Remove Airfoil Remove Drag Remove Tail
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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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Today in Aviation History: First Flight of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator

Vintage Aviation News

Davis, who had developed a new wing, whose airfoil had a lower drag co-efficiency than other wing designs of the time, and which had already been used on the company’s Model 31/XP4Y Corregidor flying boat. Originally flown under the historic schemes for All American and The Dragon and His Tail , it is now painted as Witchcraft.

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

Pilot Institute

Lift, drag, and handling correlate well with IAS in the lower atmosphere. Making the wing relatively flat on top with a blunter leading edge and more curvature on the bottom gives you a supercritical airfoil. This type of wing redirects the shockwaves further aft on the wing, reducing drag. roughly) up to about Mach 5.0.

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Nemesis NXT

Plane and Pilot

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. Just enough tail to do the job. However, like any overnight success story, the actual journey to the NXT began in the early 1990s with the original Nemesis.

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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 Hughes H-1 Racer: Howard Hughes’ Silver Bullet

Vintage Aviation News

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. Army Air Corps’ newest and fastest fighter.