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FROM the early clays of flying, aeroplanes have been provided with surfaces intended to give separate control about the rolling and yawing axes. In practice, however, the control surfaces themselves and the stability characteristics of the aeroplane combine to defeat the independence of rolling and yawing control. Recognition of this fact has lately resulted in attempts to arrange the stability characteristics of the aeroplane so that a combined rolling and yawing motion, of the type required in normal flying, is produced by only one control surface.

THE phenomenon of spinning has apparently been known to some extent since the first days of flying, but for many years it was considered a dangerous evolution from which no one ever recovered. It was not generally known that recovery was possible until 1916, when a British pilot, Major F. W. Gooden, made a scries of experiments, in which he deliberately put his aeroplane into spins and brought it out by the use of the controls. After that the spin became an ordinary manoeuvre, into which any, except the largest aeroplanes, might be put. Since then, however, and particularly in recent years when aero‐planes have been put into longer spins, difficulty has sometimes been experienced in recovering. This has given rise to considerable research, starting about twelve years ago, but the problem is so complex that results which can be satisfactorily used in a general way are just starting to come in. In this paper I hope to cover briefly the present status of spinning research, and the main results which have been obtained to date. Only the steady spin and the recovery from it will be considered—not the problem of avoiding the spin entirely.

Reports on the MSc group design project of students at the College of Aeronautics, aerospace vehicle design in 1995. The students worked on advanced short take‐off and vertical landing of a combat aircraft. Details the project showing aircraft dimensions and design. Full assessment of the results is pending, but outlines a number of problems faced by the students.

Under this heading are published regularly abstracts of all Reports and Memoranda of the Aeronautical Research Council, Reports and Technical Notes of the United States National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and publications of other similar Research Bodies as issued

Provision must be made on all aeroplanes for the rapid egress of passengers and crew in emergency. Fulfilment of the requirements detailed below will normally be regarded as sufficient, but departures may be permitted or required in particular cases.

WITH tailless aeroplanes, all known aerodynamic control devices possess the peculiarity of not only producing moments about one axis, but of also causing secondary moments about one or both of the other axes. Horizontal controllers forming part of the wing near the tips in wings having sweep‐back or sweep‐forward, for instance, do not produce rolling moments alone, when differ‐entially deflected; they also cause yawing and pitching moments. Similarly, wing‐tip disk rudders operated on such wings not only produce yawing moments, but may cause rolling and even pitching moments.

THE normal control surfaces of an aeroplane are the elevator (for pitching); the rudder (for yawing); and the ailerons (for rolling). In certain cases the ailerons may be replaced or augmented by spoilers, conveniently placed just in front of the ailerons, or at the same chordal position further inboard.

THIS article is intended, firstly, as a means to a quick approximate determination of the critical reversal speed of a wing, and secondly to give a clearer insight of why approximations can be given for the general formula for determining K, when the aileron chord and wing chord are of linear taper at least over the aileron portion.

THE complexity of the problems which are associated with the lateral stability and directional control of tailless aeroplanes was not realized until rather late.

The third term has been expressed as but in wind tunnel work it is often more convenient to measure were the omission of the dash signifies that the moment is now measured about a wind axis. The two quantities are very closely related and the measurement of one tells us almost as much as if the two were known. The latter, however, tells us either directly or indirectly what effect the addition of fin and rudder will have on the autorotation properties of the wings alone. The damping of fin and rudder being due essentially to the air flow meeting them at an angle on account of the rotation it should theoretically be possible to deduce this dynamic quantity from a simple static test of moment due to yaw angle. An experiment to test this was carried out several years ago but the static test did not give any approximation to the truth. This was ascribed at the time to the shielding of fin and rudder by the tail plane in the rotative experiment and subsequent work has amply confirmed this view. It is now known that shielding by the tail plane is by far the most important factor in determining the efficiency of the vertical surfaces at high angles of attack.