findings.
Flying Magazine
MAY 30, 2025
The Bleriot XI that was the first airplane to cross the English Channel was a monoplane, as was the first really effective fighter of World War I, the Fokker Eindecker. When engines were weak and it was hard to get into the air at all, multiple wings were an obvious way to add lift without making the airplane much bigger.
Flight Training Central
MAY 7, 2024
As much as it seems sometimes that airplanes fly by magic, it’s important for every pilot to understand at least the basic fundamentals of aerodynamics. The term 'angle of attack' is defined as the angle between the airplane's longitudinal axis and that of the air striking the airfoil. What force makes an airplane turn?
Pilot Institute
MARCH 13, 2025
Airfoils use this principle, with faster airflow over the top creating lower pressure. If lift were entirely due to Bernoulli, a symmetric airfoil (one with equal curvature on top and bottom) wouldnt generate lift – yet it does when given the right angle of attack. In reality, the wing also uses Newtons third law to create lift.
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. From 1991-98, the original Nemesis became the winningest airplane in air race history, capturing 45 of 48 events.
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