Aircraft Construction
What are the five major structural units of a fixed-wing aircraft airframe?
Fuselage, wings, stabilizers, flight control surfaces, and landing gear.
These devices convert hydraulic pressure into mechanical movement, powering things like landing gear or flight controls
What is hydraulic cylinders? (Actuators)
This type of aircraft engine converts chemical energy into mechanical energy using pistons moving back and forth in cylinders.
What is a reciprocating engine?
This four-part sequence—intake, compression, power, exhaust—describes the operating cycle of most GA engines.
What is a four stroke cycle
This instrument, along with the heading indicator, is the most common flight instrument powered by a vacuum or pressure system in GA aircraft.
What is attitude indicator?
What are the four major structural units of a rotary-wing (helicopter) aircraft?
Fuselage, landing gear, main rotor assembly, and tail rotor assembly.
This part of an aircraft hydraulic system stores fluid and helps prevent pump cavitation, often pressurized by bleed air.
What is a reservoir?
In this four-step operating cycle, the strokes occur in the order intake, compression, power, and exhaust.
What is a four stroke cycle?
This gauge displays manifold absolute pressure and is the primary indicator of engine power in constant-speed propeller aircraft.
What is manifold pressure gauge
These internal components of a dry vacuum pump self-lubricate as they rotate, but can fail if contaminated by particles, oil, or moisture.
What is graphite vanes?
What are the five basic stresses acting on an aircraft structure?
Tension, compression, shear, bending, and torsion.
This type of pump automatically adjusts output to maintain nearly constant system pressure and is the most common on large aircraft.
What is a variable displacement piston pump?
This common GA engine configuration has cylinders lying flat on either side of the crankcase, giving a small frontal area and high power-to-weight ratio.
What is a horizontally opposed engine?
This harmful condition occurs when the fuel-air mixture explodes instead of burning smoothly, often caused by an overly lean mixture.
What is detonation
Often the earliest sign of a pneumatic system malfunction, this gauge should be included in every pilot's instrument scan.
What is the suction (or pressure) gauge?
What is tension as it applies to an aircraft structure?
The stress of pulling or stretching an object with forces acting in opposite directions along the same straight line.
This safety device seals off a hydraulic line if pressure becomes too low, preventing total system fluid loss.
What is a hydraulic fuse?
This type of propeller has its blade pitch automatically varied in flight by a governor to maintain a selected rpm.
What is a constant speed propellor
By compressing intake air using exhaust-driven turbines, this system increases engine efficiency and high-altitude performance.
What is a turbocharger (turbosupercharger)?
Because these deadly events result from conflicting or misleading attitude information, they are the true cause of most fatal vacuum-system–related accidents.
What is spatial disorientation
What are the main structural members of a wing that carry the primary load?
Spars
Found on many aircraft, this deployable device can use the airstream to generate emergency hydraulic pressure when pumps fail.
What is a Ram Air Turbine (RAT)?
This induction system mixes fuel and air right at or in each cylinder, reducing evaporative icing and improving fuel distribution compared to a float-type carburetor.
What is a fuel injected system?
A pilot must adjust this during climbs or descents to compensate for changing air density and maintain proper fuel-air ratios.
What is the mixture control?
This form of redundancy uses the engine’s intake manifold pressure difference to create vacuum if the primary pump fails.
What is a standby vacuum system?