Flying adventures, aircraft engines, flying different light airplanes and reviewing aviation gear is some of what this channel is about, but it's all about aviation!
I'm a private pilot and aviation enthusiast trying to help make aviation more accessible. I love diving into complex subjects, be it pilot techniques, safety or technical powerplant subjects and break it up into understandable chunks.
Welcome to the channel, let's explore general aviation together!
So there is debate over this, but everyone and his grandmother is super confident about the nature of black holes and the big bang, and history of the whole universe. I think that public understanding of science in these other areas is laden with a bit of hubris. People should learn these basic things first.
I am an ultralight plane and RC plane pilot. Sorry to dis agree with you in the term that airplane flies in the same way upright and inverted!! Because when inverted the nose of the airplane will immediately dive to the ground unless compensated by the elevator in an opposite direction, that’s for fact.
Everything stated is 100% correct. Thank you and you're welcome. ;-) Additionally, to maintain any kind of efficient lift to drag ratio, flow both over and under the wing has to remain (mostly) laminar. A stalled wing still has lift - or resistance to downward forces - but much less. Lift force is the result of combined pressure **differential** between both top and bottom surfaces. People seem to want to consider only the top or the bottom and argue about which one it doing the work. It's BOTH. It's a SYSTEM. The devil is in the details.
You're overthinking it. How does a rudder steer a boat? It creates pressure on the side that faces the water stream by the rudder angle against the stream. The angle of attack of the surface of the wing obstructing the stream of air moving past it creates pressure, thus forcing the wing up. When the wing is upside down, with the angle of attack reversed in relation to the air stream, allows it to fly upside down.
The puzzling thing to me is how kites can fly with a single surface wing. With the leading edge being very thin, the wing being a single surface and the angle of attack being very steep when launching the kite, many kites can fly in very low windspeeds.
It's really intuitive. The angle of attack causes onward air flow to hit the bottom if the wing putting pressure on it whereas the top of the wing is on the wayward side so the oncoming air doesn't hit it creating obviously lower pressure. [If it's tilted up, the air hits the bottom and not the top.]
Great video thanks! I’ve never thought of it as being due to having a “longer path” to travel but resistance to flow that slows the upper flow causing the differential. This is more to do with the LE radius than the full path of the flow over the airfoil, I’ve always thought of a wing as being a leading edge pulling everything else along with it. I know the centre of lift is usually further aft of the LE but the LE is crucial in separating the flow to where a differential is produced thus lift occurs. Regardless, it is astounding to me that this is still a debate - why don’t the aircraft manufacturers who very carefully and precisely design their airfoils weigh in and put this to bed - this is not a mystery it is a very precise science and as such should not be a debate, in RC I’ve seen flat barely balanced planks that defy all aerodynamic theory ‘flying’ and as such should be defined or explained by a different science more akin to kite flight.
How do you know that lift produced by wing remains “normal” to the cord and span during loop… assumption without evidence. I suspect the wing-loading goes toward zero at the nadir. I have flown many loops. I disagree with your arbitrary assumption unless you have very good evidence.
Not sure what exactly you are disagreeing with. I didn't say lift produced remains normal during a loop. Of course the load will be more at the bottom, it's gravity + the G's created. At the top gravity works in the opposite direction than the G's created.
For anyone who knows anything about fluid flow, they know that the lift is created by the change in momentum from the leading edge of the wing to the trailing edge. This change in momentum is created by the angle of attack deflecting the airflow as it passes the wing. A flat plate can fly. The so called wing effect is to make it more efficient and to achieve what is called the Kutta condition, which is the seamless joining of the air flow on top of the wing with the flow on the bottom. If the upper flow does not rejoin the flow from the bottom, we have separation and the upper flow separates from the wing surface before reaching the rear of the wing. If this condition reaches an extreme, the wing stalls, quits flying, and the plane drops like a rock. The pilot must get the plane's nose down, establish air speed, and then pull up to the proper angle of attack to start "flying" again.
Great video. Perfect description of static lift. The uninitiated to airfoil design think everything works on the dynamic lift principal, which is real, but plays a considerably smaller role in how lift is created. There are also people out there who think the world is flat... dumb is everywhere.
This is by far the best and most detailed explanation while at the same time easy to understand. Especially that last section with prop pitch, and the drag in both vertical and horizontal profiles if you will. Great animations make it incredibly easy to visualize. My one suggestion would be to slow down the talking pace a bit, again in that last, very critical section of the video. Would also love to see a part 2 as others have suggested.
The relative lengths of the attached flows, above and below the stagnation point, is what helps me understand where and how much lift is created. Separated flow does not contribute to lift.
Rans S-9 and probably the S-10 can not be wheel-landed. And it is not because of prop-clearance but the wheels are too far in front of the CG so the tail drops down directly when the wheels hit the grond, increasing the alfa and you take off again, usually with a not desired result ...
I used to be a glider pilot so I understand about all the terms used in this video, but still it explains quite well some of the uncertainties I had about flying upside down (which is not the kind of things you want to try with a glider). Thank you nice video.
great explanation of radial engines! i've long been fascinated with them, and am still getting a grasp on the engineering principles behind them. Thanks!
