Category Aviation

WHAT IS MISSING MAN FORMATION?

A missing man formation is executed by the fighter pilots of a country’s Air Force. It is an aerial manoeuvre that honours a colleague who has died or is missing in action. The manoeuvre is also carried out for astronauts and Heads of State.

The practice originated in World War I. Britain’s Royal Air Force pilots returning from battle would fly in strict formation to alert the ground crew of their arrival. The ground crew recognised the formations and would note the missing aircraft. This warned them of the number of pilots who had been brought down.

The first pilot to be honoured with an official missing man formation was Baron von Richthofen, a German flying ace known as the Red Baron. Pilots put on a spontaneous flyby with a missing aircraft. By 1938, the U.S. and other countries had adopted the practice, and it became common at the funerals of high-ranking military or government officers and at commemorations of war events.

A missing man formation can either lack one plane or have a pilot pull away from it when flying over the site of the funeral or memorial.

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WHO WAS AMELIA EARHART?

Amelia Earhart was an American aviator who set many flying records and championed the advancement of women in aviation. She became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and the first person ever to fly solo from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland.

Amelia Earhart didn’t flinch. The 21-year-old was attending an air show in Canada in 1918 when a stunt plane dived right toward her. But instead of running out of the way, she faced the plane down  hat wasn’t Earhart’s only brave moment. Born in Kansas on July 24, 1897, she volunteered during World War I starting in 1917, treating wounded Canadian soldiers returning from the European battlefields. Nearby were pilot practice fields, where she discovered her passion for flying.

“…decide…whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying…” said Amelia Earhart, and she lived her life based on her own words. As a child, she was known for her fierce independence, quite uncommon for girls of the era, and was full of adventure traits that would immortalise her, well after her death.

Ironically, when Earhart saw her first aircraft at the lowa State Fair in Des Moines, as a 10-year-old, her father tried to pique his daughters’ interest in taking their first flight. However, one look at the rickety thing and all she wanted to do was return to her merry-go-round for she found the plane to be “a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting”.

However, it seemed she was destined to take to the skies one way or the other for, when she was 23, on December 28, 1920, she and her father attended an aerial meet at Daugherty Field in Long Beach, California. After inquiring about flying lessons, she was booked for a passenger flight the following day, and the cost was $10 for a 10-minute flight with Frank Hawks. That ride changed her life forever, and in her book, Last Flight, she reveals how. “By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly.” Not too long after, she bought The Canary, her first plane, a second-hand yellow Kinner Airster.

Take off

On May 16, 1923, Earhart became the 16th woman in the U.S., to be issued a pilot’s license by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Soon after, a series of events led her to live in Medford, Massachusetts. Her interest in aviation strong as ever, she became a member of the American Aeronautical Society’s Boston chapter and was eventually elected its vice president. She also flew the first official flight out of Dennison Airport in 1927. She donned multiple hats as she penned local newspaper columns promoting flying. And as her interest grew, so did her fame. =

Then, in 1928, Earhart received a phone call from Capt. Hilton H. Railey, who asked her if she was interested in flying the Atlantic. Later, that year, she I was a passenger on a transatlantic flight and became the first woman to do so. Four years later, she set off on her own from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, to Paris. Though she landed in Ireland instead, because of weather conditions and mechanical failure, she was instrumental in setting two records she became the first woman and the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic. For this, she was awarded a gold medal from the National Geographic Society, presented by Herbert Hoover, then U.S. President.

In 1935, she added another feather to her cap, another first to her list of achievements –she became the first person to fly from Hawaii to the American mainland, thus, also becoming the first person to fly solo over the Pacific and consequently, the first to fly solo over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Final flight

Nowhere close to being done, in June 1937, she set forth on a J mission to circumnavigate the earth by air. In short, she aimed to fly around the world at the equator and thus become the first woman in the world to do so. With her new plane, Lockheed Electra, 39-year-old Earhart set off on the journey from Miami, the US, along with her navigator Fred Noonan After multiple stops along the way, including Karachi and Calcutta, on June 29, they landed in Lae, Papua New Guinea, with just 7,000 miles left in their journey, after which they took off on July 2 for Howland Island, about 2.500 miles from Lae. It was deemed the most challenging leg of their trip.

However, after a run-in with inclement weather and fading radio transmissions, all contact with the Electra was lost, for, the plane carrying Amelia and Noonan vanished. Search efforts went on till 1939, within which time, multiple speculations and theories had arisen about her disappearance. However, on January 5, 1939, Earhart was declared dead.

Earhart’s impact on women’s rights was unmissable, and throughout her life, she doggedly represented what she thought women ought to do and stand for. In 1935, she was an advisor to aeronautical engineering and a career counsellor to female students, at Purdue University. She was also a member of the National Woman’s Party and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. She remained an inspiration for women, silently motivating them to fly high, literally, and otherwise, while she lived, and much later too, decades after her death.

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WHY DO EARS POP IN A PLANE?

The popping sensation in the ears is caused by the effect of the changes in pressure and altitude. The most important part of the ear is the eardrum, a thin membrane separating the outer ear from the middle ear. Equal air pressure is maintained on both sides of the membrane by the Eustachian tube, a tube which connects the ear and the throat. Sudden changes in the air pressure like when going up or down in an aeroplane stretches the eardrum, causing discomfort. The Eustachian tube tries to normalise the pressure by forcing more air into the ear internally through. yawning or swallowing. This adjustment creates the popping sound which indicates that the air pressure is back to normal in the ear. Ears may pop even when you travel in a high speed elevator of a tall building or go scuba diving.

