Angle of Attack and the Stall: Why Wings Stop Working
Share this story There is one sentence that, properly understood, prevents a large fraction of fatal loss-of-control accidents. The US Federal Aviation Administration puts it like this: “It is possible to exceed the critical AOA at any airspeed, at any attitude,...
How Does an Aircraft Fly? Lift, Weight, Thrust and Drag
Share this story Almost everyone who has been told how a wing works has been told something wrong. The explanation goes like this: the top of the wing is curved and the bottom is flat, so air going over the top has further to travel, so it must go faster to meet up...
Nimrod: The Airliner That Hunted Submarines for 42 Years
Share this story The de Havilland Comet was the world’s first jet airliner and, after three of them came apart in the air, the most notorious. Its reputation never recovered. But the last two unfinished Comet 4C fuselages on the Hawker Siddeley line did not go to...
Su-30MKI: Why the Indian Air Force Flies With Two Crew
Share this story Line up the world’s major air forces and count the seats. The United States Air Force flies the F-22, the F-16 and the F-35 with one pilot. The F-35 has no two-seat variant in any version, for any customer. France flies mostly single-seat Rafales....
DARC: The Space Force Picks Texas for Its Last Deep-Space Radar
Share this story Geostationary orbit is 36,000 km up, which is far enough that the satellites parked there appear not to move at all. It is where the most valuable military hardware in space lives: communications relays, missile-warning satellites, intelligence...
How Much Runway Does a 747 Need? 737, 777 and A380 Compared
Share this story Type the question into a search engine and you get a number. A 747 needs 10,000 feet. Or 3,000 metres. Or 8,000 feet. The numbers disagree with each other, none of them cite anything, and all of them are answering a question that does not really...
Supermarine Attacker: The Navy Jet With a Tail Wheel
Share this story The Royal Navy’s first jet fighter had a tail wheel. Two of them, in fact, tucked under the rear fuselage, so that the aircraft sat on the deck nose-high like a Spitfire. Every jet you can picture has a nosewheel, for the obvious reason that a...
Boulton Paul P.111: Britain’s Yellow Peril Delta
Share this story Britain came out of the Second World War with a captured German idea it did not fully understand. The delta wing promised high speed and a strong, light structure, and the Germans had been drawing them for years. Nobody in Britain knew what one...
SWISS A350: The Third Jet Lands, Seven Still to Come
Share this story Swiss has a third Airbus A350. According to aeroTELEGRAPH, HB-IFC arrived in Zurich on 12 September, joining the two A350-900s already in the fleet and continuing the slowest, most consequential fleet change the airline has made in twenty years. Three...
Japan CH-47s: The JSDF’s First Overseas Firefighting Mission
Share this story A Japanese landing ship arrived in West Kalimantan this week with three CH-47 Chinooks and around 300 people on board. According to the Associated Press, it is the first known overseas firefighting operation the Japan Self-Defense Forces have ever...
Recent Comments