| He's wrong. All those explanations ARE intended to explain flight! They're given to professional pilots without qualifiers, presented as if they were complete explanations. (If they weren't, then the controversy would instantly evaporate.) This situation is quite different than, say electrons of atoms. First we learn that atoms are like little solar systems ...but then also hear that this is oversimplified (wrong,) and that we'll have to learn QM and probability-clouds in order to have a correct explanation of atoms' electrons. That's NOT done with lifting-force explanations. Pilots aren't being taught that the explanations are wrong, oversimplified, and only the professional fluids experts can attain the "bigger picture" which removes all the mistaken concepts. Did your angry colleague supply a simple correct explanation, to replace the wrong ones in the article? "Feels right" is a cop-out. Pilots don't want hand-wavy fuzz, or some experts who insist "it's just too complicated for beginners." How about this instead... First we explain a hovering helicopter. It's an air pump. It pulls air inwards from all directions, then blasts it downwards. Next, shove the helicopter rapidly sideways. That's how wings actually work: they pull air in from all directions, then fling it downwards. (But this is hard to notice, since the downwash-plume of an airplane is all stretched out, and it even seems purely horizontal. It's not.) Heh, wings are the same as VTOL jet aircraft! But the turbine-blades in the VTOL engine have broken loose and flown off alone. Yet each little blade is still acting as an air-pump, and pulling air inwards from all directions, and flinging it downwards, producing a downwash, a momentum-carrying "exhaust plume." |