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HOW DID WRIGHT BROTHERS INVENTED THE AIRPLANE?

The Wright brothers need no introduction. Best known for achieving the first powered heavier-than-air craft flight, the Wright brothers obtained the patent for a “Flying Machine” on May 22, 1906.

The names of Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright will forever be intertwined with the history of flying machines. For, the Wright brothers were the first to achieve the flight of a powered heavier-than-air craft.

The elder of the two, Wilbur, was born in 1867 and was the third child in the Wright family. Orville was the sixth of seven children that his parents had. The seeds for an idea about flying were sown when Wilbur and Orville were still two young boys.

A toy that inspires

Their mother gave them a toy helicopter to play with. This little piece of wood that had two rubber bands to turn a propeller laid the foundation for a lifetime’s work.

Drawn towards flying, the Wright brothers spent plenty of time observing birds in flight. This allowed them to notice that lift was created when birds soared into the wind and the air flowed over the curved surface of their wings. They use this knowledge to build kites, which they even sold to their friends.

Cycling to aviation

As avid cyclists, Wilbur and Orville owned a bicycle shop as adults. Despite the fact that they had less than 10 years of combined high school education, the experience of building bicycles provided them the understanding of early engine design – be it using chains, sprockets, or ball bearings.

Years of riding a bicycle gave them ideas as to how they could control and balance an aircraft. Add to this the countless hours that they had spent observing flight in nature and they had the necessary knowledge and interest to get started.

By 1899, the Wright brothers ventured into flying. Between 1900 and 1902, they researched every aspect of flight, from roll, pitch, and yaw to the rudder, elevator, and performance of the wing. In order to test the aerodynamic qualities of wing models, they even developed the first wind tunnel. The brothers also worked on their own piloting skills by making over a thousand flights on a series of gliders at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Master a control system

Their years of trial and error allowed them to master their glider in all three axes of flight: pitch, roll, and yaw. While the pitch was operated by a forward elevator, their breakthrough discovery included the simultaneous use of roll control with wing-warping and yaw control with a rear rudder.

Even though they had just started conducting experiments with propellers and begun to build their own engines, they applied for a patent in March 1903 for their control system. They were granted U.S. Patent 821,393 for a “Flying Machine” on May 22, 1906. This patent is significant as it laid down a useful and modern means of controlling a flying machine, regardless of whether it was powered or not.

Not ones to be kept waiting, the Wright brothers had already made the first free, controlled, and sustained flights in a powered, heavier-than-air craft on a chilly day at Kitty Hawk, on December 17, 1903. With just a handful of others witnessing history, Orville stayed 12 seconds in the air and flew 120 feet in the first trial at 10.35 a.m. In the fourth and final trial of the day, Wilbur achieved the longest flight of 59 seconds in the air and reached a height of 852 feet. In a little over 100 years since then, human beings have flown farther and faster than ever before, and continue to progressively get better at it.

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What makes Russia a prominent country in space explorations?

Russia has achieved great heights in the field of space technology and space exploration, and its national space agency is known as Roscosmos. These achievements can be traced back to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who is known as the father of theoretical astronautics. His works inspired Soviet rocket engineers, such as Sergey Korolyov, Valentin Glushko, and many others to contribute immensely to the Soviet space programme in its early stages, leading to its participation in what is called the ‘Space Race’.

There is a name that one cannot forget in the history of space expeditions – Sputnik-1. In 1957, this satellite was launched by Russian scientists as the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. Later, in 1961, Yuri Gagarin made the first human trip into space. This was followed by a number of other Soviet and Russian space explorations, which include the journey of Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 to become the first woman in space. She flew alone in Vostok 6. Russia also holds the record for the first human to have conducted a spacewalk-in 1965, Alexei Leonov exited the space capsule of the mission Voskhod-2 and walked in space.

Can you guess what other records Russia has in this area? They sent the first animal into outer space. Travelling in Sputnik-2 in 1957, a dog named Laika became the first animal to orbit the Earth. In 1966, Luna-9, landed on the Moon, making it the first spacecraft to achieve a survivable landing on a celestial body. In 1968, Zond-5 completed the mission of circumnavigating the Moon with two tortoises and other life forms from Earth. Later, Russia’s Venera-7 became the first spacecraft to land on Venus. Following this achievement, Mars-3 became the first spacecraft to land on Mars in the very next year 1971. During this time, Russia also sent Lunokhod-1, which became the first space exploration rover. Salyut-1 became the world’s first space station, which was yet again a Russian project. As per the 2021 data, Russia had 167 active satellites in space, which is the world’s third-highest count.

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WHY ARE AIRCRAFT WINDOWS SO SMALL?

Large windows were found to weaken the structure of planes making them unsafe…

The de Havilland Comets were the first passenger jet airliners. They had large windows that allowed passengers a panoramic view of the outside. A series of aircraft crashes in 1954 led to an investigation it was found that weakening of the metal at the corners of the windows was causing a weakening of the whole structure of the plane, causing it to give way during flight.

The crashes stopped when the windows were re-designed Since then windows in all aircraft have been kept as small as possible. They are generally about 33cm high and have three panes-two pressure panes and one interior pane-that are contained in a window unit that is fastened and sealed to the aircraft structure.

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