Nomenclature

  • Airfoil – The cross-sectional shape of a wing, blade, turbine, or rotor that produces lift.
  • Air Speed Indicator (ASI) – A pitot-static flight instrument that indicates airspeed of an aircraft through an air mass in miles per hour, knots, or both.
  • Angle of Attack – The angle between a reference line on an airfoil and the direction of the oncoming air.
  • Camber – The convexity of curve on an aircraft wing.
  • Chord Line – The imaginary straight line running between the airfoil’s leading and trailing edges.
  • Doppler – accurate ((4 knots) velocity sensor for DR navigation. (Note: IN systems capable of accurate initial alignment at sea on a moving carrier were still under development in the early 1960s.)
  • Drag – A parallel and opposing force to an aircraft’s motion through the air
  • Electronic warfare (EW) system – radar warning receivers, radar jamming equipment. Essential for survivability in hostile environment.
  • Flaps – Flaps are a kind of high-lift device used to increase the lift of an aircraft wing at a given airspeed. Flat devices, typically located on the edges of a an aircraft wing, that control lift at specific speeds.
  • Groundspeed – The horizontal speed of an aircraft relative to the surface below.
  • HDD (Horizontal Situation Display) – In avionics, HDD commonly stands for Horizontal Situation Display. It is a component of an aircraft’s navigation system that provides a graphical representation of the aircraft’s position and the surrounding airspace. The HDD typically displays information such as the aircraft’s track, waypoints, airways, and other navigation-related data.
  • HUD (Head-Up Display) – In aviation, a HUD refers to a transparent display that presents crucial flight information directly in the pilot’s line of sight. This information can include airspeed, altitude, heading, and navigation data.
  • Lidar, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth.
  • Mach – The ratio of aircraft speed to the speed of sound through the medium where the aircraft is traveling.
  • Pitch – The movement of an aircraft, characterized by the nose and tail rising and falling.
  • Roll – Aircraft rotation along the longitudinal axis, which runs from the nose to tail.
  • Rudder – An aircraft surface used to control the yaw movement.
  • True Airspeed – The speed of an aircraft is the speed corrected for the errors caused by altitude and temperature.
  • True Altitude – The vertical height of an aircraft above Mean Sea Level (MSL).