Pilot Institute
JUNE 4, 2025
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?
Aerotime
APRIL 3, 2025
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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Plane and Pilot
MAY 3, 2025
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.
Pilot Institute
APRIL 12, 2025
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.
Pilot Institute
FEBRUARY 20, 2025
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.
Flying Magazine
JULY 22, 2025
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. The Epic E1000 AX is so nice to hand-fly that it stands to reason that a lot of pilots won’t make full use of the automation.
Pilot Institute
JUNE 2, 2025
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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