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The Aviation Portal

A Boeing 747 in 1978 operated by Pan Am

Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. Aircraft includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air aircraft such as hot air balloons and airships.

Aviation began in the 18th century with the development of the hot air balloon, an apparatus capable of atmospheric displacement through buoyancy. Clément Ader built the "Ader Éole" in France and made an uncontrolled, powered hop in 1890. This is the first powered aircraft, although it did not achieve controlled flight. Some of the most significant advancements in aviation technology came with the controlled gliding flying of Otto Lilienthal in 1896; then a large step in significance came with the construction of the first powered airplane by the Wright brothers in the early 1900s. Since that time, aviation has been technologically revolutionized by the introduction of the jet which permitted a major form of transport throughout the world. (Full article...)

Selected article

The air flow from the wing of this agricultural plane is made visible by a technique that uses colored smoke rising from the ground. The swirl at the wingtip traces the aircraft's wake vortex, which exerts a powerful influence on the flow field behind the plane.
The air flow from the wing of this agricultural plane is made visible by a technique that uses colored smoke rising from the ground. The swirl at the wingtip traces the aircraft's wake vortex, which exerts a powerful influence on the flow field behind the plane.
Aerodynamics is a branch of dynamics concerned with studying the motion of air, particularly when it interacts with a moving object. Understanding the motion of air (often called a flow field) around an object enables the calculation of forces and moments acting on the object. Typical properties calculated for a flow field include velocity, pressure, density and temperature as a function of position and time. By defining a control volume around the flow field, equations for the conservation of mass, momentum, and energy can be defined and used to solve for the properties. The use of aerodynamics through mathematical analysis, empirical approximation and wind tunnel experimentation form the scientific basis for heavier-than-air flight.

External aerodynamics is the study of flow around solid objects of various shapes. Evaluating the lift and drag on an airplane, the shock waves that form in front of the nose of a rocket is an example of external aerodynamics. Internal aerodynamics is the study of flow through passages in solid objects. For instance, internal aerodynamics encompasses the study of the airflow through a jet engine.

The ratio of the problem's characteristic flow speed to the speed of sound comprises a second classification of aerodynamic problems. A problem is called subsonic if all the speeds in the problem are less than the speed of sound, transonic if speeds both below and above the speed of sound are present (normally when the characteristic speed is approximately the speed of sound), supersonic when the characteristic flow speed is greater than the speed of sound, and hypersonic when the flow speed is much greater than the speed of sound. Aerodynamicists disagree over the precise definition of hypersonic flow; minimum Mach numbers for hypersonic flow range from 3 to 12. Most aerodynamicists use numbers between 5 and 8. (Full article...)

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Credit: NASA
A cutaway digram of an aircraft hangar.

Did you know

...that the Soviet spotter aircraft Sukhoi Su-12, though approved, was never produced due to lack of manufacturing capacity in the USSR? ...that the Cessna 165 aircraft was instrumental in the recovery of the Cessna Aircraft Company in the years following the Great Depression? ...that the asymmetrical monoplane BV 141 is one of many military aircraft designed by Richard Vogt?

More Did you know facts

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The following are images from various aviation-related articles on Wikipedia.

In the news

Wikinews Aviation portal
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Selected biography

Portrait of Flynn taken in 1929.

The Reverend John Flynn (25 November 1880 – 5 May 1951) was an Australian Presbyterian minister and aviator who founded the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the world's first air ambulance.

Throughout his ministerial training, Flynn had worked in various then-remote areas through Victoria and South Australia. As well as tending to matters spiritual, Flynn quickly established the need for medical care for residents of the vast Australian outback, and established a number of bush hospitals. By 1917, Flynn was already considering the possibility of new technology, such as radio and the aeroplane, to assist in providing a more useful acute medical service, and then received a letter from an Australian pilot serving in World War I, Clifford Peel, who had heard of Flynn's speculations and outlined the capabilities and costs of then-available planes. Flynn turned his considerable fund-raising talents to the task of establishing a flying medical service.

The first flight of the Aerial Medical Service was in 1928 from Cloncurry. In 1934 the Australian Aerial Medical Service was formed, and gradually established a network of bases nationwide. Flynn remained the public face of the organisation (through name changes to its present form) and helped raise the funds that kept the service operating.

Selected Aircraft

The Airbus A340 is a long-range four-engined widebody commercial passenger airplane manufactured by Airbus. The latest variants (-600 & A340E) competed with Boeing's 777 series of aircraft on long-haul and ultra long-haul routes, but it has since been succeeded by the Airbus A350.

