Test Pilot

2. What is the easiest way to fly an airplane at a constant angle of attack?

3. Explain the circumstances that enabled Louis “Lou” Lenart to fly a Vought F4U Corsair, a Supermarine Spitfire, and a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 in combat.

4. The longitudinal, lateral, and directional stability of an airplane refers, respectively, to stability about the

A. longitudinal, lateral, and vertical axes.
B. lateral, longitudinal, and vertical axes.
C. vertical, longitudinal, and lateral axes.
D. lateral, vertical, and longitudinal axes.

5. From reader John Schmidt: The Mir Mine (dubbed Diamond City) is adjacent to Mirny in eastern Siberia, Russia, and is the world’s largest diamond mine. The conical excavation is 1,722 feet deep and almost a mile across. Why are helicopters banned from flying across this huge hole in the ground?

6. A discrete transponder code is issued to a pilot so that air traffic control can easily identify his aircraft on secondary radar. All 4,096 codes may be used as discrete codes except _______.

7. On April 17, 1944, Howard Hughes and TWA President Jack Frye flew a Lockheed Constellation into Dayton, Ohio’s Wright Field to pick me up and provide me with an opportunity to sit at the controls and maneuver an airplane for the last time. Who am I?

8. True or false? GPS receivers provide aircraft position in three dimensions (longitude, latitude, and altitude). When climbing vertically at 100 knots in an aerobatic airplane with a GPS receiver, indicated groundspeed will be 100 knots.

Test Pilot Answers

1. The Grumman TBM Avenger, a torpedo bomber known by many as the aircraft flown by George H.W. Bush. It had a maximum-allowable gross weight of 17,893 pounds, almost three-fourths as much as a Douglas DC–3A.

2. Don’t do anything. With the wings level and in smooth air, an airplane will automatically seek and maintain its trimmed airspeed and angle of attack.

3. This Marine captain flew the Corsair in the Pacific Theater during World War II. After learning that 14 of his relatives had been murdered at the Auschwitz death camp, he volunteered to fly Czech-supplied, surplus British and German fighter aircraft for Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

4. B. Longitudinal, lateral, and directional stability are synonymous with pitch, roll, and yaw stability, respectively.

5. The crater is so large and symmetrical that it creates a vortex said to be strong enough to “suck” a helicopter into its depth. Lightplanes are said to be similarly affected.

6. Any code ending in double-zero (such as 1200, 5600, 7700, et cetera.)

7. Orville Wright. He commented that the Connie had a wing span that was six feet longer than the 120-foot length of his first powered flight of an airplane on December 17, 1903, and that it was “somewhat more powerful” than the Wright flyer.

8. False. Indicated groundspeed would be zero and is strictly a function of the rate of change of horizontal position (longitude and latitude).