Remove Airfoil Remove Rudder Remove Tail
article thumbnail

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.

Airfoil 69
article thumbnail

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.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

A Bristol Bulldog Biplane Fighter is Once Again in the Sky

Vintage Aviation News

What you do is you sit up high for takeoff and as you add power and the tail comes up almost immediately, very quickly. “I started to make a normal landing, but as I was getting ready to touch down, I pulled the power off and the tail just fell out from underneath me,” he said. The landings are a little tricky, if you will.

Airplanes 124
article thumbnail

Is Flying a Helicopter Harder Than Flying a Plane? A Comparative Analysis

Pilot's Life Blog

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 52
article thumbnail

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.

Lift 52
article thumbnail

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. 9” on its rudder.

Tail 98
article thumbnail

Nothing Small About It

Plane and Pilot

True, a slightly higher aspect ratio wing was desired, which in turn required a larger vertical tail and thus a little extra mass, but the size, approximately 20% larger than a Widgeon, was set. The airfoil is a Harry Riblett shape, giving modernized flow separation on the leading edge for a soft stall yet with good lift and drag performance.