Slitherine Games has released the Scramble: Battle of Britain – Flight School, Episode #7 video.
Flight school is back with another advanced topic today, designed to help Scramble pilots master their skills and excel in dogfighting.
Watch Flight School, Episode #7 “Energy Fighting” video HERE.
Airspeed and Aerodynamic Control
Since the middle of the First World War, fighter aircraft have employed guns fixed to their airframes, and a pilot must orient their entire aircraft to bring these guns to bear on a target. Aircraft generally orient themselves through aerodynamic control – the manipulation of the surfaces or shape of a body as air moves around it to inspire forces and moments to act on that body. We define the rate and quality of this air moving around a body as “airspeed” and, regardless of the aerodynamic design of an aircraft or the qualities of the air moving around it, the laws of physics demand that some energy be transferred between aircraft and air, that the energy differential between them be lessened, and thus that every instance of aerodynamic control and every resulting maneuver incur a cost in energy that is mostly paid through airspeed.
Read more HERE.