What is so unusual about their operation?
2. True or false? During World War II, Germany developed hyperspectral prismatic lenses that enabled Luftwaffe fighter pilots to “see” turbulence less than three miles ahead of the aircraft.
3. The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was a remarkably successful program, so why was this group disbanded following World War II?
4. A pilot tunes to a vortac. While attempting to aurally identify the station, he hears a dash, four dots, and a dash clustered together as if representing a letter of the alphabet in Morse code, but there is no such letter. What does this signify?
5. From reader John Schmidt: A pilot flying near Casa Grande, Arizona, notices a 289-square-mile grid of 273 concrete Xs on the desert floor. Each X measures 25 feet by 25 feet. What is the significance of these markers?
6. True or false? The minimum age for soloing an aircraft in the United States is 14.
7. Juan Trippe of Pan American World Airways referred to his airline’s flying boats as Clippers, an effort to link Pan Am with the heritage of the ocean liners with which he was competing. What were the four types of four-engine flying boats used by the airline?
8. A pilot is executing a normal turn at a constant altitude and airspeed. He then steepens the bank and increases airspeed. This causes turn rate to _____ and turn radius to _____.
A. increase, increase
B. increase, decrease
C. decrease, increase
D. Cannot be determined from the information given.
Test Pilot Answers
1. They act independently of each other to reduce wing-bending moments and undesirable oscillations while turning and during turbulence. When entering a left turn, for example, you might see (on the left wing) the inner aileron move up, the outer aileron move up but with less deflection, and the center aileron initially move down. A380 pilots refer to these unusual movements as “waltzing ailerons.” (The dual rudders behave similarly and are called “waltzing rudders.”)
2. False. It would be nice, though, if such lenses were available.
3. In its infinite wisdom, Congress alleged that “training women to fly had squandered millions of taxpayer dollars and that the program was a wasted effort because women would not fly after the war.”
4. The station is undergoing maintenance. If the dots and dashes are mentally and properly separated, the first dash represents a T (in Morse code); the first dot is an E; the last three dots are an S; and the final dash is another T, the combination of which spells TEST.
5. A secret government spy program called Corona involved orbiting satellites that photographed the Soviet Union, China, and other sensitive areas during the Cold War. The grid was used to calibrate on-board cameras.
6. False. Although a person may not solo a balloon or a glider until reaching the age of 14 (and an airplane at the age of 16), there is no minimum age for soloing an ultralight aircraft.
7. First was the 1931 Sikorsky S–40; second was the improved 1934 S–42; third was the 1935 Martin M–130; fourth was the most advanced of Pan Am’s four-engine flying boats, the 1939 Boeing B–14.
8. D. Steepening bank angle increases turn rate and decreases turn radius, but increasing airspeed decreases turn rate and increases turn radius. Without knowing the extent to which bank angle and airspeed are increased, it is impossible to know how turn rate and radius are affected.
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