Remove Center of Gravity Remove Descent Remove Tail
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Examining over 100 years of flight automation and the history of the autopilot

Aerotime

His system would provide an aircraft with automatic stability and control mechanism, through the control of the ailerons, stabilizer, and tail rudder through the use of a set of simple gyroscopes. As the French mechanic slid himself along the wing of the aircraft, shifting its center of gravity, the aircraft became unbalanced.

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We Fly: Epic E1000 AX

Flying Magazine

Over the years we’ve flown a lot of aircraft with “aft-tending” centers of gravity—if you filled the seats, you were outside the aft CG limit, and the rear seats in six-place airplanes were unusable. When that big Hartzell prop flattens out, it produces a lot of drag that lets one nicely fine-tune speed and rate of descent.

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Everything You Need To Know About Ailerons

Pilot Institute

Most of the ailerons mass lies behind the hinge, making it tail-heavy. Tail-heavy ailerons droop downwards when they arent being pulled by the control system. This shifts the ailerons Center of Gravity (C.G.) potentially reverting the aileron back into a tail-heavy state. With enough mass added, the C.G.

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The Role of Newton’s Third Law in Aviation

Pilot Institute

Helicopters use a small rotor mounted on the tail that produces sideways thrust to counter the main rotors torque reaction. The tail rotor pushes air to one side ( action ), and the tail moves the other way ( reaction ). Other Designs The tail rotor is not the only way to solve the torque reaction problem.

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Phugoid Motion in Aviation: What It Is and Why It Matters

Pilot Institute

Thats why, for a passenger, phugoid motion feels like a series of slow climbs and descents instead of pitching up and down. The Vertical Speed Indicator (VSI) will show a cycle of shallow climbs and descents. Meanwhile, the Airspeed Indicator moves the opposite way: decreasing during the climbs and increasing during descents.

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Stupid Pilot Tricks

AV Web

It had cut into the tail rotor gearbox, tearing it off the helicopter. Fixed-Wing Foibles Consider the Airbus first officer (FO) who tried to satisfy ATCs request to increase their descent (rate), so he engaged open descent mode. The pilot observed the wire wrapped around the helicopter. Other than that, what?

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Today in Aviation History: First Flight of the Bell X-14

Vintage Aviation News

(Wright State University) The original configuration of the Bell Model 68 was an open cockpit all-metal monoplane with fixed landing gear that was powered by two Armstrong Siddeley Viper turbojet engines with thrust deflectors located at the aircraft’s center of gravity.