Aviation Blog - Page 92

Five by five means loud and clear: a 5 out of 5 for signal strength and for readability. See the 5×5 chart, the WWII origin, and why pilots avoid it.

Bleed air is a term that is tossed around frequently when it comes to aircraft systems. But what is bleed air exactly and what does it do? ‘Suck, squeeze, bang, blow’: this is the phrase that most people use to describe how an engine works. Known as the Otto cycle, this summarizes the stages of

It may surprise an aviation outsider to learn this, but airports are among the most challenging places for pilots to navigate. Planes are built to fly, and operating them on the ground isn’t always easy. They don’t have great visibility, they don’t turn around fast, and they can’t back up. Furthermore, those long wings have

PAPI lights are things most people have seen at airports but not realized just how cool they are. They’re mounted next to nearly every runway in the world, but they look like red lights to most people. From the pilot’s perspective, however, they’re an incredibly valuable tool to help them land. What Are PAPI Lights?

Like car, truck, or computer manufacturers, airplane makers struggle to come up with a recognizable brand for their products. Boeing has been incredibly successful at doing this since they carved out a niche in the passenger jet market in the 1960s. Today, Boeing planes are recognizable the world over just by the mention of their

In the hundred-plus years that designers have been perfecting airplanes, they’ve come up with quite a few creative ways to squeeze more lift out of a wing. While that’s helpful to get the plane off the ground, it’s critical to make a plane easy to control during flight phases. High-speed planes like airliners and fighter

VASI lights explained: red over white means on the glide path. How 2-bar and 3-bar VASIs work, the FAA rule, and why only 522 US runway ends still use one.

When you drive your car, you can easily control the vehicle in forward and reverse. You can back out of your parking space and then drive away, all under your own power. Is this how pilots can maneuver their planes on the ground? The answer may surprise you. No, airplanes don’t have a reverse gear.

Just like all combustion engines, jets need to begin spinning to start. Small internal combustion engines, like those in our cars or small piston airplanes, use a small electrical motor. The motor spins the flywheel, which makes the cylinders in the engine move. Once fuel, air, and spark are added in, the engine fires right

At the dawn of aviation, technology was expanding quickly every year. Planes traveled farther, flew higher, and got faster and faster. One of the roadblocks designers had to overcome was actually a limitation of the human body. Their planes performed better the higher they were operated, but the human at the controls needed more oxygen