MIT Private Pilot Ground school online, free

[Scott Fletcher]

MIT has put an amazing amount courses online with their OpenCourseWare program.  Real lectures by MIT professors, free.  I was hoping for some meteorology courses, sadly they don't seem to have a meteorology department at MIT, however if you search for that, one of the few things that pops up is a private pilot ground school course.  I gave it a test drive by watching the Airplane Aerodynamics lecture.  It is quite good ,and different.  I think that the difference is because their audience is typically engineering students, so things are explained a little differently than they would be if they were talking to normal people.  I earned the right to say that after working as a Licensed Professional Engineer for 44 years.  One example of "different" is the amount of time spent in this lecture on explaining on how an airfoil produces lift compared to the amount of coverage it gets in the Soaring Flight manual.

It's winter not much to do, give it a look there has to be something there you are interested in.  Start the season off by being able to say you took a few courses at MIT just for fun n the off season.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/16-687-private-pilot-ground-school-january-iap-2019/resources/lecture-videos/

SF

[Ryszard Krolikowski]

Scott,

"how an airfoil produces lift" 

I think perfectly flat,    super 5mm flat morphing(adjustable front and rear curve) and boxed, never ending wing will beat any of old school airfoil?

"Airfoil" still alive under the rock in MIT:)?

What you think?

Can our best computer model create wing if you set lie as a rule?

Cheers

Ryszard Krolikowski

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[Dave Nadler]

I want some of whatever Ryszard is drinking.
And who are you calling "not normal" Scott?

[Scott Fletcher]

Dave,

I was calling Engineers as a non protected class, not normal.

If you disagree, my wife and my former co workers could be made available

To substantiate this assertion.

Ryszard, 

You may need to consider starting to go to meetings.

 

Scott Fletcher

120 Ashmore RD

Greer, SC 29650-2926

C: 864-420-1749

E: 211fl...@gmail.com

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From: rasp...@googlegroups.com <rasp...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Dave Nadler <d...@nadler.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2026 9:33 AM
To: RAS_Prime <rasp...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [RAS_Prime] MIT Private Pilot Ground school online, free

 

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[Ryszard Krolikowski]

I'm just daydreaming about the direction engineers should go designing the wing.

Your "profile" is just to hide a spar witch make wing strong.

Same problem with controls.

Thickness, called "profile" is only to hide them.

Third problem is to solve, is min and max speed control : morphing shape wing.

Think of comparing flight of the best 12 cm model glider you heard of ,hand launched,   versus some old, also 12 cm DVD disc:)

Ryszard

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[Ryszard Krolikowski]

Scott,

Look no "profile"

https://youtu.be/z2vkCPb7ltE?si=jiOi6P_A21bTBUaH

How I sign up to my meetings?

Ryszard Krolikowski

Aeronautical Engineer.

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[Mark Mocho]

Proving that with enough power, you CAN make a picnic table fly. Of course, the wing loading on a "foamy" is like, zero.

[Ryszard Krolikowski]

In 1977 as a student of Polytechnical University in Rzeszow, Poland I had to choose 25 cm long wing profile.

Tunnel was 25 x 25 cm. My wing was small version of Jantar std.

My job was to draw polar.

To measure forces we used simple spring scales.

Best LD was at way lower speed than real thing at  about 240, not 38 as published.

Than just for fun:

No profile 3 mm sheet, same size like my "wing" LD over 400

When I questioned 240 LD in the tunnel versus 38 in real life: 

1. My small wing had practically no ending because of 1 mm  wall clearance.

2. My wing had " ground effect" from bottom wall.

3. My wing had different proportion to air molecules size.

FIRST I proposed to cut under wing side flow with pointing down winglet.

In 2000 something I met Peter Masak in Mifflin 1 day before he past away.

He agreed to my winglet pointing down and I agreed it would be impractical for T/O and landings.

Than about 2014 I noticed Dave Nadler has no problem taking off with his wing in the grass.

His winglet pointing down with the same or bit bigger wheel would be no problem I think.

Side flow is not only encouraged by ending wing but also initiated by fuselage, so small pylon holding wing would help or like JS3 attachment when fuse gets  few % smaller going up.

Winglet up and smaller and smaller end of the wing and elliptical shape is cheating dispersing vortex.

Pointing down I think would ad energy and accelerate the wing.

SECOND idea while still at the school 1977, was elliptical never ending wing connected with tail horizontal surface.

Now it's called a box wing.

Maybe 10 yrs later some Finnish students also needed " meetings" and build glider like this, than added electric motor.

THIRD idea, no profile, but super hard to make it strong, hard to change speeds by morphing not only trailing edge but also not wasteful way(slots) of morphing leading edge.

