Test Pilot

GENERAL

1. From reader Bob Dillon: The temperature of 100LL avgas in a truck sitting in the sun on a hot day is 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Instead of using this fuel, a pilot uses fuel pumped from an underground tank where the fuel temperature is 32 degrees F. By approximately what percentage does this extend the range of the aircraft?
2. The majority of light airplanes have two front seats. What airplane was produced by a major airframe manufacturer and has three front seats?
3. Identify the four aircraft named Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, and Seattle.
4. Why is a taildragger more unstable during ground operations than an airplane with tricycle landing gear?
5. Banking an airplane results in a horizontal component of wing lift that, we are told, causes the airplane to turn. But such a component should only cause the airplane to move laterally (as in a sideslip). What causes the nose to yaw and, therefore, causes the airplane to turn?
6. From reader Charles Cahoon: Pilot operating handbooks for many (if not most) nonaerobatic lightplanes state that these aircraft are approved for "stalls (except whip stalls)." What is a whip stall?

MULTIPLE CHOICE

7. As (trailing edge) wing flap deployment is increased on a typical general aviation airplane, maximum lift _______ and the angle of attack at which this occurs _______.
   1. decreases, decreases
   2. decreases, increases
   3. increases, decreases
   4. increases, increases
8. From reader Rich Reinhart: Aeronautically speaking, which one of the following cities does not belong?
   1. Chicago, Illinois
   2. Grand Rapids, Michigan
   3. Houston, Texas
   4. New York, New York
   5. Washington, D.C.
9. The most difficult type of cockpit door to close in flight is one that is _______ and situated _______ the wing.
   1. curved, above
   2. curved, below
   3. flat, above
   4. flat, below

TRUE OR FALSE

10. An Englishman departed Montreal in a glider (not a motorglider) and flew it across the Atlantic Ocean to southern England.
11. From reader Gary Holden: A pilot taxiing a tricycle-gear airplane under the influence of a strong quartering wind holds the flight controls in their proper position. When taxiing in the opposite direction, he should hold the controls opposite to the way he had been holding them.
12. There were two female fighter aces in World War II.
13. The first certified, civilian, production airplane with tricycle landing gear was the Ercoupe.

ANSWERS

1. The warm fuel weighs 5.70 pounds per gallon, and the cold fuel weighs 5.93 ppg. (Refer to the FAA's Aircraft Weight and Balance Handbook.) The cold fuel, therefore, is 4 percent more dense than the warm fuel and would increase range by this amount.
2. The Beechcraft Model 50 Twin Bonanza accommodates three people on a bench-style seat. Flight controls are provided for the left and center pilots. The person seated on the right is strictly a passenger.
3. These were the Army's Douglas World Cruisers (DWCs) that began an epic flight around the world in Seattle on April 4, 1924. Only two aircraft, Chicago and New Orleans, completed (on September 28, 1924) this westbound, globe-girdling journey.
4. The center of gravity of a taildragger is behind the main landing gear instead of ahead of it (as in the case of a trike). The taildragger behaves like a child's tricycle that is shoved backwards and then released. (Shove it hard enough and it will ground loop.)
5. As the airplane begins to move laterally, the relative wind begins to come from that side. Because the airplane is a large weather vane (the result of its stabilizers and aft fuselage), it automatically yaws into the wind the way a weather vane does.
6. The airplane is pitched up into a vertical or near-vertical climb. It then pauses, slips downward momentarily (tail first), and then whips into a steep, nose-down attitude.
7. (c) The point of maximum lift is also the point at which wing stall occurs.
8. (a) Chicago does not have an airport named after a president. Grand Rapids, Houston, New York, and Washington have airports named after Gerald Ford, George Bush, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan, respectively.
9. (a) A curved door is like the top of a wing and creates more outward-pulling "lift" than does a flat door, and a door above a wing experiences more airspeed to generate that outward pull than one beneath a wing (everything else being equal).
10. True. The Waco-designed glider was towed across the Atlantic by a Douglas C–47 and piloted by Squadron Leader R.G. Seys of the Royal Air Force in June 1943 for delivery to Russia.
11. False. When taxiing with a tailwind, the elevator should be held down; with a headwind, it should be held neutral. The ailerons should be held in the same direction (wheel left or right in both cases).
12. True. Lts. Lily Litvak and Katya Budanova of the Russian Air Force shot down seven and six aircraft, respectively.
13. False. The first was the Curtiss-Wright amphibious Commuter (1935), which was followed by a few lesser-known aircraft. The Ercoupe (1940) was the first general aviation airplane with tricycle gear to achieve popularity.