Pushing the throttle increases power, and pulling it decreases power. The ailerons raise and lower the wings. The pilot controls the roll of the plane by raising one aileron or the other with a control wheel. Turning the control wheel clockwise raises the right aileron and lowers the left aileron, which rolls the aircraft to the right.
The rudder works to control the yaw of the plane. The pilot moves rudder left and right, with left and right pedals. Pressing the right rudder pedal moves the rudder to the right. This yaws the aircraft to the right. Used together, the rudder and the ailerons are used to turn the plane. The elevators which are on the tail section are used to control the pitch of the plane.
A pilot uses a control wheel to raise and lower the elevators, by moving it forward to back ward. Lowering the elevators makes the plane nose go down and allows the plane to go down.
By raising the elevators the pilot can make the plane go up. The pilot of the plane pushes the top of the rudder pedals to use the brakes. The brakes are used when the plane is on the ground to slow down the plane and get ready for stopping it. The top of the left rudder controls the left brake and the top of the right pedal controls the right brake.
If you look at these motions together you can see that each type of motion helps control the direction and level of the plane when it is flying. Sound is made up of molecules of air that move. They push together and gather together to form sound waves. Sound waves travel at the speed of about mph at sea level. When a plane travels the speed of sound the air waves gather together and compress the air in front of the plane to keep it from moving forward. This compression causes a shockwave to form in front of the plane.
In order to travel faster than the speed of sound the plane needs to be able to break through the shock wave. When the airplane moves through the waves, it is makes the sound waves spread out and this creates a loud noise or sonic boom.
The sonic boom is caused by a sudden change in the air pressure. When the plane travels faster than sound it is traveling at supersonic speed. A plane traveling at the speed of sound is traveling at Mach 1 or about MPH. Mach 2 is twice the speed of sound. Sometimes called speeds of flight , each regime is a different level of flight speed.
General Aviation MPH. Most of the early planes were only able to fly at this speed level. Early engines were not as powerful as they are today. However, this regime is still used today by smaller planes. Make sure you regularly scan the flight instruments in front of you and check for other aircraft so you're not zoning out.
To learn how to take off and land, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No. Log in Social login does not work in incognito and private browsers. Please log in with your username or email to continue. No account yet? Create an account.
Edit this Article. We use cookies to make wikiHow great. By using our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Cookie Settings. Learn why people trust wikiHow. Download Article Explore this Article parts. Tips and Warnings. Related Articles. Article Summary. Part 1. Perform an inspection of the aircraft before getting in. Before taking off, it's important to perform a walk-around examination called a "pre-flight. Your instructor should provide you with a highly useful operating checklist for the specific plane and this checklist will tell you exactly what to do in each phase of flight, even pre-flight.
Remove any control locks and make sure your ailerons, flaps, and rudder are moving freely and smoothly. Visually check your fuel tanks and oil. Make sure they're filled to the specified levels. To check the fuel level, you'll need a clean fuel measuring rod.
To check oil, there's a dipstick in the engine compartment. Check for fuel contaminants. This is done by draining a small amount of fuel into a special glass container tool, and looking for water or dirt in the fuel. Your instructor will show you how. Fill out a weight and balance sheet which helps ensure that you are not flying outside the capabilities of your airplane. Look for nicks, dings, and any other type of body damage. These small imperfections might inhibit your aircraft's flying ability, especially if the prop is compromised.
Always check props before an engine start. Use caution around airplane props. Check emergency supplies. Although it is not pleasant to think about, prepare for the worst. Make sure there is a supply of food, water, and first aid items. Also ensure that you have an operating radio, flashlight, and batteries.
A weapon may be needed along with standard repair parts for the plane. Locate the flight control column in the cockpit. When you take your seat in the cockpit, all of the systems and gauges will look complicated, but they'll look much simpler once you become familiar with what they do.
In front of you will be a flight control that looks like a modified steering wheel. This control, more commonly called the yoke , works like a steering wheel in a car. It controls the pitch of the nose up or down and banking of the wings. Get a feel for the yoke. Push to go down, pull to go up, and use left and right to roll, unsurprisingly, left and right. Don't use too much force when flying.
Locate the throttle and fuel mixture controls. They are usually located between the two seats in the cockpit. The throttle is black, [3] X Research source and the mixture knob is red. Thrust is controlled by the throttle and the mixture knob adjusts the fuel-to-air ratio lean or rich in gas.
Familiarize yourself with the flight instruments. On most aircraft, there are six primary flight instruments located along two horizontal rows. These indicators are often referred to as the six pack and show, among other things, altitude, attitude orientation of the aircraft relative to Earth's horizon , compass heading, and speed—both forward and up or down rate of climb.
Top right - The " Altimeter " shows the height altitude of the aircraft, in feet MSL—feet above mean, or average, sea level. This instrument should be calibrated usually every 15 minutes.
To calibrate, adjust the instrument to agree with the compass. This is done on the ground or, if in flight, only in straight and level flight. Lower right is the " Vertical Speed Indicator " which tells how fast you are climbing or descending in feet per minute.
Locate the landing gear controls. Many small planes have fixed gear, in which case you will not have a landing gear control knob. For airplanes that do have a landing gear control, the location varies, but it usually has a white rubber handle. You will be using this after you take off and before you land and taxi the plane. It may deploy any non-fixed landing gear—wheels, skis, skids, or floats beneath. Place your feet on the rudder pedals. These are a set of pedals at your feet used to control the rudder which is attached to the vertical stabilizer.
