Do Pilots Understand How An Airfoil Generates LIft? (Survey Says...)

[Martin Pauly]

One of the worst ideas in pilot training was deciding to force student pilots to try to understand Bernoulli. A cambered wing is interesting optimization for aeronautical engineers to discuss, but has zero value for simply learning to fly a plane — better to teach about pitch stability, yaw-roll coupling, etc. if you're going to dive into theory, because at least they have some practical application to flying a plane.

Agreed. We can have a lot of very meaningful and very applicable conversation with pilots about lift and drag, and about how lift and drag depend on relative wind/airspeed/angle of attack and other parameters. That is useful to know. How precisely this lift is generated is less important, in my opinion. We can do a lot of good by simply accepting that it IS generated, and quickly move on to the more useful (for pilots) concepts of how we influence it and what we can do with it.

- Martin

 

[IK04]

Helicopter pilots don't ask these silly questions.

 

[RingLaserGyroSandwich]

The FAA is quite complicit in proliferating confusion on this topic.

 

[bflynn]

Helicopter pilots don't ask these silly questions.

Those who know not and know not that they know not....

 

[Piperonca]

Those who know not and know not that they know not....

Actually, it's that dark fatalistic outlook most professional helo pilots seem to have--concerned more about dynamics than aerodynamics: "is this thing gonna shake itself apart if I lose a blade tip?" Will the blades seize up if I lose transmission fluid? Rotor speed in the green is about all the aero I need for working low and slow, near Mother Earth. Don't trouble me with the details.
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"The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by its very nature wants to fly and, if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other and, if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance, the helicopter stops flying, immediately and disastrously.

"There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.

"This is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why, in general, airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts, and helicopter pilots are brooders, introspective anticipators of trouble. They know if something bad has not happened, it is about to."

Harry Reasoner
February 16, 1971