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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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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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Approachable Excellence

Plane and Pilot

The rich can dream of jets and warbirds. Piper put bigger engines in the basic PA-28, gave it retractable gear, stretched the fuselage, changed the wing to a semitapered design, gave it a T-tail (then took the T-tail away), made the cabin wider and fitted six seats, and refined it year over year to the airplane it is today.

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The Role of Newton’s Third Law in Aviation

Pilot Institute

The principle is the same whether the aircraft gets thrust from propellers or jet engines. A propeller forces air backward, while a jet engine ignites a mixture of air and fuel to generate hot gases that eject backward. In jet engines, increasing throttle increases the fuel flow, producing more exhaust gases that can be flung backward.

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

Pilot Institute

In 1985, Japan Airlines Flight 123s tail section blew out from explosive decompression, cutting all the aircrafts hydraulic lines. Weight Distribution Effects For example, moving the aircrafts Center of Gravity (CG) aft makes it less stable in pitch. It may experience barely damped, neutral, or even unstable phugoid motion.

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

Vintage Aviation News

It was also the first VTOL aircraft to use a jet thrust diverter system for vertical lift. 1127 Kestrel, the aircraft that was to be the basis for the Harrier jet-jump fighter-bomber flown by the Royal Navy and the United States Marine Corps.