Important References

• FAA-H-8083-25B - Pilot Handbook
• FAA-G-8082-22 - Remote Pilot - sUAS Study Guide
• FAA-S-ACS-10 - Remote Pilot - sUAS Airman Certification Standard

Loading and Performance

• 3 axes of rotation
  • Roll is tilting left and right
    • Aeleron. On a quad, right stick left and right
  • Pitch is tilting up and down
    • Elevator. On a quad, right stick up and down
  • Yaw is panning left and right
    • Rudder. On a quad, left stick left and right
      Power on a quad is left stick up and down, and that controls elevation
      For fixed wing, power is forward thrust

• Flight Forces
  • Summary of Forces
    • Fixed Wing
      • Lift is force applying "up" on the aircraft
      • Weight is the force applying "down". gravity
      • Thrust is force created by the primary engine. Prop or Jet
      • Drag is wind resistance opposite thrust
    • Quad (rotorcraft)
      • Lift is created by the motors
      • Weight is gravity
      • Thrust is when we tilt the quad in a direction, thrust is created in that direction
      • Drag is wind resistance opposite thrust

Forces

Lift

• Quad - Produced by the motors
• Fixed - created by the wing (airfoil)
• Applied as the Center of Pressure/Lift (CP/CL)
• Counteracts the Weight
• Relative Wind is parallel to the flight path in the opposite direction
  • Pretend that the aircraft is fixed in position
• Leading Edge (airfoil) where the wind hits the airfoil and splits the air above and below the surfaces
• Trailing Edge (airfoil) where the wind remerges at the back of the airfoil
• Chord Line (airfoil) the line drawn between the leading and trailing edge
• Angle of attack (airfoil) the angle between the chord line and the relative wind
• Lift is always perpendicular to the relative wind.
• Proportional to speed of aircraft and angle of attack
  • Faster speed or increase angle of attack = more lift
• Lift is governed by Newton's 3rd Law and Bernoulli's Principle

Drag

• Always perpendicular to the lift (basically, the relative wind)
• Resultant Force (airfoil) the total lift. From vector math, subtract the drag from the true lift, I think
• 2 types of drag
  • Parasite Drag by product of flying through the air
    • As speed increases, parasite drag increase.
    • Three types of Parasite drag
      • Form Drag the shape of an object (e.g. Truck vs sports car)
      • Interference Drag increased drag created by the junction between different objects
      • Skin Friction any imperfections on the surface of the lift generating object (propeller, wing, etc)
  • Lift Induced Drag

Weight

• Result of gravity
• Applied as center of gravity. This is different than the center of pressure/lift.
• Always points to center of earth
• Every aircraft has a maximum allowable weight to be able to leave the ground.
  • If exceeded, no flight

Thrust

• Created by the propeller
• A Propeller is just an airfoil and creates lift using the same principles as a wing.
• In a quad, thrust is only created when the quad is banked, otherwise, it's creating only lift
• Trust > Drag = Accelerating
• Drag > Thrust = Decelerating
• Drag == Thrust = Consistent speed
• If Thrust == 0 then Drag == 0, meaning you aren't moving