Test Pilot

GENERAL

1. What do the letters in the acronyms radar and loran represent?
2. Why were some World War II Japanese fighters called Zeros?
3. Why are the long handles used to operate manual flap and landing-gear systems (and other similar levers) often referred to as Johnson bars?
4. A pilot preflights his airplane after a clear night and just before sunrise. There is frost on the wings but no ice or moisture on the ground. How is this possible?
5. The wind over the mid-latitudes is generally westerly. What is the general wind direction over the high and low latitudes in the northern hemisphere?
6. Name the three astronauts who were aboard Apollo 11, the first mission to place men on the moon.

TRUE OR FALSE

7. From reader Yves Hoebeke: Pilots are aware of adverse yaw effect created by ailerons. Many airplanes also exhibit a characteristic known as adverse roll.
8. From professor Will Hubin: An inverted aircraft in cruising flight receives the greatest stress from an updraft (as compared to an equally strong downdraft).
9. America's first certificated female pilot, Harriet Quimby, was killed when she fell out of her airplane.
10. During World War II, the swastika adorned the wings of Luftwaffe fighters.
11. When a pressurized airplane is in cruise flight, the amount of air entering the cabin is greater than the amount of air leaving the aircraft.
12. As recently as 1975, regulations required that a married female (but not a married male) under 21 years of age who applied for a student pilot certificate provide the written consent of her husband, irrespective of his age.
13. During World War II, Germany developed motorless fighter gliders.

BRAINTEASER

14. Reader Rob Spencer asks: A pilot is flying in cloud under the influence of a strong crosswind. His conventional compass is inoperative, and the gyroscopic heading indicator has been set incorrectly. The GPS provides position, track, and groundspeed, but not heading or drift angle. In what way can the heading indicator be reset to the proper heading?

ANSWERS

1. Radio Detecting and Ranging; and Long Range Navigation.
2. They were technically known as Zero Zeros, which represented the last two digits of the year in which they were designed: the 2,600th year of the Nipponese Dynasty (1940).
3. This term originated with the Johnson bar found on steam locomotives. Developed by T. H. Johnson, it was used to vary the effect of engine power and is loosely analogous to the propeller-pitch control of an airplane.
4. There are several reasons, but the most common is that metal wings lose (radiate) heat more rapidly than the ground and get colder.
5. Polar easterlies prevail in the Arctic, and the northeasterly trade winds prevail in the tropics.
6. Neil Armstrong, Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin, and Michael Collins. (How quickly we forget.)
7. True. When the rudder is deflected, a horizontal force is created by the vertical stabilizer at a point that usually is above the longitudinal axis of the airplane. This force initially tends to roll the aircraft in the opposite direction.
8. True. It does not matter whether the aircraft is inverted or not.
9. True. Neither she nor her passenger was wearing a safety belt when they were jostled from their seats by turbulence.
10. False. The swastika was placed on the vertical stabilizer and/or the rudder.
11. False. If that were so, the cabin would inflate like a balloon until the pressure vessel (cabin) eventually ruptured.
12. False. This was true, however, in 1965.
13. True. Although never deployed, the Blohm and Voss 40 was equipped with a 20-mm cannon. After being towed aloft, it was to swoop through Allied bomber formations.
14. The pilot enters a shallow turn. When groundspeed (as indicated by the GPS) reaches a minimum or a maximum, the airplane will be aligned with the wind and drift will be zero. The pilot rolls out of the turn and sets his heading indicator to the track shown on the GPS.