The A340-600 flies 380 passengers in a three-class cabin layout (419 in 2 class) over 7,500 nautical miles (13,900 km). It provides similar passenger capacity to a 747 but with twice the cargo volume, and at lower trip and seat costs.

The A340-600 is more than 10 m longer than a basic -300, making it the second longest airliner in the world, more than four meters longer than a Boeing 747-400.

  • Span: 63.45 m (208 ft 2 in)
  • Length: 75.30 m n(246 ft 11 in)
  • Height: 17.30 m (56 ft 9 in)
  • Engines: four 56,000 lbf (249 kN) thrust Rolls-Royce Trent 556 turbofans
  • Cruising Speed: Mach 0.83 (885 km/h, 550 mph)
  • First Flight: October 25, 1991
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Today in Aviation

January 27

  • 2010 – Death of Lee Andrew Archer Jr. American Fighter aircraft pilot in the African-American WWII unit the Tuskegee Airmen, first African American military aviators in the United States Army Air Corps earning the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
  • 2002 – Boeing’s 737, the world’s most widely use twin jet, becomes the first jetliner in history to amass more than 100 million flying hours. The 737 was launched onto the market 1965.
  • 2002 – Shelkovskaya Mil Mi-8 crash in Chechnya killed 14 people, including senior Russian officers, among them the deputy Interior Minister Mikhail Rudchenko.
  • 2001 – The Oklahoma State University men’s basketball team plane crash occurred when a Beechcraft Super King Air 200, registration N81 PF carrying the Oklahoma State University basketball team, crashed near Strasburg, Colorado. The pilot had become disoriented in a snow storm. The plane was flying from Jefferson County Airport to Stillwater Regional Airport after a game against the Colorado Buffaloes men’s basketball. The plane was carrying two players, as well as the pilot and members of the media. There was a total of 10 fatalities.
  • 1998 – A Myanma Airways Fokker F27 crashed while taking off from Yangon, Myanmar killing 16 of the 45 people on board.
  • 1997 – Death of Cecil Arthur Lewis, British WWI flying ace, Vickers Instructor for Chinese pilots. Last surviving WWI ace, He co-founded the BBC and enjoyed a long career as a writer.
  • 1992 – Death of Harold Edgar Mott, Canadian WWI flying ace.
  • 1991 – Two U. S. Air Force F-15 C Eagles of the 53rd Tactical Fighter Squadron shoot down two Iraqi MiG-23 s and two Iraqi Mirage F1 s 60-100 miles (97-161 km) south of Baghdad using Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles. United States Central Command claims that Iraqi naval losses thus far in the Gulf War total one oil platform, two patrol boats, one tanker, and four unidentified ships presumed sunk and four mine warfare ships, one hovercraft, three patrol boats, and two unidentified vessels confirmed as sunk. Coalition aircraft have inflicted most of the losses.
  • 1989 – Thomas Sopwith, British aviation pioneer, dies (b. 1888). In June 1912 Sopwith with Fred Sigrist and others set up The Sopwith Aviation Company. The company produced key British World War I aircraft, most famously the Sopwith Camel.
  • 1985 – Landed: Space Shuttle Discovery STS-51-C at 21:23:23 UTC. KSC, Runway 15. Mission highlights: First classified Department of Defense (DoD) mission; Magnum satellite deployment.
  • 1983 – Five are killed and eight injured when a USAF Boeing B-52G-90-BW Stratofortress, 57-6507, c/n 464212, of the 319th Bomb Wing, catches fire due to an overheated fuel pump and explodes at 0930 hrs. on the ramp at Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota. The Stratofortress was undergoing routine fuel cell maintenance after flying a training mission the previous night.
  • 1973 – A ceasefire agreement between the United States, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam ends U. S. participation in the Vietnam War. Since January 1962, the United States Armed Forces have lost 3,339 fixed-wing aircraft in Southeast Asia, 2,430 of them in combat. American aircraft have shot down 200 enemy aircraft in exchange for 76 of their own lost in air-to-air combat. The United States has also lost 4,870 helicopters in Southeast Asia, 2,588 of them in combat.
  • 1973 – A U. S. Navy F-4 Phantom II from USS Enterprise (CVA(N)-65) piloted by Lieutenant Commander Harley Hall is shot down over South Vietnam near the Demilitarized Zone. It is the last American fixed-wing aircraft lost in the Vietnam War.
  • 1971 – Death of Norman William Reginald ‘Bill’ Mawle, British WWI flying ace.
