1. True or false? Howard Hughes worked as a co-pilot for American Airways (a predecessor of American Airlines) in 1932.
2. Which of the following does not belong?
A. interference drag
B. form drag
C. parasite drag
D. skin friction
3. The Boeing B–29 Superfortress that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, the Enola Gay, is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum at Washington Dulles International Airport. Why does the clock on the pilot’s instrument panel indicate the time that it does?
4. A flamboyant and famous race pilot of the 1930s, _______ frequently took along as “co-pilot” his pet _______. The pet’s name was _______.
5. What place on Earth receives the greatest annual rainfall?
6. A pilot encounters a visibility restriction identified as VOG. In which state is he most likely flying?
7. Who is responsible for the following quotation? “Let’s get one thing straight. There’s a big difference between a pilot and an aviator. One is a technician; the other is an artist in love with flight.”
8. Everything else being equal, a properly inflated tire wears evenly across its tread. The tread wears more toward its center when the tire is _______ and more toward its shoulders when _______.
A. overinflated, overinflated
B. overinflated, underinflated
C. underinflated, overinflated
D. underinflated, underinflated
Test Pilot Answers
1. True. Age 27 and already a famous multimillionaire, he used the alias Charles Howard while working incognito. He held the job for two months “to satisfy the same aviation itch that later induced him to buy TWA,” he said.
2. The correct answer is C. The other three items are forms of parasite drag.
3. No, it does not indicate 0915, the local time at which the bomb was dropped. The time shown on the clock is the precise time at which the clock eventually and naturally stopped running on its own. (Sorry about that.)
4. Roscoe Turner’s pet lion was named Gilmore. Turner’s sponsor at that time was the Gilmore Oil Company, the logo of which was a lion.
5. Mawsynram, India, receives an average annual rainfall of 467 inches (13 times as much as Seattle).
6. The contraction VOG—volcanic “fog”—is heard mostly in Hawaii and was coined there to describe a visibility restriction caused by volcanic pollutants in the atmosphere.
7. Capt. Elrey B. Jeppesen, founder of the charting and flight data company that bears his name.
8. The correct answer is B. With respect to wear alone, a tire should be replaced when any of its internal fabric is visible or when any groove is worn to its base at any spot on the tire.
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