Just wondering if we have any more ideas as im presenting them to the CO on friday 🙂
cheers guys 🙂
Does anyone teach basic flight engineering, such as how wings and control surfaces work together?
And the effects (and control) of G forces on the plane’s structure, pilot, other crew & passengers – how do those fast jets turn so tightly without pulling the wngs off, and how does the pilot make a turn feel like he’s flying straight and level from his passengers point of view?
How does a helicopter work – fine going up and down spin a propeller – but turn and bank (and even doing back flips or, in the case of models, grass cutting), how is all that achieved? Do the controls of a helicopter bear any resemblance to a fixed wing plane? How? Model choppers are very helpful in explaining these engineering nightmares.
I remember one lesson where the basic principles of the jet engine were explained and worked out independantly, that even a fan (or turbine) in a tube was probably as, if not more, efficient (ducted fan) than a standard propeller design – and that’s how many modellers made “jet”models for many years. Yet when I posed the design I was told by the ATCs engineering tutor that it must be more complicated than that (of course, heating up the exhause before exiting the “tube” is the key to much greater power (that’s the jet bit) and reheating the exhaust {injecting more fuel into the hot exhaust stream) squeezes out even more power)!!!
As an ATC cadet myself in the sixties/early seventies, these were the subjects that most fascinated me and that were directly relevant to being an ATC cadet interested in aircraft. I’m not sure that I would have been as fascinated in go-carts and would have been much more interested in model aircraft building and flying, where the skills and aviation orientated approach is more easily recogniseable.
I was a member of both Pendeford Airport (now an awful council housing estate), and later Wednesfield’s ATC squadron’s. (I must say, though, that Pendeford’s squadron was much better in this regard.)
As a cadet, flying models weren’t as available then, as they are now – and I bet you’d have lads clamouring to join your engineering group for the promise of some weekend model flying trips using models they had helped design and built. And there are a fair fiew kits that include all the components and control equipment at very reasonable prices these days. I wouldn’t mind betting that RipMax or one of the many other manufacturers (Kyosho for instance) would love to get involved in some kind of sponsorship/apprentiship arrangement.
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