Mis Tareas

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Fixed-wing aircraft
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Aeroplane" and "Airplane" redirect here. For other uses, see Aeroplane (disambiguation) and Airplane (disambiguation).

A Boeing 737airliner - an example of a fixed-wing aircraft

Boeing 777 airliners at Dubai International Airport
A fixed wing aircraft is an aircraft capableof flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed and the shape of the wings. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft in which the wings form a rotor mounted on a spinning shaft and ornithopters in which the wings flap in similar manner to a bird.
The wings of a fixed-wing aircraft are not necessarily rigid; kites, hang-gliders and aeroplanes usingwing-warping or variable geometry are all regarded as fixed-wing aircraft.
A powered fixed-wing aircraft that gains forward thrust from an engine is typically called an aeroplane, airplane, or simply a plane. Aeroplanes include powered paragliders, powered hang gliders and some ground effect vehicles.
Unpowered fixed-wing aircraft, including free-flying gliders of various kinds and tethered kites, canuse moving air to gain height.
Most fixed-wing aircraft are flown by a pilot on board the aircraft, but some are designed to be remotely or computer-controlled.
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History
Main articles: Aviation history and Early flying machines
[edit]Kites
Kites were used approximately 2,800 years ago in China, where materials ideal for kite building werereadily available. Alternatively, other authors hold that leaf kites existed far before that time in what is now Indonesia, based on their interpretation of cave paintings on Muna Island off Sulawesi.[1] By at least 549 AD paper kites were being flown, as it was recorded in that year a paper kite was used as a message for a rescue mission.[2] Ancient and medieval Chinese sources list other uses ofkites for measuring distances, testing the wind, lifting men, signalling, and communication for military operations.[2] The earliest known Chinese kites were flat (not bowed) and often rectangular. Later, tailless kites incorporated a stabilizing bowline.

Boys flying a kite in 1828 Germany, by Johann Michael Voltz
Stories of kites were brought to Europe by Marco Polo towards the end of the 13thcentury, and kites were brought back by sailors from Japan and Malaysia in the 16th and 17th centuries.[3] Although they were initially regarded as mere curiosities, by the 18th and 19th centuries kites were being used as vehicles for scientific research.[3]
The period from 1860 to about 1910 became the "golden age of kiting". Kites started to be used for scientific purposes, especially inmeteorology, aeronautics, wireless communications and photography; reliable manned kites were developed as well as power kites. World War II saw a limited use of kites for military purposes (see Focke Achgelis Fa 330 for example). Since then they are used mainly for recreation due to a vast improvement in technology.
[edit]Gliders and powered models
Many stories from antiquity involve flight, such asthe Greek legend of Icarus and Daedalus, and the Pushpaka Vimana in ancient Indian epics. Around 400 BC in Greece, Archytas was reputed to have designed and built the first artificial, self-propelled flying device, a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of what was probably steam, said to have flown some 200 m (660 ft).[4][5] This machine may have been suspended for its flight.[6][7]
Some of theearliest recorded attempts with gliders were those by the 9th-century poet Abbas Ibn Firnas and the 11th-century monk Eilmer of Malmesbury; both experiments injured their pilots.[8] Leonardo da Vinci researched the wing design of birds and designed a man-powered aircraft in his Codex on the Flight of Birds (1502).

Le Bris and his glider, Albatros II, photographed by Nadar, 1868
In 1799, Sir...