IV. Answer the following questions:

1. Who built the first four-engine plane? What was it?

2. How could the ocean crossing be obtained?

3. What and why did whet the appetite of American airline operators?

4. What was the first hurdle in the constructing of the passenger plane?

5. When was Stratoliner first introduced? What an aircraft was it?

6. What was the second four-engine plane? Was it differ from Stratoliner?

Text 3. Aircraft

During those years which have passed since the first aeroplane was built, aviation has enjoyed phenomenal progress. At present aviation influences many aspects of social life.

In the dynamic world of today, aviation provides a rapid transportation link between different population centres. In many places the aeroplane is the only known vehicle for the large-scale movement of passengers and freight over large distances. The airplane has made it possible to patrol the forests, to fight their fires, to assess their timber resources and to plan their harvesting. It has made an enormous contribution to the photographing and mapping of the vast territories, to exploring and prospecting for mineral wealth and to studying and assessing the water resources.

As for the helicopter, besides its use for passenger transportation, this type of aircraft has proved its value in special applications where vertical take off-landing are required. Helicopters are widely used in search and rescue operations in emergency situations or when some accident occurs.

The main components of airplanes are as follows:

1. The fuselage is the main body of the airplane and contains the pilot's compartment (cockpit) and passenger and baggage compartments. The cockpit contains the flight controls and instruments.

2. The wings are the main lifting surfaces which support the aircraft in flight. Aircraft may be divided into monoplanes and biplanes.

3. The tail unit or empennage consists of a vertical stabilizer and rudder and the horizontal stabilizer and elevators to provide the necessary stability in flight.

4. The three basic flight control surfaces are the ailerons, the elevators and the rudder.

5. The power plant is the heart of the airplane. There are many types of engines: turboprop, turbojet, turbofan, rocket engines, etc.

6. The landing gear or undercarriage is used during manoeuvering of the aircraft on the ground while taxying, taking off and landing. In flight the retractable landing gear is retracted into the wing or the fuselage structure.

Aircraft instruments

Aircraft instruments are basically devices for obtaining information about the aircraft and its environment and for presenting that information to the pilot. Their purpose is to detect, measure, record, process and analise the variables encountered in flying an aircraft. They are mainly electrical, electronic or gyroscopic. Modern aircraft have a computer on board. They are concerned with the behavior of the engines, the speed, height and attitude of the aircraft and its whereabouts. Instruments concerned with the whereabouts of an aircraft are navigation instruments.

An aircraft usually takes the name of the designer or manufacturer. Here are some of the Russian designers: Tupolev, Ilyushin, Antonov, Yakovlev. Manufacturer's names are represented by Boeing, Douglas, Lockheed and others. The name of the designer or manufacturer is followed by a type code, known in some airlines as a class. For example: Ilyushin-96 (designer's name and type code), Boeing-747 (manufacturer's name and type code).

Exercises