Before watching: As far as I remember there are at least 3 effects that together make airfoil as efficient in producing lift as necessary for planes to fly. Pressure differential is just that hand-wavy explanation that provides couple percent of the lift at most. From memory the biggest part of lift comes from conservation of momentum. And of course the "lower pressure" bit does matter, but just a tiny bit. You can fly upside down, it's just that it will be suboptimal (and other effects will get penalty as well IIRC).
I use a lavalier mic which I place into my headset earcup, and record directly to my smartphone. I then sync it up with the video when editing. There are cables on the market that record directly to gopro, but they have noise cancelling and thus isn't suited to recording headset noise like I did in this video.
@@LetsGoAviate thats great, but how are you recording the mic from the airport and you talking on it? Oh wait the earphone mic is picking up your broadcast to the tower and your headset is monitoring it..
Nice explanations. Density of air above and below wings gives an Archimedean clue as to why lift occurs. Here's a nice related question: if an aircarft flies directly above you, do you feel the weight of it? Does the height at which it flies above you have any effect on what you may feel? Thanks for posting.
I always thought that was a stupid idea. I don’t have a physics degree but the idea that the pressure differential between the two t sides of the wing was ridicules. I always through it was the wind pushing up on the underside of the wing that are slanted up. Just like it’s the pressure of the wind being compressed by the speed of the wind or the force being applied to the wing. Thrust creates momentum, momentum, creates speed, speed, creates pressure against the air, creating lift the more speed the more pressure against the wing the more lift. And I didn’t even graduate HS. And it shows 🥴
Great content, I enjoyed it thoroughly. In the US, the V-8 arrived well before the muscle car, which probably isn’t news for most. Perfect for our family sized cars when the interstates were built.
V engines can also very challenging to get the centre of thrust in the right position whilst still retaining decent forward visibility . Not so bad when designing an aircraft around a specific engine , but otherwise can be an issue .
Oldsmobile of General Motors USA put their new , of the time Rocket 425 ci V8 engine in Cessna's to prove its power and smoothness ! They flew coast to coast , with double the power of the Lycoming .
pretty sure if they did with the rotary what they did with pistons- 32 rotary with counter spinning rotors... and a super scavenger turbo 😀 would be amazing 😂🤣
😄 or a single rotor radial! it would counter spin and stay really cool. gons of torque. what i find odd is they pretty much gear them down to stay at like 3600 rpm. instead of giving the pilot blade control. you need to wait for the engine to spin down to decellerate... which is probably why the poston design persisted... it provides resistance and spins down fast... while resisting spin in a dive... but its prone to stalling while clinbing, or any kind of turbulance... a strong cross wind can stall the engine and take away lift at the same time. leading to many failed take offs even today. if propeller planes could tilt their blades to reduce lift to maintain higher rpms, it would save fuel and likely be more reaponsive if you want to try and dive... engine maintains speed, provides an air brake and you can switch back onto power rapidly. 🤔
Great video. I’m perplexed by secondary balance/imbalance and why they create an upward vector at both TDC and BDC. It seems unintuitive, but I know that it’s true. Still working on understanding that.
Pretty much all the radials were two-valve hemis, including the Pratt and Whitney R-2800s on the Thunderbolts that weren’t XP-47Hs. From the early 1920s onwards.
Yes the Beetle motor , from 1932 still driving around ! Just think of how many 1930s cars are on streets today , and still look ok , the Bug is the only one , nearly 100 years old !
@@SlowSTEN V-dubs are going into small homebuilt aircraft all the time. There are even 1/2 VW's going into ultralight aircraft (literally 2 cylinders removed). Good little engines if used within their limits.
If an aircraft needs the power of a V8 it's time to consider a turboprop to get the same or more power with far less complexity and longer service/overhaul intervals.
@@loddude5706 Only because of economy of scale. If all aircraft were turboprop or turbojet powered the engines would be no more expensive than piston engines. It is only because in the light aircraft market piston has a 100:1 advantage of numbers over turboprops that make those engines artificially cheaper to buy even though in many ways they are more difficult to manufacture than turbines and turboprops.
@@loddude5706 Specific Fuel Consumption, Expressed as LBS/HP/HR: *Turboprops - .5 to.7 lbs traditionally, mid .4s to .5 for newer designs. *Two Stroke Gas - Similar to older TPs, About .6 *Four Stroke Air Cooled Carbureted - About .45 *Four Stroke Air Cooled Fuel Injected - Low .4s *Four Stroke Fuel Injected Liquid Cooled - High .3s *Diesels - Low to Mid .3s As you can see fuel costs while higher on a turboprop are completive. What drives the price up is solely the cost of acquisition, maintenance, and parts. This is where I say if a turboprop was the more common engine in light civil aviation than piston the economy of scale drives the cost down on them. I agree right now a turboprop is roughly 50% more per hour in total operational cost consideration but that price goes down with more mass production and lower per part/unit costs.
