THE AUTOBRAKE
You wouldn’t be reading an article from our #AvGeek column if you thought that applying the brakes was enough to make an aeroplane land or stop.
Whilst you do also need to ‘apply the brakes’ in some sense, engaging thrust reversal and the air brakes,...
ROGER OR ROMEO?
You too may sometimes use a bit of ACP 125, perhaps even without knowing it. That time you absentmindedly said “Roger” the day after you watched an aviation movie on TV…
“Roger” is an instruction from the English ACP 125 radiotelephone procedures, which means “Received...
WHY DOES THE CAPTAIN SIT ON THE LEFT?
It is well-known that the driver’s seat of a car is on the left-hand side almost all over the world.
However, the driver sits on the right in the United Kingdom and also in Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Botswana, Brunei,...
THE VARIOMETER
Welcome back to those of you who would rather sit next to the window to watch the aircraft wing flaps than gaze at the clouds ;)
In this article we’ll analyse another component of the cockpit: the variometer or vertical speed indicator. First of all,...
HOW DO HELICOPTERS FLY?
To understand how helicopters fly, you have to forget everything you know about airplanes for a moment.
The first and rather obvious difference is visible to the naked eye: helicopters fly thanks to a rotary wing, whereas airplanes fly with fixed wings.
Some history
Let’s go back...
PLANE SPEAKING
In our last article in this section dedicated to those who always find themselves asking, “How is that done?”, we talked about ACP125 and ICAO, the past and present conventional languages used in airline communications. We received a lot of interest from our readers.
So...
HOW DO AEROSTATS FLY?
Aerostats are among the oldest means of transport created by humans. With their charm and bright colours, today they’re some of the most ‘Instagrammable’ forms of transport when it comes to leisure flights and festivities. But how do they work?
Aerostats
Hot air balloons are not...
WHAT EXACTLY IS AEROPLANE LANDING GEAR?
Out of all of the many aircraft features, the one that most stands out, even for those who know very little about aeroplanes, is the landing gear. The wheels on which an aeroplane sit look extremely small compared to huge fuselages and wings, but...
PROFESSION: PILOT. INTERVIEW WITH CAPTAIN MARINO PALLA
What does being a pilot mean? And how do you become a pilot?
We asked these questions to Captain Marino Palla. With 16,000+ flight hours, he’s been a pilot for Air Dolomiti since 1997, a flight instructor since 2000 and Director of the Verona...