An aircraft has four basic "forces" acting on it during flight.

These can be visualized as vector components--like arrows pointing in the direction of the force taking into account the magnitude of the force.

In straight and level flight, where the aircraft is not turning or ascending or descending, the four forces are equal--canceling each other out to keep the airplane in the air. To achieve this, and airplane uses its engines to produce thrust to counteract aerodynamic drag--and it uses its wings to counteract gravity.

The four forces listed are Thrust, Lift, Drag, Gravity/Weight.

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An airplane has three control methods: Aileron (also flaperons), elevator, and rudder. They are controlled with the control yoke and floor pedals (which tilt for the brakes.)

Elevator:


By pulling the yoke toward one's body, the aircraft will pitch upward--pushing the yoke away will cause a pitch downward.

This changes the attitude of the aircraft, as indicated by the attitude indicator.




Aileron:

By turning the yoke like you would a car's steering wheel, it will cause the airplane to roll from side to side. This happens because when one turns the yoke to the right, the aileron on the left wing raises and causes that wing to drop--and the right aileron lowers, causing it to ascend.


The result of the turn can be seen in the attitude indicator--which will tell you the degree of the roll. For a shallow turn, a 5-15 degree turn; for a medium turn, 15-30; for a steep turn, 45 to 90 degrees is used.

Rudder:

The pedals on the floor are pressed in the direction of the yaw desired.


The rudder is a very important control surface--it can cause skids and slips and also to maintain a coordinated turn. Aircraft use "forward slips" to slow down, and "side slips" to line up for landing in cross-winds. A forward slip can be used for an emergency descent to regulate speed--full rudder to one side, aileron in the opposite direction--the flight path remains forward, but the aircraft is then pointing several degrees away causing great aerodynamic drag. This drag is compensated by converting altitude into speed--thus a very fast descent is initiated.



In windy conditions, an airplane's flight path is often a few or more degrees away from the direction of the aircraft--the airplane appears to be flying crooked. That is called "crabbing." On landing in a cross wind, an airplane "crabs" toward the runway, but it cannot land in a crab angle (some can, but most do not), thus the aircraft will roll into the wind and then use rudder to counteract the turn--the side slip points the airplane in the direction of the flight path along the runway, allowing it to land while pointing forward.



If the wind gets underneath the wing of the aircraft during an unsuccessful side slip, a ground loop can result:



Turning:

A turn is initiated by using the ailerons to roll the airplane into the desired angle.

This initial move results in two things: Adverse yaw and loss of lift.

Thinking in terms of vector components as above, lift is always perpendicular to the wings--because the wings produce the lift. When the aircraft rolls, so do the wings, thus the lift component is also angled the same as the bank. Gravity, however, continues to pull down at a (mostly) constant angle--straight downwards. Due to the loss of lift component, the airplane will begin to descend upon turning.

 

Thus slight elevator pressure is necessary to increase the lift component--this counteracts the tendency to sink. The turn occurs because of the tilting of the lift component, it gives power to the horizontal component--the airplane will turn. This causes a resultant load, plus the extra lift of the elevator, can cause a change in how gravity is experienced--in a 60 degree turn requiring higher elevator input, one's own weight will be experienced as twice or greater than it is standing on the ground. A 160 lbs pilot would feel like 320lbs or more in a steep turn.

And so one needs muscle, as well as money, to fly.

When you turn an airplane by twisting the yoke, the turn does not start immediately--this is due to adverse yaw.

When a turn is initiated, one aileron becomes elevated while the other drops. This changes the chord of the airfoil--a higher angle of attack and greater drag is experienced by the wing with the "down" aileron. This makes the airplane yaw in the opposite direction of the roll--adverse yaw.

Adverse yaw makes a turn uncoordinated. An uncoordinated turn is at least imprecise, and at most fatal.

To make the turn coordinated again, rudder is applied also in the direction of the turn--by using the turn coordinator to gauge when the aircraft is in a coordinated turn.




The little ball must be kept between the lines to keep the aircraft coordinated--if it goes to the left, hit the left pedal, and on the right, step the right pedal. It doesn't make much. There are times when this instrument is unreliable, however....

