1.
Glider (sailplane)
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A sailplane or glider is a type of glider aircraft used in the sport of gliding. Sailplanes are aerodynamically streamlined and are capable of soaring in rising air, sailplanes benefit from producing the least drag for any given amount of lift, and this is best achieved with long, thin wings, a fully faired narrow cockpit and a slender fuselage. Aircraft with these features are able to climb efficiently in rising air produced by thermals or hills, sailplanes can glide long distances at high speed with a minimum loss of height in between. Gliders have rigid wings and either skids or undercarriage, in contrast hang gliders and paragliders use the pilots feet for the start of the launch and for the landing. These latter types are described in articles, though their differences from sailplanes are covered below. Gliders are usually launched by winch or aerotow, though other methods, auto tow, all sailplanes soar, but some gliders do not soar and are simply engineless aircraft towed by another aircraft to a desired destination and then cast off for landing. Military gliders are only, and are abandoned after landing, having served their purpose. Motor gliders are gliders with engines which can be used for extending a flight and even, in some cases, Some high-performance motor gliders may have an engine-driven retractable propeller which can be used to sustain flight. Other motor gliders have enough thrust to launch themselves before the engine is retracted and are known as self-launching gliders, another type is the self-launching touring motor glider, where the pilot can switch the engine on and off in flight without retracting their propellers. Sir George Cayleys gliders achieved brief wing-borne hops from around 1849, in the 1890s Otto Lilienthal built gliders using weight shift for control. In the early 1900s the Wright Brothers built gliders using movable surfaces for control, in 1903 they successfully added an engine. After World War I gliders were built for sporting purposes in Germany, the sporting use of gliders rapidly evolved in the 1930s and is now their main application. As their performance improved, gliders began to be used for cross-country flying, in 1930, pilot Frank Hawks flew the Texaco Eaglet with tow plane from San Diego to New York over eight days, helping to popularize the activity in the United States. Early gliders had no cockpit and the pilot sat on a seat located just ahead of the wing. These were known as gliders and they were usually launched from the tops of hills. To enable gliders to soar more effectively than primary gliders, the designs minimized drag, gliders now have very smooth, narrow fuselages and very long, narrow wings with a high aspect ratio and winglets. The early gliders were mainly of wood with metal fastenings, stays. Later fuselages made of fabric-covered steel tube were married to wood and fabric wings for lightness, New materials such as carbon-fiber, fiber glass and Kevlar have since been used with computer-aided design to increase performance
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
High-wing
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A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with a single main wing plane, in contrast to a biplane or other multiplane, each of which has multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing configuration and is the simplest to build, however, during the early years of flight, these advantages were offset by its greater weight and lower manoeuvrability, making it relatively rare until the 1930s. Since then, the monoplane has been the most common form for a fixed-wing aircraft, although the first successful aircraft were biplanes, the first attempts at heavier-than-air flying machines were monoplanes, and many pioneers continued to develop monoplane designs. For example, the first aeroplane to be put into production was the 1907 Santos-Dumont Demoiselle, while the Blériot XI flew across the English Channel in 1909, throughout 1909–1910, Hubert Latham set multiple altitude records in his Antoinette IV monoplane, eventually reaching 1,384 m. The equivalent German language term is Eindecker, as in the mid-wing Fokker Eindecker fighter of 1915 which for a time dominated the skies in what known as the Fokker scourge. The German military Idflieg aircraft designation system prior to 1918 prefixed monoplane type designations with an E, however, the success of the Fokker was short-lived, and World War I was dominated by biplanes. Towards the end of the war, the parasol monoplane became popular, nonetheless, relatively few monoplane types were built between 1914 and the late 1920s, compared with the number of biplanes. The reasons for this were primarily practical, towards the end of the First World War, the inherent high drag of the biplane was beginning to restrict performance. Engines were not yet enough to make the heavy cantilever-wing monoplane viable. It remained popular throughout the 1920s, on flying boats with a shallow hull, a parasol wing allows the engines to be mounted above the spray from the water when taking off and landing. It was popular on flying boats during the 1930s, an example being the Consolidated PBY Catalina. It died out when taller hulls became the norm during World War II, most military aircraft of WW II were monoplanes, as have been virtually all aircraft since. Jet and rocket engines have more power, and all modern high-speed aircraft. The inherent efficiency of the monoplane can best be realised in the cantilever wing which carries all structural forces internally. By contrast, a wing has additional drag from the exposed bracing struts and/or wires. On the other hand, the wing has greater structural efficiency. This in turn means that for a wing of a size, bracing allows it to fly slower with a lower-powered engine, while a heavy cantilever wing needs a more powerful engine. A cantilever wing can be lighter by making it thicker
4.
