In late 1903, a pair of brothers built and flew the very first practical fixed-wing aircraft in the small town of Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Though the Wright brothers were not the first to experiment with flying machines, they were the first to design an aircraft that had three-axis control by which a pilot could control the pitch, roll, and yaw.
Today’s aircraft are much more advanced, but the concept has remained unchanged for almost 110 years. The website listed above provides an outline of the basic parts, control surfaces, and other components of a typical aircraft. It also contains pictures and information detailing where each component is located and what each component achieves during flight.
The components that I found interesting were the same components the Wright brothers used to control the flight of their first aircraft. Those components are the elevator, the rudder, and the aileron.
The elevator is the component that controls the pitch of the aircraft. There are two elevators located in the rear of the aircraft on each side of the horizontal stabilizer. By moving the elevators up or down, a pilot can change the amount of down force applied to the tail, thus moving the aircraft nose up or down.
The rudder is the component that controls the yaw of the aircraft. The rudder is also located in the rear of the aircraft on the aft end of the vertical stabilizer. By moving the rudder left or right, the side force produced by the vertical stabilizer changes to move the nose of the aircraft to the left or right.
The final component I will discuss is the aileron, though the aileron wasn’t invented in 1903. Instead the Wright brothers used a series of cables and pulleys to perform an action called wing warping to control the roll of an aircraft. Modern aircraft have two ailerons, which are located on the tips of each wing. During flight, the ailerons move in opposite directions of each other. This causes a deflection of force that increases or decreases the amount of lift produced by the wing, thereby causing the aircraft to roll to the right or left.
There are so many different components that are used to produce an aircraft. The listed website above will give the viewer all the basic information needed to fully understand the basic parts and functions of each.