The 1930 Chevy Coupe needed a lot of work, even being only 5 years old. One had to make constant adjustments to critical engine components--tedious work involving shims and getting doused by rancid motor oil. Often the sons would do this work...the parents didn't know English so the only point in going into town was for business and occasionally for father to play concerts for the people of Mott or New Leipzig, even then a son was needed to translate for father. The sons, however, had places to go all the time; and so the Coupe was kept running in order most of the year.


The sons learned to drive as soon as they could see over the wheel and press the pedals. The oldest brothers learned first, they were all only a couple years in age difference. They all took an interest in dancing and young women around the same time--the coupe, sometimes taking hours to repair, was a better ride into Mott than walking. A car would give them an edge.

And so they would ride into Mott or New Leipzig every weekend night after dinner for a dance, a gathering of youth around the county. They put on white button shirts, ties, suspenders, wool trousers. They would arrive a few hours before sunset in summer and return around midnight--it was closer to midnight when they returned because of the Coupe. Otherwise it was two or three when they walked to six miles back from Mott.

In the backseat of the Coupe they laid Thomas' .22 Long Rifle, das Gewehr, more comfortable to speak their first language to family than the English they had to speak outside the family.

On the ten to fifteen minute drive down the washboard road to Mott they passed around das Gewehr and fired from the windows of the moving coupe at small game--rabbits, prairie dogs, pigeons grazing, fence posts, rocks, retired threshers, grass, dirt, hills.

After four miles they would encounter the Mongrel. Mongrel was a mixed-breed dog with a very bad disposition. He chased their horses on the way to Mott, he chased the car and tried to bite the tires. Snarling and barking all the way for a quarter mile. First on the way to Mott, and then again on the return late at night.

One summer evening on the ride to Mott, Mongrel came running up to the car, barking and biting at the car.

They tried to speed up, and so did Mongrel. Mongrel nipped at the tire, brother Tom saw, and flew into a furious rage "He could have popped the tire, will you just run him over already, Leonard?"

"He gets out of the way, " Leonard said factually--as if he had tried before when Thomas was too young to remember.

"Then..." Thomas reached down for das Gewehr, picking it up by barrel near the muzzle BANG.

The side of the window blew out, Leonard hit the brakes hard to see what happened. Mongrel ran away. Thomas had been shot.

They all turned slowly to see, Thomas yelled in pain--the bullet went straight through his bicep and out the other side and threw the window. My grandfather picked up the rifle, pulled the bolt to expel the casing and load a new round and fired once more from the window at Mongrel as he ran away. He missed.

Leonard hit the gas and raced into Mott for the doctor. The doctor was on his way home. He looked at the arm and gave them bandages to keep the wound covered, then told him to return on Monday for a check up.

The brothers drove Thomas back home, his arm swelling massively.

From that night on, the Mongrel stayed in the ditch to bark at the coupe with the brothers inside--and they never shot at him again.

I'm not sure whether to write a ton of scavenger hunt posts or go hide until everyone else is done. So much to read!

Scavenger Hunt #29, Write something that scares you.

"Do you ever feel," he smiled broadly and enthusiastically gestured, "like you're a superhero, on top of the world, invincible and nothing can bring you down?"

"No, I haven't felt like that."

"Ok, have you ever felt so low you've thought about committing suicide?"

"Not really," though I had considered it, I knew I couldn't do it. It wasn't something I'd felt often, when I was younger it felt like it could just happen and become true, that I'd lose control and it would just happen. But I had to tell myself things don't just happen. And the thing that is making me disappear cannot make me do it willingly, it wasn't logical. But it was maddening still. I would go completely mad before I die, and then it would matter. I would endure being broken apart first.

"And so these episodes, we'll just call them that" he started. I didn't have a name for it. The general practice doctor didn't know. The neurologist didn't know. The therapists, the psychiatrists didn't know.

"Yes...I just feel really weird. Things look strange."

"How do things look? Do you see things that are not there?"

"No. Everything is the same, exactly the same. When it happens, I am clearly aware of everything around me. I know the time, who the president is, I can do arithmetic. I can even pretend it isn't happening for a short moment or two before things are intolerable."

"I see...so things look the same, but different?"

"Yes, it is like everything is turned up, the volume, everything looks grainy like when you turn up the sharpness on a television display and you see every tiny detail over-emphasized. But it's still the same. I don't actually see things any better."

"And you feel weird?"

