Vertical Wing Position
The vertical positioning of the wing changes the roll stability of an aircraft.
- An aircraft with a "high" wing position (i.e., set on top of the fuselage) has a higher roll stability. A Cessna 152 is an example.
- An aircraft with a "low" wing (i.e., underneath the fuselage) has less roll stability. A Piper Pawnee is an example of a "low" wing.
This is commonly explained through the analogy of a pendulum-style effect, but this explanation is incorrect (see Pendulum rocket fallacy). Instead, this effect is due to the aircraft's response to sideslip. An aircraft which is rolled to one side will tend to start to sideslip towards the low side of the airplane. A high wing tends to cause the aircraft to roll away from the sideslip, which tends to level the aircraft. A low wing tends instead to roll into the sideslip, increasing the roll angle and therefore increasing the sideslip further.
Read more about this topic: Relaxed Stability
Famous quotes containing the words vertical, wing and/or position:
“I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“Love’s the only thing I’ve thought of or read about since I was knee-high. That’s what I always dreamed of, of meeting somebody and falling in love. And when that remarkable thing happened, I was going to recite poetry to her for hours about how her heart’s an angel’s wing and her hair the strings of a heavenly harp. Instead I got drunk and hollered at her and called her a harpy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart, she has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a wet-nurse, she has no equal among men. What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)