In Case You Missed it
Around the Patch
Have you checked your fuel system for leaks lately? Turns out there's a good reason to periodically conduct a thorough investigation. Incipient leaks may go undetected. Worse, when the O-ring on the fuel-selector valve goes bad, it could allow air into the system, which means your engine could misbehave at a most inconvenient time. Often, this malady is difficult to diagnose and the assumption is that the fuel selector is OK when it is not.
Wind Tunnel
When is an airplane in trim? At least to the pilot, the airplane is trimmed when no stick force is required to maintain equilibrium. So how do we achieve this? Barnaby Wainfan explains any number of ways to go about it, including the use of trimtabs, spring systems, sparrow strainers and variable incidence tails.