"Yea, like I got injected with Novocaine all over my body. My hands feel like their not their usual size, like that. I lose sense of proportion. I feel like I'm shrinking away inside my body. Every movement and every sensation reminds me of how numb I am all over that I shrink farther and farther. Like I will eventually disappear. And I don't be here anymore."

"Can you cause this episode?"

"No...I would have to do something to set it off."

"Is there anything I can do, would you be willing to try it?"

"Not now. It isn't scary...just annoying. Scary at first, though."

"What would happen if you were to experience this right now? What would I see?"

"I might pause, look like I'm stuck, like a computer that has to reboot for an instant. Then I might appear normal again, you wouldn't know I'm having it. I might stop occasionally when I feel overwhelmed. But then continue until I get completely stuck."

"And what happens then?"

"I get too close to disappearing. So I have to move somewhere where I can rest and let it ease up for a while."

I might be calmly walking outside, or in a grocery store, or walmart. And then it hits me. And I cannot function. I cannot walk, I don't want to sit. I cannot speak. Things sound different, intolerable. There is no where to sit anyway. The place is so large...I cannot sense proportion. I feel larger, numb from Novocaine, but shrinking away into nothingness in a place even larger than I've become.

And for years it hits me, everyday it is a struggle. And for years I fight it. I live my life anyway...and so I experience it again and again. It becomes a way of life. I avoid strange things that set it off.

My angst and frustrations increase. I start to have other stress-related symptoms and the madness feels like it has an open window through which to creep in.

And then one day I learn the word depersonalization. And it has a name.

I run to my other doctor, frantic and elated and full of energy "I finally found its name!" I tell her, excitedly.

"Oh...yes. I have a lot of patients with that. I never figure it out, they always do. And they run in, excited like you and handfuls of paper on depersonalization."

I wasn't alone, I had an edge now. She tells me, in my case, it will be a matter of reasoning--of cognition. I can avoid medication if I so wish--I would only take it to manage the potential for madness as a result, anyway. And I had years left before that.

But how is it a matter of reasoning? It just hits me instantly...well...it was just a matter of reasoning.

But what if I had given up and accepted a slow onset of madness? What if I had given up before then? My fear had always been disappearing suddenly--and it still is; how it was possible at one time to really happen.

This is my first entry on Guide for the Perplexed. It has been brought to my attention that this is waaaay too ambitious a reading schedule, so I will stretch it over another month to make it easier on us all. It is understandable if people could only get down a handful of chapters for now--post on what I can. A revised schedule is coming soon.

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I am not a theologian or a master of language or in interpreting text, and thus this first reading of mine is more of a personal reaction and I'll look at it from my point of view.

These initial chapters are fascinating to my nonetheless, to see this description and explanation of Hebrew words as they are used in the bible to set up for a view of God as a non-anthropomorphic and how we are to define God. It is a line of proof and reasoning that starts with definition, or identity, as is common to Aristotelian tradition--and paralleled in mathematics. This I admire, though being atheistic myself and generally uninterested in language for the sake of it--Moses Maimonides makes this interesting for me. His investigations in language and conceptual identity are profound for a medieval thinker, in my view. It is logical in a way that few philosophers, much less religious philosophers, have accomplished in their own writing.

I can see from the beginning the influences to be found in Aquinas.

The beginning of the fifth chapter was especially profound--in it he set his approach to be similar to Aristotle; that his own prejudices of emotion and irrationality and whim to be set aside in a passion for truth, in reality as it is. One must be knowledgeable, in possession of his mind, and understand that there is a hierarchy to man's approach to understanding reality as it is.

This is big--for this period of human history, it is very big.

Overall, I have found this to be exhaustive in its study of Hebrew language as it applies to the bible. And how to read it according to Maimonides. I have read a few other theological hermeneutics and they have been of a much smaller scale than this work, so I am impressed from the standpoint of a philosopher who sees a more principled approach to ideas. It is rare to see philosophers list all the waypoints navigated by a thinker in arriving at an idea to this degree. I feel part of this is due to Aristotelian attitudes possessed by Maimonides as well as an attempt to keep his discourse from direct public viewing--it is logical in its method, though precise and exhaustive, which is best appreciated by an intellectual audience. That audience listened, as history has shown.

This was a post for the Guide for the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides reading group, to read more posts by participants in the group visit the group schedule here: http://tjordanm.xanga.com/714036885/moses-maimonides-reading.