PPL Mentor Select Topics

Principles of Flight

Principles of Flight is the physics of ‘lift’ and is an ‘understanding’ course as opposed to a memorising course, consequently, if you study it and cannot understand the subject or the half a dozen critical graphs, it will be a waste of timr to attempt the examination, talk to your instructor for some guidance and assistance.

The specific topics and sub-topics are shown below, tick which of these you require.

Basic concepts

Forces acting on an aircraft, Weight / Lift, centre of gravity & wing loading. Lift & Bernoulli’s theorem. Aerofoils & aerofoil shapes, angle of attack & angle of incidence, chord, camber, aspect ratio & wing planforms. Lift coefficient & and angle of attack α

Drag, Induced drag & parasite drag. Drag curves & methods of reducing drag. IAS, TAS.

Stalling and spinning, Flow separation, angle of attack α effects of weight and CofG, stall prevention, stall warning devices and stall recovery techniques. Stalls in turns, spinning. Load factor and limitations.

Stability and Controllability, Lift & Weight, Drag & Thrust, Static & Dynamic stability. Longitudinal, Directional and Lateral stability, Stability on the ground. Controllability, secondary effects, flutter & stick forces. Flaps & Ground effect. Straight & Level, Climbing, Descending, Turning.

the Propeller, Pitch, twist, Forces acting on the propeller. Torque reaction, slipstream effects, gyro precession and asymmetric blade effects.

Select / deselect all the sub-topics

Additional resource that may be useful to Principles of Flight