I can't find any good information on ... how this layout was developed

The glass cockpit arrangement for the primary flight display copies the defacto standard analog instrument minimal T arrangement that pilots are/were used to.

Airspeed     Attitude   Altimeter        Airspeed       Attitude     Altimeter

 .........

              Heading                                  Heading

From Wikipedia


Can a person with a tibia problem become an air traffic controller?

In the US, an air traffic controller is required to have Class-II medical. However, it is mentioned here that:

  The applicant must have no deformity of spine or limbs of sufficient
  degree to interfere with the requirements of the position of
  employment being sought. Certain limitations of range of motion may be
  acceptable for certain specific options or positions, in which case
  acceptance for employment will be noted specifically for that position
  or option only.

Other than the regulatory standpoint, reaching the top air traffic tower might be hard. There may not be elevators reaching all the way to the top. To save space, many use ladders, not even a staircase.

However, working as air traffic controllers does not always mean in the tower. Many radar rooms are ADA complaint and are wheel chair accessible.


How low can a helicopter fly above a residence if the helicopter is an air ambulance landing?

Talk to a lawyer.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The fact of the matter is, regardless of whether or not they've got FAA clearance to operate the way they do, they're causing physical damage to your property. As such, I would recommend talking to a lawyer about what your legal options are. While suing them for damages would definitely be a step you could take, a lawyer would be able to advise you on how best to navigate the process leading up to that, potentially involving things like Cease and Desist letters or negotiated settlements with the company in question.
Since you're from America, it's also entirely possible that your state might simply seize your house with Eminent Domain and give you a token payment for its "fair market value", since the construction and operation of a hospital with medical helicopters clearly falls within its remit. As a result, I would recommend to be prepared to start looking for a new house should you begin a dispute with them.


What happens if a commercial airplanes navigation system completely failed during a flight?

The possible answers to your question are for all practical purposes infinite depending on the details of the system failure, the weather, where you are, and crew experience, to name a few. However, as a thought exercise extremely unlikely to ever happen in reality, let's play with it a bit.

First, let's define the navigational systems failure to be such that we cannot determine our position by reference to instruments in the cockpit. What have we got left? If we can still communicate, others can work with us to determine our position and develop a course of action.

The simplest case would be if we were talking to ATC, were in an area of secondary radar coverage, and our transponder was still working. If that were the case, it would be a matter of getting radar vectors to wherever we wanted to go. If I were the captain, I would want to go to the nearest suitable airport since if I had had a failure of everything that could tell me in-cockpit where I was, I would be worried about possible further failures.

If talking to ATC and in an area of primary radar coverage only or you also had transponder failure, they could give us a series of turns to identify us (used to do that back in the 1960s occasionally).

If you were out of range of VHF communications with ATC, you could try getting a relay via another aircraft that was in VHF range of ATC. Two aircraft at altitude can talk to each other at far greater distances than an aircraft to a ground station. A simple call to any listening station or aircraft on 121.5 requesting assistance will almost always get a response.

If VHF communication is not possible, you could try getting a patch through to ATC on HF radio. My favorite back in the 1990s was Stockholm radio. These days, however, SATCOM is available. I don't know anything about it, but I imagine it provides the ability of an aircraft anyplace in the world to be patched through to an appropriate ATC facility.

So, if you're talking to ATC (by whatever means) but you're out of radar coverage, what then? Every captain would remember generally where he was prior to the failure. It could be as simple as someplace in the North Atlantic and eastbound. He could simply tell ATC that and that he will fly a westerly heading. ATC would clear the altitude he was at and look for him along the westerly limits of their radar coverage for when he inevitably would show up. Actually if it was the North Atlantic and it was nighttime, he could just follow any airplane in front of him. They're easy to see stacked out into the distance.

The general idea would be to get to where you could be seen by ATC, and go from there. Anymore, there aren't a lot of areas along regularly traveled airline routes over land in North America and Europe where above 30,000 ft an airline flight won't be seen. That was true back in the 1990s, more true now I am sure, and increasingly true through the world, especially if military radar can be utilized..

