Page 26 - May22T

goes. You have about 10,000 things to do and check, and you’ve already used up a third of your gas just getting off the ground and to the test area.
Most Never Get North of Mach 2
As soon as you hit the test corridor, you plug it back into burner and do the speed check. By the time you get to fly the F-16, you’ve already been supersonic a few times so that’s no big deal. Most pilots never get north of Mach 2, however, except FCF pilots. The actual speed I’m checking is classified, but it’s on the checklist to verify that you can get to it. The new motor does it easily. It’s also at these speeds that the stabilator starts to work as a “taileron” taking over from the flaperons.
Now, for you aero folks (short for aerospace engineers) and RC builders, the stabilator vs. elevon vs. taileron debate is ongoing. We F-16 guys used to say stabilator when the true engineering name would be elevon. In the 16, the “horizontal tail” is actually a combination elevator, stabilizer, and aile- ron. So taileron, elevon, and stabilator all are correct. In any case, whatever it’s called, it’s a “made-up” word. Made up by you aero people.
In the style of professor William Strunk Jr., who coined the word “studentry” over student body, I thought maybe I’d make up a new word to describe the horizontal tail functions: Staba-later-on. Pronounced Stabalator with “on” added to the end. Take the hyphens out when you quote me. “I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way.”
24 • TWIN & TURBINE / May 2022
AEA
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