An aircraft is a vehicle or machine that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines. Common examples of aircraft include airplanes, helicopters, airships, gliders, paramotors, and hot air balloons.
A fixed-wing aircraft is a heavier-than-air flying machine, such as an airplane, which is capable of flight using wings that generate lift caused by the aircraft's forward airspeed and the shape of the wings. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft, and ornithopters. The wings of a fixed-wing aircraft are not necessarily rigid; kites, hang gliders, variable-sweep wing aircraft and airplanes that use wing morphing are all examples of fixed-wing aircraft.
Alexander Martin Lippisch was a German aeronautical engineer, a pioneer of aerodynamics who made important contributions to the understanding of tailless aircraft, delta wings and the ground effect, and also worked in the U.S. Within the Opel-RAK program, he was the designer of the world's first rocket-powered glider.
The Lun-class ekranoplan is a ground effect vehicle (GEV) designed by Rostislav Alexeyev in 1975 and used by the Soviet and Russian navies from 1987 until sometime in the late 1990s.
The Taylor Coot is a two-seat homebuilt amphibious aircraft designed by Moulton Taylor, famous for his flying car designs. When a market for the Aerocar did not emerge, Taylor turned to more conventional designs. The Coot was nonetheless somewhat unusual for its low wing, a feature uncommon on most seaplanes and flying boats, which conventionally strive to keep their wings as far away from the water as possible. Instead, Taylor designed the Coot's wing roots to act as sponsons to stabilise the craft in the water. The arrangement allowed him to do away with the weight and drag penalties imposed by wingtip floats, and additionally gain ground effect benefits during takeoff. First flown in 1969, the Coot proved very popular with homebuilders, with an estimated 70 aircraft completed by 2007.
The A-90 Orlyonok is a Soviet ekranoplan that was designed by Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeyev of the Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau.
A ground-effect vehicle (GEV), also called a wing-in-ground-effect (WIG), ground-effect craft, wingship, flarecraft or ekranoplan, is a vehicle that is able to move over the surface by gaining support from the reactions of the air against the surface of the earth or water. Typically, it is designed to glide over a level surface by making use of ground effect, the aerodynamic interaction between the moving wing and the surface below. Some models can operate over any flat area such as frozen lakes or flat plains similar to a hovercraft.
The Chyetverikov ARK-3 was a multi-role flying boat designed for Arctic operations that was built in the Soviet Union from 1933. It featured a conventional flying boat hull, with high cantilever wings equipped with floats at mid-span. The two piston engines were mounted in tractor-pusher fashion on a pylon above the fuselage.
The Fairey Fremantle was a large single-engine biplane seaplane designed in the mid-1920s for a proposed around-the-world flight. Only one was built.
Akaflieg Darmstadt is one of approximately twenty aviation groups attached to German universities. Akaflieg is an abbreviation for Akademische Fliegergruppe, an academic group of students and faculty from a German University.
The KM, known colloquially as the Caspian Sea Monster, was an experimental ground effect vehicle developed in the Soviet Union in the 1960s by the Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau. The KM began operation in 1966, and was continuously tested by the Soviet Navy until 1980 when it crashed into the Caspian Sea.
The Gabardini biplane was an Italian single seat biplane, designed and built near the beginning of World War I. It was an advanced trainer and could be fitted with engines of output between about 40 to 80 kW.
The Schütte-Lanz D.VI was a single engine, parasol wing fighter aircraft designed and built in Germany towards the end of World War I. It had a very short career, crashing on its first flight.
The RFB/Grumman American Fanliner was an experimental German light aircraft of the 1970s, propelled by a piston engine driving a ducted fan. A joint venture between the German company Rhein-Flugzeugbau (RFB) and the American general aviation manufacturer Grumman American, two examples were built, but no production followed.
The Collins X-112 was an experimental two-seat ground-effect vehicle, designed by Alexander Lippisch in the United States in the early 1960s to test his thick reverse delta wing concept.
The RFB X-114 was a ground-effect craft, designed chiefly to operate over water but capable of flight at higher altitudes where required, carrying five or six passengers or freight along coasts and capable of surveillance duties. One was evaluated by the German military in the late 1970s, but no orders followed.
During the pioneer years before the First World War, Cedric Lee and G. Tilghman Richards in the UK built and flew a series of aircraft having a novel flat ring-shaped or annular wing. They built both biplane and monoplane types, and in 1913 their first monoplane proved to be an early example of a statically stable aircraft.
The Rohrbach Ro III was a twin-engined, all-metal flying boat built in Germany in the mid-1920s. A development of the Ro II, it could be configured either as an airliner or a reconnaissance aircraft. It was developed into the similar but more powerful Ro IIIa Rodra, intended only as a military reconnaissance/bomber. Four Ro IIIs were bought by Japan and two Rodras by Turkey.