Let's hope those MIT students don't ask difficult questions like , why wings fly, or why plane can fly inverted, or why historically wings gets thinner?

 

Re shop desk can fly with enough power, this guy has videos landing with no power as a glider, try this with your bench below 500 kts.

Ryszard

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[Erik Mann]

Trying to translate Ryszard to English/English to Ryszard is a whole field of study in and of itself.... but I digress.     I think buried in there is something my professor told me on Day 1 of a freshman seminar on Aerodynamics.     Materials science is (almost) as important as advances in fluid dynamics (CFD was only just becoming accessible to anyone besides top research programs and the government).    Historically for example with gliders,  span and thickness were limited by stiffness and strength of materials to build the wings.  As materials have improved we've gotten higher aspect ratios and thinner profiles.     So you go from a "factor" ASW-17 at about 27 or 28 aspect ratio to an ETA with something over 50.    You couldn't do that without adding Carbon and other materials to the mix.... 

[Michael Opitz]

In powered aircraft, if you build with conventional aerodynamic design, structures/materials, and powerplant, the end result is conventional performance.

In gliders, you delete the powerplant, but the rest is the same.   One has to change at least one of these variables in order to obtain unconventional

performance.  By using new high strength lightweight materials, the structures and aerodynamics can be modified to better optimize performance.  It has

pretty much been that way all along.  I'm interested to see how the now completed Akaflieg Karlsruhe AK-X performs when it flies later this year.  Maybe 

with their use of the newest materials and some innovative designs, they may have  come up with a competitive all flying wing design. 

Mike Opitz

RO

[Ryszard Krolikowski]

What do you guys think about this?

My 1977 idea had reversed wing :

High in the front to scoop under wing side flow, low wing in the tail, and hight difference so wings don't interfere.

https://youtu.be/j8DPAJttj5g?si=vStHeHsf_smbCsoE

Ryszard

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[Scott Fletcher]

I really wasn't trying to start a discussion on aircfoil design.  Thread drift is unpredictable. For those of you with students the MIT course gives you a ground school option a good bit better than sending them home to read the book. It's mostly about powered aircraft, but so is the test.

The instructor is teaching a lesson I've taken, been tested on  and taught before. The topics she chose to spend more time on was interesting.  She spent a lot of time on how an airfoil produces lift, and minimal time on stalls.  My opinion is that the student needs to learn to pass the test questions on how a wing produces lift according to the FAA.  Stalls will kill you so I spend more time on stalls with the student than I do on how an airfoil produces lift.

No comments on the FAA's description of how lift is produced being wrong?  The MIT instructor didn't come out and say that but her teaching didn't align well with the FAA's reliance on Bernoulli's theorem.  NASA also has something on line about this that tiptoes around the same issue with the FAA.

SF

Sf

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[Charles Mampe]

From my various FAA written test preps over the decades, they teach you to take and pass the FAA written, not to safely fly. Being correct in real life can still fail you on a written. If you disagree with the FAA, feel free to contact them and tell them how they are wrong.

Let us know how it works out for you.

[Scott Fletcher]

I decline to offer to argue with the FAA, sometimes you just gotta kiss the ring and get on with it.

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[Mark Mocho]

[Ryszard Krolikowski]

Scott,

My bad,

Your "MIT students" and "profile" would not trigger my rant if you mention " students" and " profile"

I thing if MIT students do something in aviation means 2 different things for you and me.

Re FAA  glider pilot written test: 

1. Navigation:  It has so much old school IFR questions:  we should ask to remove all IFR stuff totally . 

This makes so hard to explain to new pilots and it's totally useless.

VOR radials and DME, NDB, and it a ton of this.

2. Lies: I found 5 lies. 

I bet there is more.

To pass you have to learn when to lie. 

One particular big lie is also in many other countries glider written test: to pass you have to chose a lie; wing loading is NOT changing best L/D.

There are probably many, but look at Diana 2 or SZD 55 empty and loaded polars.

FAA glider written test has one extremely dangerous lie you have to use. This question shows Carolinas sectional with few marked points.

Chose the best place to fly a glider.

OMG. On the other tread Kevin was asking for horn installed on the glider to land on his air park runway.

Imagine having hundreds of people jogging with noice canceling headsets on his runway.

3. Speaking to my friends from Germany and UK, I understood soaring national organization writes or at least has to approve glider written test, not kissing the ring.

Re Bernoulli principle:

It has nothing to do with wing flying.

It takes two, facing each other, to tango.  If dancers don't see each other, separated  by the wall of the wing, they move different ways.

And you will not like this dance.

Also two friendly air molecules have practically no chance to ever, ever   see each other, after separation on the leading edge.

Ryszard

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[Hank Nixon]

Aren't you glad you started this thread?

UH