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September 2006
Mother
Nature's Designs
To a pilot,
bad weather is not something he likes to
wake up to. It’s even worse
when he flies into it. But if
he’s a working pilot, it can offer
an unexpected day off. A chance to
catch up on other things, like doing his
laundry, writing letters, cleaning his
living quarters, his airplane, shopping
for his groceries, or even writing
articles such as this one.
A delay of
a few hours would sometimes mean I’d
be sitting in a pilot lounge at some
little airport on the prairies.
Lounge is a generous description of many
of those places. More often it
meant a little building with a bathroom,
a phone, a pilot registration book,
sometimes a coffee pot, a broken down
lumpy couch and inevitably, a stack of
old flying magazines. The reading
material is generally donations from the
local flying club members, who quite
rightly assumed there would be a more
useful afterlife for the magazines than
simply sending them to the
landfill.
Some
articles are relevant and important to
pilots everywhere. Mostly, they
help to pass the time, waiting for the
weather to break. One
afternoon, I was delayed at the Hanna,
Alberta airport, browsing through a
Flying magazine dated 1995.
Apparently back then, airliner
manufacturers were considering building
larger jets, capable of carrying up to a
thousand seats. I came across
a report that researchers in Germany were
suggesting manufacturers look at geese
for some guidance. By flying in
echelon formation, geese use less energy
than they would flying alone. So
rather than building a super jumbo
behemoth, designers reasoned that in a
formation of two smaller planes, the one
flying about five wingspans aft and
laterally offset, would use about 10
percent less fuel than the leader.
The next
obvious consideration surrounds the
danger of flying in formation taken to a
new extreme with airliners packed with
people. No problem, the
article continued. Fly-by-wire
commands input by the crew of the lead
aircraft could be transmitted
automatically to the number two ship. I
wonder why the Snowbirds haven’t
thought of that yet.
Unless this
has all been a hushed up, top secret
developing program, I don’t think
it’s gone anywhere past the idea
stage. Not that I’ve heard
anyway. Again, this was a 1995
magazine report.
There’s
no doubt that nature does most things
much better than man, another example
found in AOPA PILOT magazine that same
afternoon. In a 2005 issue, an
article reports that scientists have
wind-tunnel tested models of the pectoral
flippers of a humpback whale and found
them more efficient with better stall
characteristics than anything currently
in aviation. The flippers produced 8
percent more lift than a modern airplane
wing, 32 percent less drag and stalled at
a 40 percent steeper angle. Just
when you think you have it all figured
out something better comes along, and
sometimes from way out in left field.
Back to the
geese for a moment. The formation
flying that they have adopted, would seem
to suggest they’ve made the best of
aerodynamic advantages. Everyone in
Canada is familiar with the familiar
“V” they form in their
migratory flights. There was one
question however, that remained
unanswered about their formations
Have you ever wondered why one side of
the “V” is often longer than
the other? My father offered
his reasoning. There are more geese
on that side. Simple as that.
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