Designer's Notebook

Airplanes are surprisingly flexible, and changes in their shape can affect aerodynamic characteristics. Barnaby Wainfan explains how the two are coupled.

Columnist Barnaby Wainfan discusses the factors that affect the longitudinal stability of an aircraft during a variety of maneuvers. Designers make compromises to keep stick forces down so that a pilot can control an airplane, but sometimes they go too far, and light control forces can result in problems that are just as serious as those posed by forces that are too heavy. Whats a designer to do? The most important considerations are presented.

Last month we looked at roll control schemes for airplanes where high lift or other requirements do not leave enough room on the wing’s...

A pilots ability to recover from a spin depends just as much on the design characteristics of the airplane as on stick-and-rudder skills.

Flight testing for longitudinal stability problems continues this month as columnist Barnaby Wainfan details tests for stick force as related to trim and stick-free stability of an aircraft. The object is to gather data and analyze it to see if the hypotheses about the nature of the problem hold up under scrutiny.

Cooling the engine and its accessories requires a continuous flow of air to come in from outside the airplane to absorb heat from the...

Barnaby Wainfan explains the challenges designers face in creating viable STOL aircraft.

In the last few editions of Wind Tunnel, we looked at how changes to the surface of an airplane's skin can affect the aerodynamic...

Trim tabs.

VTOL flight modes.