1. From reader Ed Drury: Electrically powered aircraft are being developed in increasing numbers, but what was the first successful flight of an electrically powered, man-carrying aircraft?
2. Why was it often desirable during World War II for flight crews to include someone who was colorblind?
3. From reader David Paule: The word “seaplane” was coined by
A. William Boeing.
B. Winston Churchill.
C. Glenn Curtiss.
D. Theodore Roosevelt.
4. Ground-based radio aids for navigation in the United States are identified using letters of the alphabet. Which of the following letters are not used to begin the identification of any navaid?
A. Q and W
B. K and Z
C. Q and Z
D. K and W
5. From reader John Schmidt: While in Terminal C at Newark Liberty International Airport, you bump into a fellow pilot and ask, “Where will you be eating?” The pilot responds by saying, “It’s classified.” Where will this person be dining?
6. What is the origin of the word aviation?
7. The first country to build and launch a ship designed from the outset to be an aircraft carrier was
A. England.
B. France.
C. Japan.
D. the United States.
8. Why can taildraggers typically be made to slip more steeply (and have steeper descent angles) than aircraft with tricycle landing gear?
Test Pilot Answers
- In 1884, two French military officers built and flew the La France, a 170-foot-long Renard Krebs non-rigid airship (blimp) powered by an 8-horsepower, battery-powered motor. (A steam-powered airship had been flown 32 years earlier.)
- As aerial observers, they could detect camouflage based on color-blending deception more easily than crewmembers with normal vision.
- B. In his 1923 book, The World Crisis, Churchill—then head of the admiralty—wrote that the Royal Naval Air Service used “hydro-aeroplanes, or seaplanes as I christened them for short.” In the United States they had been called hydroplanes.
- A. Q and W
- “Classified” is the name of a secret, exclusive restaurant at KEWR that accommodates only 36 elite clients. It is located behind a store, and you enter through what appears to be the door to a storage closet. It is uncertain how you can wrangle an invitation.
- Aviation is a French word derived from the Latin, avis, which means bird.
- C. The Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō was commissioned in 1922. America’s first purpose-built aircraft carrier was the USS Ranger (commissioned in 1934).
- Because of their directional instability on the ground, taildraggers typically are provided with larger, more effective rudders. These make it possible to enter and maintain larger slip angles.