Basically, the rudder controls the yawing aspect of turning the aircraft. Part 2. Get permission to take off. If you are at a controlled airport you must contact Ground Control before taxiing. They will give you further information as well as a transponder code, commonly called a "squawk code.
Once given clearance, proceed to the runway as directed by Ground Control, making sure to never cross any runway unless you are cleared to do so. Adjust the flaps to the proper angle for takeoff. Usually 10 degrees of flaps are used to help increase lift. Check your aircraft manual, though. Perform an aircraft run-up procedure. Before you reach the runway, stop at the run-up area. You'll have to perform the engine run-up procedure here.
This helps insure that your aircraft is ready to fly safely. Notify the tower that you're ready for takeoff. Start the take-off run. Push the fuel mixture knob completely in and advance the throttle slowly. This will increase the engine RPMs revolutions per minute , generating thrust and the airplane will start to move. Note, though, that the plane will want to go left when you do this, so add proper rudder to stay on the runway centerline.
As you pick up speed, slowly decrease this correction. You'll need to control the yaw twisting on a vertical axis with the rudder pedals. If the plane starts doing twisting, use the foot pedals to control it. Get up to speed. In order to take off into the air, the plane needs to achieve a certain speed to create enough lift. This approach exists not on the level of numbers and equations but rather on the level of concepts and principles that are familiar and intelligible to nonspecialists.
It is on this second, nontechnical level where the controversies lie. Two different theories are commonly proposed to explain lift, and advocates on both sides argue their viewpoints in articles, in books and online. The problem is that each of these two nontechnical theories is correct in itself. But neither produces a complete explanation of lift, one that provides a full accounting of all the basic forces, factors and physical conditions governing aerodynamic lift, with no issues left dangling, unexplained or unknown.
Does such a theory even exist? Bernoulli came from a family of mathematicians. In other words, the theorem does not say how the higher velocity above the wing came about to begin with.
There are plenty of bad explanations for the higher velocity. Because the top parcel travels farther than the lower parcel in a given amount of time, it must go faster. The fallacy here is that there is no physical reason that the two parcels must reach the trailing edge simultaneously. And indeed, they do not: the empirical fact is that the air atop moves much faster than the equal transit time theory could account for.
It involves holding a sheet of paper horizontally at your mouth and blowing across the curved top of it. The page rises, supposedly illustrating the Bernoulli effect. The opposite result ought to occur when you blow across the bottom of the sheet: the velocity of the moving air below it should pull the page downward.
Instead, paradoxically, the page rises. On a highway, when two or more lanes of traffic merge into one, the cars involved do not go faster; there is instead a mass slowdown and possibly even a traffic jam. That lower pressure, added to the force of gravity, should have the overall effect of pulling the plane downward rather than holding it up. Moreover, aircraft with symmetrical airfoils, with equal curvature on the top and bottom—or even with flat top and bottom surfaces—are also capable of flying inverted, so long as the airfoil meets the oncoming wind at an appropriate angle of attack.
The theory states that a wing keeps an airplane up by pushing the air down. The Newtonian account applies to wings of any shape, curved or flat, symmetrical or not. It holds for aircraft flying inverted or right-side up. The forces at work are also familiar from ordinary experience—for example, when you stick your hand out of a moving car and tilt it upward, the air is deflected downward, and your hand rises.
But taken by itself, the principle of action and reaction also fails to explain the lower pressure atop the wing, which exists in that region irrespective of whether the airfoil is cambered. It is only when an airplane lands and comes to a halt that the region of lower pressure atop the wing disappears, returns to ambient pressure, and becomes the same at both top and bottom. But as long as a plane is flying, that region of lower pressure is an inescapable element of aerodynamic lift, and it must be explained.
Neither Bernoulli nor Newton was consciously trying to explain what holds aircraft up, of course, because they lived long before the actual development of mechanical flight. Their respective laws and theories were merely repurposed once the Wright brothers flew, making it a serious and pressing business for scientists to understand aerodynamic lift.
Most of these theoretical accounts came from Europe. In the early years of the 20th century, several British scientists advanced technical, mathematical accounts of lift that treated air as a perfect fluid, meaning that it was incompressible and had zero viscosity.
These were unrealistic assumptions but perhaps understandable ones for scientists faced with the new phenomenon of controlled, powered mechanical flight. These assumptions also made the underlying mathematics simpler and more straightforward than they otherwise would have been, but that simplicity came at a price: however successful the accounts of airfoils moving in ideal gases might be mathematically, they remained defective empirically.
In Germany, one of the scientists who applied themselves to the problem of lift was none other than Albert Einstein. Einstein then proceeded to give an explanation that assumed an incompressible, frictionless fluid—that is, an ideal fluid. To take advantage of these pressure differences, Einstein proposed an airfoil with a bulge on top such that the shape would increase airflow velocity above the bulge and thus decrease pressure there as well. Einstein probably thought that his ideal-fluid analysis would apply equally well to real-world fluid flows.
He brought the design to aircraft manufacturer LVG Luftverkehrsgesellschaft in Berlin, which built a new flying machine around it. Contemporary scientific approaches to aircraft design are the province of computational fluid dynamics CFD simulations and the so-called Navier-Stokes equations, which take full account of the actual viscosity of real air.
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