Aerodynamics is important

When I was in ground school last winter, the first thing we covered on the first night was aerodynamics. At the time, I was gaining an appreciation for the importance of aerodynamics, and it was not just because I needed to have a knowledge of aerodynamics to pass the FAA"s written Private Pilot exam.

For example, I spent some time learning about stalls. One of the things a pilot is supposed to know in order to pass the practical (flying) portion of the FAA examination process leading to a private pilot's certificate is how to recover from a stall.

I have already written that it is unlikely that I may never get a pilot's certificate but that doesn't stop me from learning all that I can about aviation and flying. And to that end, one of the things that I have that I have seen on a few of my scenic flights involve watching the pilot demonstrate stalls. They talk about what they are doing and made sure I knew what the aircraft was doing (stall horn and vibrations in the wings). And they both made sure that I understood how they got out of a stall by lowering the nose and/or increasing thrust.

Then there was learning about weight and balance in ground school so as to not overload the aircraft. Here I did many practice problems that helped drive home the point of proper weight and balance of an aircraft.

Up until a few days ago, I hadn't given much thought to aerodynamics. That changed recently. I'll try to explain.

The other day as I doing some background research for an upcoming series of articles on the B-17 (to post in January), I realized again how important aerodynamics is. This time it was about how aerodynamics affect airplane design. I was wondering what factors affect the speed at which an airplane flies, but I was only thinking about thrust so I was missing a kep point. One of my pilot friends gently reminded me about drag because there are things that can be done to reduce drag in designing aircraft. Reducing drag means a faster aircraft.

So, I am revisiting aerodynamics and reviewing the chapters on aerodynamics in the books I used in ground school. I read about drag, reread a chapter in the B-17 book I am reading, and asked my pilot friend another question about drag. The brain cells kicked in again. It is hard to explain, but I learned (again) how important aerodynamics is.

I knew that I wanted to write about this experience in today's article. But not being any kind of expert in aerodynamics, I wanted to find something simple to provide those of you who are not pilots with a context. So, I found this video that I am embedding here. It is a little old, but I think that it still provides a good overview of basic aerodynamics.

The video, How Airplanes Fly is available from Fed Flix here, and is in the public domain.



revised 5:50 PM, Dec. 13 2010