The more interesting problem becomes that there is a loss of communication as well as a loss of navigational ability. The possibilities here are limitless. A simplification would be to say that what you would do would be to take up a heading that you believe will get you to where you could visibly see a land mass with airports, and land at the first suitable airport you see. Most airline flights are along routes that the crew is very familiar with; they know what they've been flying over many times, and that would be a help.


How can I get back up into flying after not flying for over 20 years?

I do not have a sanctioned answer, but I can give you my take on an overview of what I would plan for someone in your situation.

Your certificate duplicate can be ordered.

You will need a through review of airspace (things have changed), weather gathering (also changed), AIM stuff (changed runway markings, phraseology, etc.).  I would urge FAAST courses for various topics you might feel you can get brushed up in.

On the air side, if we were flying, we would do a "checkout" in the 182, covering the systems, cowl flap operation, targeted power settings, trim usage, etc.  A little airwork, steep turns, turning to headings, power on and off stall recoveries, emergency procedures and landings, takeoffs and go arounds.

Everyone is different, but the last guy, similar to you, flew C208 and stopped in 2003, and did not fly since then.  This summer he hit the books, watched a few videos, took a practice commercial written, and flew 3.4 hours with me.  I was real comfortable signing him off, and his wife, who was the concerned party, was real happy with the results.

Two months later we did a instrument proficiency ride, and that was a little more difficult for him, but he completed the ride in two flights and less than 4 hours.

Good luck and enjoy. Have your instructor put a new high performance endorsement in your new logbook for the 182.


Takeoff power is almost never maximum engine power.

Maximum power affects engine life as it brings significant wear to the engine. IIRC, if max power is used on takeoff, the crew must log an entry in the logbook to notify maintenance.
Turbo-fans produce a lot of power. If you require max power to takeoff, you better double-check your numbers, or you're operating with a pretty narrow margin.

The reality is the reverse: airlines love to do low power takeoffs, and they avoid a high power takeoff as much as practical. Occasionally, a condition such as high ambient temperature (resulting in high pressure altitude), heavy load, obstacle on departure path may demand a max power takeoff. Possible wind shear may also prompt the crew to select a higher takeoff power.


Airliners are both larger and more complex than the small aircraft you're familiar with at your local flight school. For an example of some of the items to consider, see: What do you need to do to bring a 737 Max back in service after 6 months in storage?

A lot of those things won't be improved just by flying the plane periodically, but some items are. Tires can develop flat spots from sitting for too long. Engines and systems need to have their fluids circulated. Getting things warmed up and moving helps to prevent corrosion. Even with proper storage procedures, an aircraft would have to be thoroughly checked for any foreign debris or damage that could have accumulated.

As the article you linked states:

  Planes that have been grounded for a significant period have to be checked over before they are cleared to fly again, a process that keeps them from flying for even longer and costs the airline money.

There is of course a tradeoff between paying to put the aircraft in long-term storage, and later to bring them back into service, versus keeping them in working order. Also, as mentioned in the answer to the linked question, the flight crew need to fly a minimum amount to be considered "current" and allowed to fly passengers. Even aside from regulations, having periodic practice will help to maintain skills for everyone involved.

Having crews do a few laps around the airport helps to keep both the airplane and crew in working order, and avoids having to do more rigorous checks to get them back up to speed when needed, which can save both time and money.


What weight and balance form should I use for my checkride?

Use the same form you use every other time you go fly with your instructor.

If you're at the point of preparing for a check-ride and you have never had a weight and balance form before, you may want to sue your flight instructor (...kidding, kind of).

If I approach a new trainer-airplane for the first time, I find out whether someone has made a weight and balance form for the plane yet and ask for a copy.  If not, one can be created using the data in the AFM in Excel or other spreadsheet program.

I like to make mine fully-automated as much as possible for day-to-day usage, but they can still be filled in manually for the purpose of demonstrating the understanding to an examiner.

If you use LibreOffice Calc, you can download the one I made for the plane I use.

If you try to open it with other software, it will look screwed up, but you can still get the idea.