Bracing (aeronautics)
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In aeronautics, bracing comprises additional structural members which stiffen the functional airframe to give it rigidity and strength under load. Bracing may be applied both internally and externally, and may take the form of strut, which act in compression or tension as the need arises, and/or wires, which act only in tension. Another disadvantage of bracing wires is that they require routine checking and adjustment, or rigging, during the early years of aviation, bracing was a universal feature of all forms of aeroplane, including the monoplanes and biplanes which were then equally common. Today, bracing in the form of lift struts is still used for light commercial designs where a high wing. Bracing works by creating a triangulated truss structure which resists bending or twisting, by comparison, an unbraced cantilever structure bends easily unless it carries a lot of heavy reinforcement. Making the structure allows it to be much lighter and stiffer. To reduce weight and air resistance, the structure may be made hollow, for example, a high-wing monoplane may be given a diagonal lifting strut running from the bottom of the fuselage to a position far out towards the wingtip. This increases the depth of the wing root to the height of the fuselage. Typically, the ends of bracing struts are joined to the internal structural components such as a wing spar or a fuselage bulkhead. Bracing may be used to resist all the forces which occur in an airframe, including lift, weight, drag. A strut is a bracing component stiff enough to resist these forces whether they place it under compression or tension, a wire is a bracing component able only to resist tension, going slack under compression, and consequently is nearly always used in conjunction with struts. A square frame made of bars is not rigid but tends to bend at the corners. Bracing it with a diagonal bar would be heavy. A wire would be much lighter but would stop it collapsing only one way, to hold it rigid, two cross-bracing wires are needed. This method of cross-bracing can be clearly on early biplanes. Another way of arranging a rigid structure is to make the cross pieces solid enough to act in compression and this method was once common on monoplanes, where the wing and a central cabane or a pylon form the cross members while wire bracing forms the outer diamond. Most commonly found on biplane and other aircraft, wire bracing was also common on early monoplanes. Unlike struts, bracing wires always act in tension The thickness and profile of a wire affect the drag it causes, wires may be made of multi-stranded cable, a single strand of piano wire, or aerofoil sectioned steel
5.
Steel
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Steel is an alloy of iron and other elements, primarily carbon, that is widely used in construction and other applications because of its high tensile strength and low cost. Steels base metal is iron, which is able to take on two forms, body centered cubic and face centered cubic, depending on its temperature. It is the interaction of those allotropes with the elements, primarily carbon. In the body-centred cubic arrangement, there is an atom in the centre of each cube. Carbon, other elements, and inclusions within iron act as hardening agents that prevent the movement of dislocations that otherwise occur in the lattices of iron atoms. The carbon in steel alloys may contribute up to 2. 1% of its weight. Steels strength compared to pure iron is possible at the expense of irons ductility. With the invention of the Bessemer process in the mid-19th century and this was followed by Siemens-Martin process and then Gilchrist-Thomas process that refined the quality of steel. With their introductions, mild steel replaced wrought iron, further refinements in the process, such as basic oxygen steelmaking, largely replaced earlier methods by further lowering the cost of production and increasing the quality of the product. Today, steel is one of the most common materials in the world and it is a major component in buildings, infrastructure, tools, ships, automobiles, machines, appliances, and weapons. Modern steel is generally identified by various grades defined by assorted standards organizations, the noun steel originates from the Proto-Germanic adjective stakhlijan, which is related to stakhla. The carbon content of steel is between 0. 002% and 2. 1% by weight for plain iron–carbon alloys and these values vary depending on alloying elements such as manganese, chromium, nickel, iron, tungsten, carbon and so on. Basically, steel is an alloy that does not undergo eutectic reaction. In contrast, cast iron does undergo eutectic reaction, too little carbon content leaves iron quite soft, ductile, and weak. Carbon contents higher than those of steel make an alloy, commonly called pig iron, while iron alloyed with carbon is called carbon steel, alloy steel is steel to which other alloying elements have been intentionally added to modify the characteristics of steel. Common alloying elements include, manganese, nickel, chromium, molybdenum, boron, titanium, vanadium, tungsten, cobalt, and niobium. Additional elements are important in steel, phosphorus, sulfur, silicon, and traces of oxygen, nitrogen, and copper. Alloys with a higher than 2. 1% carbon content, depending on other element content, cast iron is not malleable even when hot, but it can be formed by casting as it has a lower melting point than steel and good castability properties
6.
