Peter Garrison There may still be something to say about it. A few years ago, a sightseeing flight crashed in the Swiss Alps, killing all 20 aboard. The Junkers Ju-52 was attempting to cross a 10,000-foot saddle from south to north. The wind was out of the north, gusting toRead More →
Jean-Claude was in the left seat. He was senior to me, but I was flying. We were near the Equator, where Mermoz and Guillaumet – salut, old comrades! – had once flown. But they, poor fellows, had not been at 35,000 feet! We entered the clouds at what looked likeRead More →
Peter Garrison The Staggerwing was the climax, and the end, of an era. Late in 1932, the newly formed Beech Aircraft Company flew its first product, a five-seat biplane with a 420-hp radial engine and fixed landing gear enclosed in huge fairings. Walter Beech gave it model number 17, sinceRead More →
Peter Garrison An explanation is a collage in which bits and pieces of the familiar combine to make an image of the unfamiliar. The more obscure the thing being explained, the more numerous and remote the elements that comprise the explanation. It’s a wonder we understand anything at all. IRead More →
In 1945, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, precursor of NASA and source of much of our knowledge about practical aerodynamics, published a hefty compendium of aerofoil data, NACA Technical Report 824, which later appeared in book form under the title Theory of Wing Sections. The names of the authors,Read More →
Peter Garrison Someone once suggested that if you want to know how you would feel crossing an ocean in a single-engine aeroplane, you should just fly out to sea for a couple of hours and then turn around and come back. There’s something about being out of sight of landRead More →
After 20 years of flying my second homebuilt, preceded by 9 years in my first, I wish I could say that most things that can go wrong already have; but the gods might think me insolent. At this point, however, I can at least say what has worked and whatRead More →
Peter Garrison ‘Hinge moment’ is the technical name for the force required to deflect a control surface. In small, relatively slow aeroplanes hinge moments are not very large; pilots move the controls with ease. But as control surfaces get larger and speeds get higher, hinge moments grow rapidly. Hinge momentsRead More →
Block that Coefficient! I have to admit that when I encounter equations in a book, I usually just skip over them. Often some phrase like, “It may be readily seen that…” precedes them, and so I figure that since plenty of other people must be readily seeing whatever there isRead More →
My son Nick, who was screening a series of classic films for his friends, put on the 1981 Spielberg pulse-pounder, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which came out in the year he was born and therefore stood to him, in terms of the history of film and the decline ofRead More →
