Joel Fehr

November 4th 2015

ECF 40S

Flight Journal Response:

For my second book of the English Major Assignment, I read Flight by H. Guyford
Stever and James J. Haggerty. It was a great book for me, and I learnt a lot more in depth about
flight principles and physics that make flight possible.
The first book I read, "The Complete History of Aviation from Ballooning to Supersonic
Flight, talked about the history and development over the years of aviation as the title suggests.
Flight fits in perfectly after the first book by continuing to advance my knowledge of aviation.
The first book had only a small section about controls and flight principles. It didnt go into
many details on them, it just barely scraped the surface, whereas Flight goes in depth into all
the principles. It focuses more on educating the reader on what makes flight possible.
In this journal, I am going to share a bit about what I learnt from this book, including
some interesting things I did not previously know. All of what Im about to share, are things that
I personally enjoyed or that will assist me in my future dream of becoming a pilot.
From reading this book, I gained a greater understanding on how and why airplanes fly.
Throughout the book, I learnt just how amazing flight actually is. An example of this is in
chapter 2, where it tells of the four essentials to flight: aerodynamics (considered The Queen of
the Flight Sciences pg. 62), propulsion, structure, and control. These four delicately work with
the airs physics, and principles to lift aircraft from the earths gravitational forces. Another cool
thing I learnt, goes by the name Dihedral. I had never heard of this term until chapter 2 (pg.
36-37). Dihedral is the slant or upward angle of the airplanes wings. If an aircraft rolls left, the
left wing lowers, and the other tilts up. The lowered wing relative to the wind, is now at a higher
angle of attack compared to the raised wing. The airplane often rolls back to balanced and even
flight due to the increase in lift.
Another one of the many things I took away from reading Flight, would be Bernoullis
principle. I didnt know of many principles, other than some of Newtons principles from science
class, so learning another was interesting. On page 53, in brief, it states that depending on the
speed of a moving liquid or gas, the pressure of the liquid or gas changes. If the liquid or gas is
sped up it decreases in pressure. This principle explains how an aircraft wing gets its lift. The
wing is shaped like half a teardrop (pg. 53/54), so air traveling over the top curve moves faster
and farther, to match with air moving along the straight bottom. Having the air on top move
faster, as the principle states, decreases the pressure above while the bottom stays the same and
from this difference, lift occurs.
The lift, with the forward motion, generates drag. I learned that there are three basic types
of drag: friction, form, and induced. (pg. 55-57). Friction and form drag are only caused because
of the aircraft moving through the air. Induced drag however, is the consequence of creating lift.
It has to do with Bernoullis principle, as talked about in the paragraph above. The air over the
wing, and the air below form different pressures, having that difference in pressure creates a
downwash. The high pressure air is attracted up toward the low pressure air and mixed, and as a
result creates two spiral vortices. These vortices and downwash produce a rearward force, which

Joel Fehr
November 4th 2015
ECF 40S

in turn is overcome by the aircraft engines forward power. Friction drag has the possibility of
being overcome, however form and induced drag effects can only be reduced.
I knew that jet engines got pushed forward by their exhaust, but I didnt know much on
how they work. On page 84-85 I learned that there are three types of jet engines: turbojet,
turbofan, and ramjet engines. The turbojet and turbofan are similar, but the ramjet is quite
different. For the turbojet engine, air goes in, then is compressed, and then forced inside the
combustion chamber to ignite after mixing with fuel. The expanding mixture rushes out the back
of the engine as exhaust, which turns the compressors turbine, and propels the aircraft forward.
The turbofan, or bypass engine, can let higher amounts of air through the engine, compared to
the turbojet. As the nickname bypass engine suggests, half the air goes through the middle of the
engine, to be compressed, ignited and expand, while the other portion of the air is directed
around the engine to meet the portion of mixture that traveled through the engine. This method
gives the engine better fuel efficiency, and more power. The third engine, the ramjet, is my
personal favorite. The ramjet engine has no compressor or turbine, therefore it doesnt contain
any moving parts! The engine is shaped specifically so that the incoming air is stuffed, or
rammed into the combustion chamber, and from this it is hot enough to ignite with the fuel, and
burn into exhaust for thrust. The drawback is that it can only operate well at high speeds, so ways
of combining the types of jet engines are being developed to take care of this issue.
I was interested on two photo essays throughout the book. The cockpit: a crowded
command post (pg.108-121), and Controlling the aerial highways (pg.130-143). The first
would have to have been the best. It told of all the controls in the cockpit of an aircraft,
specifically the 707 airliner. It showed how all controls were grouped into areas, which I never
knew. It makes sense though to have them grouped, so that everything isnt randomly placed all
over. On every page, details were given about one of the grouped areas. From there they
discussed the four most important instruments on the panel, which assists the pilot in case he
cannot see out of the window. The airspeed dial, shows how fast youre travelling. The horizon
director indicator, shows the aircrafts attitude in the air, relative to the horizon (left/right turns,
and climb/descent). The course deviation indicator, is a compass to notify if the plane is on or off
course. And the last is the altimeter, which shows the aircrafts height in thousands of feet. The
second gave me an interesting picture, which I never thought about before. The air is like
highways. There are lower levels for smaller aircraft, and higher levels for jets. The airplanes
follow a specific route, just like a car on a road trip. To stay on that highway there are radio
transmitters to guide the airplane along. A cool tool used is the instrument landing system (ILS)
which show bearing, distance, and altitude. When an aircraft is landing the controller sees this
information and can let the pilot know if hes on or off the glide slope, to land safely.
Because the book was written in 1965, some of the technologies are a little older, but are
still in use today. Microvision is one of these things. I find it amazing how if the pilot cannot see,
the system places a realistic picture in front of the pilot to mirror the runway through the cockpit
window by using electronic beacons. These send signals to the aircraft receiver to produce the
image. It was quite cool reading what the writers had to say about the future airplanes. When
they were writing this book the Concorde, which was a supersonic aircraft that could travel twice
the speed of sound, was still being developed (pg.176+189). Today, we already know how it

Joel Fehr
November 4th 2015
ECF 40S

turned out. The Concorde made it 27 years in service, and then was taken out of service in 2003.
Various reasons contributed to this, including: low amounts of passengers, aged and dated
technology, and maintenance costs that were too high. There is talk that the Concorde could
come back as soon as 2019 if all goes well. A group has raised $186 million to bring back one of
the aircraft, so it is possible, but as many say, it takes more than just the money.
After learning all of this new information, I can see how I will be able to use it in my
personal life. From reading this book I now know now more of the logistics on how airplanes
work and how they function. Along with this, I also learnt some flight lingo that I didnt
previously know, such as: zero-zero, which means there is no ceiling or visibility and S.O.B,
which is the term for how many souls are on the aircraft. All of this information is valuable to me
personally, because I have an interest in one day being a pilot. Being able to learn some of the
terms and physics of flight will really give me a head start when entering flight school. With all
this in line, my passion for flight has grown through reading this book because I now have more
insight into the world of aviation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Retirement
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/21/travel/concorde-return-to-flight/