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[Shiv]

For those of you interested in how an aircraft actually works and all that fun stuff, this is gonna be the thread for you! We'll touch on various different things, starting with something we like to call "principles of flight". Eventually, we'll get into various other things, maybe even going so far as navigation and meteorology. Hopefully, this will help everyone understand the physics and such behind this whole thing we're doing, and maybe give you a new insight for future roleplaying. So, we're going to start with the basics, with:

The Four Forces Acting on an Aircraft

If we disregard the inner workings of engines and such for the moment, there are four forces that act on an aircraft in motion; four things that make an aircraft move. These forces are lift, weight, thrust and drag.

Lift moves the aircraft upward and is required to sustain it in flight.

Weight (sometimes referred to as gravity) is a downward force directly opposed to lift. The centre of gravity is the point through which weight acts downward.

Thrust is the forward motion of the aircraft produce by the engine, be it jets, propellers or rockets. It is based on Newton's third law of motion; the engine pushes (or pulls) the air toward the rear of the aircraft, causing it to move forward.

Drag is the resistance to thrust and is usually caused by friction between the aircraft and the air flowing around it.

Equilibrium refers to an aircraft in stable motion when lift equals weight and thrust equals drag. It is often referred to as being in straight and level flight. If lift is greater than weight, the aircraft will continue to ascend, while if weight is greater than lift the aircraft descends. Acceleration occurs when thrust is greater than drag, if drag exceeds thrust, the aircraft will continue to slow.

[Frosty]

I'm breaking in on this thread with a link that some players might find useful. Here is a glossary (admittedly incomplete) of military pilot terms.