Re: aviation (aircraft) freaks, gather here!
I do want to point out that when it comes to planes and helicopters, watch out! I could really care less about cars, unless they are the really, really old ones, but aircraft? I've flown in piston aircrafts like the Piper Comanche, the Diamond Aircraft DA40, and the Cessna-182 when I did my Sky-dive. The only turboprop I've flown in was another sky-dive aircraft which was a Cessna-208 Caravan. then of course I've flown in commercial turbofan jets. I've even got the chance to check out the cockpit of a Southwest airlines plane. I learned that most planes have a yoke. Imagine cutting off the top part of the steering wheel of your car. You're now left with a U-shaped yoke. Some yokes have two handles connected by shafts that is a full circle. . On the Piper Aztec I toured, the yoke was more like a U shaped in a square form. It had two handles connected at the bottom and open at the top. But in all designs, they pretty much work similar. They have trim tabs th
at you either move with a pair of pliers, or with some electrical or manual means of adjusting the control surfaces. Most planes I've seen had stabilators, which basically means stabilliser and elevator combined in one. One interesting phenomenon I've observed was that when you first take off, the force of the wind pushes the elevator up, which causes the yoke or control stick to be pushed as far back as it can.
I also learnt about the three main axes of rotation. Imagine drawing a line through the nose all the way back to the tail, and you rotate left and right along this line. That is called a roll, and it is achieved by moving the yoke or control stick left and right, which raises the aileron on one side and lowering it on the other side. If you draw a line from left to right, from wing to wing, and you rotate the plane forwards and backwards, that is called pitch. It is achieved by moving the elevator of the tail up or down. If it is up, the tail moves down,
which points the nose upwards. If the elevator is down, it causes the tail to go up, which points the nose downwards. You do this by pulling the yoke or stick back to pitch the plain back, or push the yoke or stick to pitch forward. These are the y and X axes respectively. Now, if you draw a line from the top of the plain all the way down, and you rotate in a pivotal manner, that is called yaw. It is achieved by moving the vertical rudder with your foot pedals. That is called the Z axis.
Now, if you've read about the Bernoulli's principle states that all fluids rushing over an uneven surface will create a current that is independent of the fluid rushing beneath. Let's examine one of the wings of an air glider or sailplane. Notice how the back end of the wing is very skinny, but the front part is very fat? Do you also notice that the top part of the wing seems to be rather slanted? It goes up from the back all the way to the front. But if you look at the bottom,
it's relatively flat. So what this means is that when the wing is pushing against the wind, it causes the current to be split. The wind rushing atop the wing is moving back and down, while the wind on the bottom is only moving back So notice what happens. The flow on top is going by much more quickly than the flow on the bottom. this creates less pressure being pushed on top, which causes the greater amount of pressure on the bottom to push up. This is creating a force called lift. So in short, if you want to know which part of the plane is moving, the leading edge always goes first. The leading edge is the fatter part of the wing, and the trailing edge is the skinnier part. by applying changes to the shape of the wing, you can use the ailerons, which move independently from one another, and in some planes, the flaps located inward, which move together. In some gliders, you have slats or spoilers which act as brakes to slow you down.
Now, propellers work pretty much the sa
me way. The leading edge always turns into the wind, which creates thrust. You can change the RPM by pitching the angle of the blades as well. P-factor describes the phenomenon when a plane's propeller pushes in one direction to get trust. If we are facing the propeller, and it is spinning left, the force of the turning would cause the plane to want to turn right, because of action equals reaction. so you have to have a trim tab pointed to the left to compensate for this.
I'm not going to go much into detail on turboprops, turbojets, turbofans and turboshafts, suffice it to say that they are pretty much the same in how they operate. The turboshaft operates a vertical rotor, which we'll talk about in a bit. The turbofan is simply a turbojet that drives a fan. So imagine the exhaust of the plane. All around it is a force of cold air blowing in a circle. In the middle of this cold air is the hot air from the jet. This causes a significant reduction in jet noise.
Now, let's look at how helicopters work. I won't go over this too much since I'm still learning about them. But the basic idea is this. You use the collective, which is a small lever that looks like the emergency stop in some cars. It even lets you throddle the engine by twisting it like a motorbike. this causes the vertical rotors to pitch with a greater angle of attack. Remember what we talked about earlier? The greater the angle of attack, the more thrust or lift you are going to get. But that also means you need to increase your throddle. Helicopters aren't natural flyers like planes. Planes are designed to fly themselves with very little effort. However, with helicopters, you have to balance out each move to avoid losing control of it.
Anyhow, the next part of a helicopter is the cyclic. In some Robinson models, this looks like the letter T, which has a main column and another shaft that swivels. This is useful for helicopter training. When you move t
he cyclic forward, left, right or back, you are creating a change in the rotor disc. This is something that I'm still trying to understand how this works. The idea is that you create a disc when you spin the rotor blades. By default, you spin both rotors evenly, which creates an even circle. But if you move the cyclic in one direction, it causes the rotor blades to shift or act in some maner that tilts the direction in which they are spinning. Think of spinning a CD (compact disc) and instead of it moving horizontally, you tilt it at a 45-degree angle so as to make it spin diagonally.
And finally, the pedals at your feet control the pitch of the anti-torque rotor. The more pitch there is, the more the helicopter will spin.
I think this is a pretty long enough post, and I encourage you to check out some air shows near your area so you can demonstrate the new knowledge you just learnt. I love air shows!
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