The light blue shaded fields are the only ones that can have data entered into them.  The graph is created based on the weight data, and it automatically subtracts the fuel burn based on the flight duration.  So the two connected dots are the takeoff and landing C.G./Weight combinations.

This was all done from scratch using the AFM's data.  It takes some work, but it is worth it.  Your instructor should have something like this made already.


Flight Levels shall be transmitted by pronouncing each digit separately. And how should be FL200 transmitted?

Your confusion is understandable, since, back in 2016, a number of countries changed this phraseology as ICAO published the 7th edition of Annex 10. In the EU specifically, EU regulation 2016/1185 applies, which states that, generally speaking, each digit should be spoken separately, but with some exceptions:

Flight levels shall be transmitted by pronouncing each digit separately except for the case of flight levels in whole hundreds.

Example: Flight Level Two Hundred (instead of "Flight level two zero zero").

The altimeter setting shall be transmitted by pronouncing each digit separately except for the case of a setting of 1 000 hPa which shall be transmitted as “ONE THOUSAND”.

Example: QNH One Thousand (instead of "QNH one zero zero zero")

All numbers used in the transmission of transponder codes shall be transmitted by pronouncing each digit separately except that, when the transponder codes contain whole thousands only, the information shall be transmitted by pronouncing the digit in the number of thousands followed by the word “THOUSAND”

Example: Squawk seven thousand (instead of "Squawk seven zero zero zero")
Source: SKYbrary
The UK have obviously implemented this EU regulation, which is why you find the new phraseology in CAP 413.


What materials are suitable for making a mini gas turbine engine?

Materials are one thing. You also need tools and machinery to build one: the turbine and compressor in a mini jet engine rotate at ~100,000 rpm so they're subject to significant stress. They have to be balanced perfectly.

If you want to build one yourself, look into using a turbocharger from a car engine as the core. That gives a decent base for the high-temperature parts of the engine. Others have built DIY jet engines from turbochargers.


Reference: ICAO Annex 15, Appendix 2

  According to the article ''H''; what about the other runway/runways when I want to add extra info other runway/runways too; there is just one runway in here?

A SNOWTAM is for a single runway, if you want to involve multiple runways, you would release more than one SNOWTAM.

  According to the article ''J'' it is indicated that critical snowbanks; but it is again just 1 runway I think so.

Yes, this is just for the runway identified in C).

  According to the article ''P'' 15 is the meter of this taxiway snowbank but in which direction is 15 mt.?

This is the distance between snowbanks in meters. There is no direction there as it just identifies a relative distance between two (or more) objects.


Why does overspeed cause structural damage or failure when limit load factors are not exceeded?

Flying way too fast is an example as shown by the graph. For example descending with full power while maintaining 1 G load factor. Or with a powerful enough engine, exceeding the speed limit in level flight.

The air impacts dynamic pressure on the aircraft, the faster the plane, the higher this pressure—up to the design limitations.

What causes structural failure when the aircraft is merely flown fast?

High speed induces vibrations, flutters, etc., all would likely cause loss of control and/or structural damage/failure.

  Flutter: At its mildest this can appear as a "buzz" in the aircraft structure, but at its most violent it can develop uncontrollably with great speed and cause serious damage to or lead to the destruction of the aircraft.

(Source) Flutter.


Why are propeller engines uncommon on airliners?

Well, first let's clear up a few terms:
When you say "rotary" engine I'm assuming you're referring to radial engines, a type of piston engine that used to be pretty common on aircraft. (These days opposed piston engines are what you typically find on piston-powered aircraft, rotary engines are yet another design, but their usage died out around the end of World War I.)

The TU-95 is not actually a piston-powered aircraft.  It's a turboprop – basically a turbine engine similar to what you'd find in a jet, only rigged up to turn a propeller rather than produce "jet thrust" directly.

