Thread: 1940 Ford Pickup

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Looking at those pictures made me realise the delicate balance the engineer that designed it faced.
He had to make it as light as possible at the rear so that the rear would lift easily to get it airborne; but not so light that it was in danger of digging its nose in the dirt when landing.
Hence the placement of the axle braces.
There were some clever people out there 'back in the day'.
There still are some out there even now.

Thanks for that Navy.

Originally Posted by johnboy

Looking at those pictures made me realise the delicate balance the engineer that designed it faced.
He had to make it as light as possible at the rear so that the rear would lift easily to get it airborne; but not so light that it was in danger of digging its nose in the dirt when landing.

Good point, JB. Also, there is a delicate relationship between center of gravity (CG) of the aircraft and the center of lift (CL). Get the CG of the plane outside of the the fore and aft CG limits, and you have big problems.

Yeah, that's something I'd never thought about before either.
If you think about it; if you mucked up CG and CL the plane would want to cartwheel.
Scary!

I've never really looked hard at aircraft before.
Everything I've dealt with has had either tracks or wheels and just had to sit on the ground.

This is an entirely new train of thought.