The mighty Flap
So I’m sitting in the Aero Club dining room tonight enjoying some nosh in dubious surroundings, with a slimey view out of the tatty old windows of Winter Hill right across the brown peat to Bolton, and the hills of Lancashire off to the right intermidley disappearing in heavy rain showers ( and there are some pretty good associated partial rainbows between the cloud layers). I note a small red flying object – a Chipmunk a couple of miles out over the Moss (who can mistake the mighty Flap??), about 2000 feet going right to left downwind LH for Barton, no doubt.
A short while later, the relaxed sounds of a subdued Finlay, quiet voices over leisurely cold meals, and the clunk of mugs and cheap china tea are subsumed by an increasingly loud clatter. The Mighty Flap is back – left to right this time, and much lower and much closer, presumably off a go-around or a touch and go. Then he banks left out over the Cemetary and has a couple of peoples attention; we get a super-detailed plan view of the ‘Flap’ with wings strait out in a steep bank away from us. And as the tatty old windows start to rattle in their frames as he comes tail-on to us, we note the single blue blobs of ‘oil burner'.
Ok, it was a relatively shallow turn (maybe 7 degrees), but it was slow and it was level. Why the need for ‘oil burners? Does the ‘Flap’ generate that much induced drag in such a turn?
Sir George Cayley
The air is a navigable ocean that laps at everyones door