From an efficiency standpoint, turbine engines are usually more fuel efficient than their piston counterparts, and jet fuel is denser and less refined than aviation gasoline and is consequently cheaper for operators to procure. Turbine engines also offer more reliability than piston engines, and the maintenance on a turboprop engine is also largely similar to a jet engine with a few extra components, which is an advantage for a company operating a fleet of jet and propeller driven aircraft.

The differences in operating efficiency and reliability are the major reason why gasoline-powered piston engines have basically disappeared from scheduled airline service.

So why don't we see more turboprops? Actually we see a lot of them, if you look in the right places.

Jets and Turboprops are good at different things: broadly simplifying, a turboprop is more efficient at lower altitudes and airspeeds while a jet engine is more efficient at higher altitudes and airspeeds.

As a result we see turboprop aircraft like ATR 72s in use for short-haul "commuter" service, but for trans-continental or trans-oceanic flights where they spend a long time cruising at high altitude jets dominate the sky.

Since most people are flying to go relatively long distances there are comparatively more jets in scheduled airline service than turboprops.

Noise is probably also a factor: fast turboprops like the Bear are LOUD not due to the engine, but due to the propeller.  The tips of the spinning propeller on a TU-95 can approach supersonic speeds, which causes quite a bit of noise. The TU-95's contra-rotating propellers (which help produce thrust more efficiently) also contribute to a louder noise footprint.  In the case of the TU-95 this doesn't matter – it's a military plane, and the Russian air force doesn't care if people complain as the aircraft has a mission to complete and that's more important than a few noise complaints.  If United Airlines were to operate a TU-95 out of Kennedy departing over people's houses I suspect they would quickly reconsider their choice of equipment when the noise complaints started coming in....


Can the pitch be very different from the angle of attack?

The angle of attack is the angle between the wing (wing chord to be precise) and the direction of travel (undisturbed airflow). The angle of pitch is the angle between the main body axis and the horizon. The difference can theoretically be any angle, but during normal flight it will be limited to about 15 degrees.

The reason that the angle of attack sensor was inoperative was due to low airspeed. Below 60 knot IAS the indication is unreliable and therefore the indicator is inhibited. This also inhibits the stall warning. This lead to the confusing situation that lowering the nose to correct the stall increased the airspeed beyond 60 knots, thereby reactivating the stall warning.


Are pilots required to notify the tower when they are flying "under the hood" for IFR training?

No, because the responsibilities aren't any different. And, with a safety pilot on board, the capabilities really shouldn't be either.


Your data TELLS us that the airlines schedule fewer flights on the weekends, from which we can INFER that there is less demand for travel on those days.  (The numbers of cargo flights at PHX are dwarfed by the numbers of passenger flights there. The data at a major cargo hub like MEM or SDF might be different in that regard.)

To what extent that is driven by business travelers or leisure travel patterns, is beyond your data, and might even get into some fairly complex data and calculations that USAir and Southwest and others use to build their schedules.


When a B-2 takes off, does it use some device to ionise the airflow in front it?

I have never heard of an ionization device being used on an aircraft, but when I searched Google for "Northrop B-2 ionization", I actually found a reference for this:

  Microwave frequencies emitted along the leading edge would readily ionize the approaching air and allow the B-2's high-voltage electric field to discharge a greater flux of positive ions. With increased ion currents, the B-2 would be able to generate a greater ion sheath space charge at a given velocity and thereby increase the electrogravitic and electrostatic thrust propelling the craft.

This quote is from the book Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion: Tesla, UFOs, and Classified Aerospace Technology by Paul A. LaViolette, which sounds a lot like pseudo-science and conspiracy theories. This page says about the author:

  In addition, Paul LaViolette has developed a new theory of gravity that replaces the deeply flawed theory of general relativity.  Predicted from subquantum kinetics, it accounts for the electrogravitic coupling phenomenon discovered by Townsend Brown and may explain the advanced aerospace propulsion technology utilized in the B-2 bomber.

