Test Pilot

1. From reader John Schmidt: In which airplane did Henry Ford take his first airplane ride?

A. Curtiss Robin
B. Ford Tri-Motor
C. Spirit of St. Louis
D. Henry Ford never flew.

2. Because of his nerve, what pilot was inducted as a life member of the Wisconsin Liars Club?

3. From reader Ron Deutch: True or false? A fly-in theater was built in New Jersey in 1948 that accommodated 25 airplanes.

4. A pilot is changing heading from north to northwest (in the shortest direction) while performing an inverted turn. To initiate recovery from this turn, he should simultaneously move the

A. right aileron up and apply right rudder.
B. left aileron up and apply right rudder.
C. right aileron up and apply left rudder.
D. left aileron up and apply left rudder.

5. From reader Rick Cohen: Under what circumstances would a normally operating stall-warning indicator not sound an alarm prior to stalling during wings-level flight in smooth air?

6. Why were certain French World War I airplanes called penguins?

7. Estimate within 10,000 the total number of aircraft produced by the United States during World War II.

8. Why is the wind-direction (runway-in-use) indicator found at many airports called a tetrahedron?

Test Pilot Answers

1. C. At different times, Charles Lindbergh also took up his mother as well as several others in the cramped cockpit of his single-place airplane.

2. Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan took off from New York in his dilapidated Curtiss Robin in 1938 and landed in Ireland instead of California, his declared destination. He claimed that his “compass must have been wrong.”

3. True. The fly-in/drive-in theater also accommodated numerous automobiles. Aircraft landed at what is now known as Monmouth Executive Airport, taxied to the adjacent theater, and parked in the last row, which was reserved for airplanes. Admission was 25 cents. After the movie, a Jeep was provided to tow airplanes back to the airport.

4. C. The airplane must roll clockwise about its longitudinal axis (as viewed from behind). Aileron input is the same, therefore, as when recovering from an upright left turn. The rudder, however, must be moved in the opposite direction (to the left) to compensate for adverse yaw effect.

5. A stall-warning indicator cannot be relied upon to provide a timely warning when the wings are contaminated with structural ice.

6. Penguins were aircraft with extremely short wings and could not fly. They were used only to practice taxiing as well as takeoff and landing rolls.

7. Slightly more than 276,000. That was an average of 6,130 aircraft per month or about 200 per day, a tribute to America’s manufacturing might.

8. From geometry, a tetrahedron is any solid bounded by four polygons. (Tetra is a prefix meaning four, and a polygon is a plane figure bounded by three or more straight sides.)