  • 1967 – Apollo 1 launchpad fire kills three U.S. astronauts. Apollo 1 is the official name that was later given to the never-flown Apollo/Saturn 204 (AS-204) mission. Its command module, CM-012, was destroyed by fire during a test and training exercise at Pad 34 (Launch Complex 34, Cape Canaveral, then known as Cape Kennedy) atop a Saturn IB rocket. The crew aboard were the astronauts selected for the first crewed Apollo program mission: Command Pilot Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee. Although the ignition source of the fire was never conclusively identified, the deaths were attributed to a wide range of lethal design hazards in the early Apollo command module. Among these were the use of a high-pressure 100 percent-oxygen atmosphere for the test, wiring and plumbing flaws, inflammable materials in the cockpit (such as Velcro), an inward-opening hatch that would not open in this kind of an emergency and the flight suits worn by the astronauts.
  • 1967 – The Outer Space Treaty, outlawing nuclear weapons in space, was signed by the United States, the UK and the USSR.
  • 1953 – A point to point record between London and Mauripur in Karachi starts with Flight Lieutenant L. M. Whittington and Flight Lieutenant J. A. Brown in an English Electric Canberra.
  • 1951 – First test of operation Ranger. For ‘Able’ test, A B-50 drops a 5 Kiloton Bomb over Nevada test site for Testing compression against critical mass.
  • 1947 – United States Army Air Force Silverplate Boeing B-29-36-MO Superfortress, 44-65385, of the 428th Base Unit, Kirtland Army Air Field, New Mexico, for Los Alamos bomb development testing, crashed immediately after take-off from Kirtland on routine maintenance test flight. No specific cause is documented - a fire in one engine and the pilot's failure to compensate for loss of power is believed to have caused the accident. Twelve crew KWF.
  • 1945 – Twentieth Air Force B-29 s based at Calcutta bomb Saigon, French Indochina.
  • 1944 – The Japanese have 150 operational aircraft in the Marshall Islands.
  • 1943 – The USAAF makes its first daylight raid on Germany over Wilhelmshaven. 91 B-17 s and B-24 s attack the U-Boat construction yards.
  • 1943 – (27-28) For the first time, Oboe-equipped British Mosquitos leading the way for a British raid on Düsseldorf drop ground markers rather than sky markers to guide follow-on Pathfinder aircraft, clearly improving British night-bombing accuracy over that experienced before.
  • 1941 – First combined operation between Malta’s reconnaissance and strike aircraft. German vessel Ingo (3,950 tons) is sunk by the Fairey Swordfish of No.830 and No.806 Squadrons Fleet Air Arm.
  • 1939 – First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, a WWII American Twin-engine, single seat fighter aircraft. It had distinctive twin booms and a single, central nacelle containing the cockpit and armament.
  • 1929 – First flight of the Saunders A.10, a private venture prototype four-gun fighter. single-seat, single-engined biplane.
  • 1928 – First rigid airship to aircraft carrier mooring is achieved when United States Navy (USN) dirigible (steerable airship) ‘Los Angeles’ moors to USS Sagatoga while the latter vessel is at sea.
  • 1928 – Death of Walbanke Ashby Pritt, British WWI flying ace.
  • 1927 – First flight of the Douglas T2D, an American twin engine torpedo bomber contracted by the military, and required to be usable on wheels or floats, and operating from aircraft carriers. first twin-engined aircraft to be operated from an aircraft carrier.
  • 1920 – Death of Louis Honore Martin, French WWI flying ace.
  • 1920 – Birth of Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, Japanese WWII fighter ace.
  • 1912 – Birth of Francis Melvin Rogallo, American aeronautical engineer inventor credited with the invention of the Rogallo wing, or “flexible wing”, a precursor to the modern hang glider and paraglider.
  • 1906 – Death of Stanley Spencer, early English aeronaut, famous for ballooning and parachuting in several countries.
  • 1905 – Death of Paul Haenlein, German engineer and flight pioneer.
  • 1898 – Birth of Charles Roger Lupton, British WWI flying ace.
  • 1897 – Birth of Kurt Wüsthoff, German WWI fighter ace, 2nd youngest winner of Germany’s highest decoration for valor, the Pour le Merite or Blue Max, Aerobatic pilot and flying advertiser.
  • 1897 – Birth of Rudolf Friedrich Otto Windisch, German WWI flying ace.
  • 1895 – Birth of Thomas Rose, DFC, British Flying Ace in WWI.
  • 1894 – Captain B. F. S. Baden-Powel (the brother of the first Chief Boy Scout) makes a kite ascent from Pirbright Army Camp, England in what appears to be the first use of man-carrying kites outside China.

References

  1. ^ "Accident description". Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved 17 September 2009.
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