Fuselage
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The fuselage is an aircrafts main body section. It holds crew, passengers, and cargo, the fuselage also serves to position control and stabilization surfaces in specific relationships to lifting surfaces, which is required for aircraft stability and maneuverability. This type of structure is still in use in lightweight aircraft using welded steel tube trusses. A box truss fuselage structure can also be out of wood—often covered with plywood. Simple box structures may be rounded by the addition of supported lightweight stringers, allowing the fabric covering to form an aerodynamic shape. Geodesic structural elements were used by Barnes Wallis for British Vickers between the wars and into World War II to form the whole of the fuselage, including its aerodynamic shape. In this type of construction multiple flat strip stringers are wound about the formers in opposite spiral directions and this proved to be light, strong, and rigid and had the advantage of being made almost entirely of wood. A similar construction using aluminum alloy was used in the Vickers Warwick with less materials than would be required for other structural types, the geodesic structure is also redundant and so can survive localized damage without catastrophic failure. A fabric covering over the completed the aerodynamic shell. The logical evolution of this is the creation of fuselages using molded plywood, in this method, the exterior surface of the fuselage is also the primary structure. A typical early form of this was built using molded plywood, a later form of this structure uses fiberglass cloth impregnated with polyester or epoxy resin, instead of plywood, as the skin. An example of a larger molded plywood aircraft is the de Havilland Mosquito fighter/light bomber of World War II, no plywood-skin fuselage is truly monocoque, since stiffening elements are incorporated into the structure to carry concentrated loads that would otherwise buckle the thin skin. The use of molded fiberglass using negative molds is prevalent in the production of many modern sailplanes. The use of molded composites for fuselage structures is being extended to large aircraft such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This is the method of constructing an all-aluminum fuselage. First, a series of frames in the shape of the cross sections are held in position on a rigid fixture. These frames are then joined with lightweight longitudinal elements called stringers and these are in turn covered with a skin of sheet aluminum, attached by riveting or by bonding with special adhesives. The fixture is then disassembled and removed from the fuselage shell, which is then fitted out with wiring, controls
7.
Aircraft fabric covering
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Aircraft fabric covering is a term used for both the material used and the process of covering aircraft open structures. II, in its wrapped Wickelrumpf plywood strip and fabric covering. The purposes of the covering of an aircraft are, To provide a light airproof skin for lifting. To provide structural strength to weak structures. To cover other non-lifting parts of an aircraft to reduce drag, to protect the structure from the elements. Pioneering aviators such as George Cayley and Otto Lilienthal used cotton-covered flying surfaces for their glider designs. The Wright brothers also used cotton to cover their Wright Flyer, other early aircraft used a variety of fabrics, silk and linen being commonly used. Some early aircraft, such as A. V, roes first machines, even used paper as a covering material. Until the development of cellulose based dope in 1911 a variety of methods of finishing the fabric were used, the most popular was the use of rubberised fabrics such as those manufactured by the Continental company. Other methods included the use of sago starch, national insignia painted on the fabric were often cut from downed aircraft and used as war trophies. The German aircraft designer Hugo Junkers is considered one of the pioneers of metal aircraft, the highly flammable mixture of fabric, dope and hydrogen gas was a factor in the demise of the Hindenburg airship. Many transports, bombers and trainers still used fabric, although the flammable nitrate dope was replaced with butyrate dope instead, the Mosquito is an example of a fabric-covered plywood aircraft. The Vickers Wellington used fabric over a geodesic airframe which offered good combat damage resistance, an interesting case of ingenuity under wartime adversity was the Colditz Cock glider. This new fabric could be glued to the airframe instead of sewn, grade A cotton would typically last six to seven years when the aircraft was stored outside, whereas Ceconite, which does not rot like cotton, can last over 20 years. Early attempts to use these modern fabrics with butyrate dope proved that the dope did not adhere at all, nitrate dope was resurrected as the initial system of choice instead, although it was supplanted by new materials too. One fabric system, developed by Ray Stits in the USA and this uses three weights of Dacron fabric sold as by the brand name Ceconite, plus fabric glue for attaching to the airframe, fabric preparation sealer resin and paint. This system is not dope and instead uses vinyl-based chemicals, Ceconite 101 is a certified 3.5 oz/yd² fabric while Ceconite 102 is a 3.16 oz/yd² fabric. There is also an uncertified light Ceconite of 1.87 oz/yd² intended for ultralight aircraft and this method requires physical attachment of the fabric to the airframe in the form of rib-stitching, rivets or capstrips, which are then usually covered with fabric tapes. In addition to Poly-Fiber, a number of companies produce covering processes for certified
8.
Spoiler (aeronautics)
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In aeronautics, a spoiler is a device intended to intentionally reduce the lift component of an airfoil in a controlled way. Most often, spoilers are plates on the top surface of a wing that can be extended upward into the airflow to spoil it. By so doing, the spoiler creates a controlled stall over the portion of the wing behind it, spoilers differ from airbrakes in that airbrakes are designed to increase drag without affecting lift, while spoilers reduce lift as well as increasing drag. In modern fly-by-wire aircraft, the set of control surfaces serve both functions. Spoilers are used by nearly every glider to control their rate of descent, an increased rate of descent can also be achieved by lowering the nose of an aircraft, but this would result in increased speed. Spoilers enable the approach to be made at a speed for landing. Airliners are almost always fitted with spoilers, spoilers are used to increase descent rate without increasing speed. Their use is limited, however, as the turbulent airflow that develops behind them causes noise and vibration. Spoilers may also be operated for roll control instead of ailerons. On landing, however, the spoilers are nearly always fully deployed to slow the aircraft. The increase in form drag created by the spoilers directly assists the braking effect, in air-cooled piston engine aircraft, spoilers may be needed to avoid shock cooling the engines. In a descent without spoilers, air speed is increased and the engine will be at low power, the engine may cool too rapidly, resulting in stuck valves, cracked cylinders or other problems. Spoilers alleviate the situation by allowing the aircraft to descend at a desired rate while letting the engine run at a setting that keeps it from cooling too quickly. Spoiler controls can be used for control or descent control. Some aircraft use spoilers in combination with or in lieu of ailerons for roll control, for such spoilers the term spoileron has been coined. In the case of a spoileron, in order for it to be used as a surface, it is raised on one wing only, thus decreasing lift and increasing drag, causing roll. Spoilerons also avoid the problem of control reversal that affects ailerons, almost all modern jet airliners are fitted with inboard lift spoilers which are used together during descent to increase the rate of descent and control speed. Some aircraft use lift spoilers on landing approach to control descent without changing the aircrafts attitude, one jet airliner not fitted with lift spoilers was the Douglas DC-8 which used reverse thrust in flight on the two inboard engines to control descent speed
9.
Frank Hawks
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Prolific in the media and continually in the public eye, in the 1937 The Mysterious Pilot movie serial, Hawks was billed as the fastest airman in the world. A popular saying from the time, was Dont send it by mail, after retiring from a career as an air racer, he died in 1938, flying an experimental aircraft. Born in Marshalltown, Iowa on March 28,1897, Hawks attended grammar school before his parents who were actors, joined a stock company and toured Minnesota. Hawks took on juvenile parts during his parents engagements but when the family settled in California, Hawks resumed his formal schooling and graduated in 1916 from a high school in Long Beach. An early exposure to the thrill of flying came when Hawks convinced local Long Beach air field owners and he had convinced the owners that a high school students impressions would result in increased interest in flying and more business for the air field. It worked and Hawks was able to parlay a series of pleasure flights, after enrolling at the University of California where he played halfback on the freshman football team, Hawks enlisted in 1917 when war was declared. Hawks joined the U. S. Army with the aspiration to become a pilot in the Aviation Section, Army Air Service’s Brooks Field at San Antonio, Texas. One incident that nearly proved fatal occurred when Hawks and Lieutenant Wendell Brookley collided in midair over the San Antonio football stadium, both flyers served a week in confinement. Leaving active duty in 1919, Hawks was promoted to a captain in the United States Army Air Service Reserve, during the immediate postwar years, he did a stint of aerial barnstorming in the United States and Mexico. Earharts father arranged for the flight and paid the fee of $10 for a 10-minute hop, Hawks began to be in public eye when he joined the Gates Flying Circus and was involved in a demonstration of the first in-flight refueling in 1921. Earl Daugherty in his JN4D Jenny had been touted as being able to stay in the air for 24 hours, Hawks flew his Standard J-1 World War I trainer carrying wing-walker Wesley May aloft to join up with Daugherty, circling over Long Beach, California. May, carrying a five-gallon can of gasoline, stepped over to Earl’s ship, on May 7,1922, Hawks landed his small Standard biplane within the grounds at the Stadium Jalapeño at Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, as part of the inaugural ceremonies. In 1924 Hawks was hired by Compañía Mexicana de Aviación as a pilot flying special charter service routes, piloting his Standard J-1 two-place modified for five-place passenger service. By 1927, Hawks continued to eke out a living as a pilot but with money from his wife, in the Ford National Reliability Air Tour, Hawks placed sixth and earned $1,000.00 in prize money. With the public idolizing Lindbergh, Hawks toured the country, selling rides in the aircraft like Lindy flew, also on December 5,1927, the Texas Company hired Hawks to head up its own Aviation Division as a Superintendent to market aviation products. It was the first goodwill trade extension air tour from the U. S. to Mexico, later in the same year, Hawks embarked on a nationwide goodwill tour, visiting more than 150 cities and covering approximately 51,000 miles. It was estimated that 500,000 people saw the Texaco One and he described the tour in his autobiography Speed, In the course. I visited 175 cities, carried 7,200 passengers, all of this without a mishap to plane and passengers
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