Putting the conspiracy theories aside, how much energy would be needed to ionize the air in front of an aircraft? It requires 14.5eV to ionize a single nitrogen atom (main component in air) and air has an average molar density of 28.97 g/mol resulting in a required energy per gram of air of

$$ E = \frac{14.5 \, \mathrm{eV} \times N_A}{28.97 \, \mathrm{g}/\mathrm{mol}} \approx 3.014 \times 10^{23} \, \mathrm{eV}/\mathrm{g} \approx 48.3 \, \mathrm{kJ}/\mathrm{g} $$

For comparison, jet fuel has an energy density of around 43kJ/g. So you need to burn about the same mass of jet fuel as air passes over the wings in order to ionize it. It goes without saying that this is not done on the B-2, nor any other aircraft.


What would they call the US President's personal plane?

I'd expect Executive One:

  Executive One is the call sign designated for any United States civil aircraft when the President of the United States is on board.


What is a "high-bypass geared turbofan," and why is it so much more efficient?

The fan section of a turbofan engine is driven by the low pressure (LP) spool. This means that it is connected to two parts of the engine:

The LP compressor, which must compress the air before it enters the high pressure (HP) compressor
The LP turbine, which must receive the air after it exits the HP turbine

The problem is that the HP section is efficient at high RPM. But the fan will reach aerodynamic limits as the fan tips pass supersonic speed. Fan blades are also harder to contain in the event of a failure as they spin faster. So to accommodate the fan, the LP section has to spin at a slower speed, which makes it harder to match with the high RPM HP section.

There is also a limitation on air flow. The fan must be able to move a maximum amount of air, which is takeoff power at sea level. But it must also be able to function efficiently at cruise level, where the flow is faster but much less dense.

Engine companies use different strategies to deal with these limitations.

GE mainly makes the LP sections larger in diameter. This allows the blades to have a high velocity at lower RPM. This this requires the air flow to change direction more rapidly.

Rolls Royce has created a 3 spool design, which allows each section to spin at a more optimal RPM. This adds complexity to the design.

Pratt and Whitney is going with the geared fan approach. Similar to turboprops, there is a gearbox to allow the fan to spin at a lower speed than the engine spool that is driving it.

This allows the turbine spool to operate at a more optimal RPM while still allowing the fan to spin more slowly. A slower fan can be larger, allowing for a higher bypass ratio.

A high bypass ratio allows a turbofan engine to drive more air (produce more thrust) for less air going through the core (burn less fuel). Modern large aircraft have engines like the GE90 on the 777 (9:1 bypass), with the latest engines on the 787 going even higher with the GEnx (9.6:1 bypass), and Trent 1000 (10.8:1). Smaller aircraft like the 737 and A320 currently use engines like the CFM56 (5.5:1), with the new LEAP going higher (9:1 or 11:1). The PW1000G goes even higher (up to 12:1).


How much time it will take a B787 to fuel completely when empty?

According to Boeing (via airliners.net), it takes 53 minutes to load 55,800 US gallons with two fuel trucks operating at 35 psi delivery pressure. The total fuel capacity of the 787-8 is 33,340 US gal, so fueling from empty to full should take about 31.6 minutes with two trucks.


The Citations have an auxiliary battery in the nose that lets you power up limited avionics, like a comm radio and one of the FMS units and displays, to allow you to get your clearance and program the FMS before engine start, in the absence of a ground power cart, without having to deplete the main battery.  It's controlled by the Ground Power Dispatch Switch.


What is the relative safety record of the Sukhoi Superjet 100?

The plane was flown into the ground with a clearly visible and well-known landing error, pitching down after a bounce. That said, to blame it squarely on the pilots is premature, especially as the crew will soon be able to shed light on what happened. I've done some of the same in simulators with heavy instrument failures, although their poor/lacking damage models let you get away with it.

On the actual question, the Superjet does not yet have a meaningful safety record of any kind, good or bad. It's seen far too little use, and it only had two accidents, one of which was confirmed as a pure human error CFIT. Driving a perfectly intact plane into a mountainside is akin to driving a car off a bridge.

This leaves one accident where the plane had any faults at all, and such a small sample size is not enough to build any sort of statistics out of.

It's also difficult to distinguish cause and effect in the plane's simultaneous loss of popularity and reduction in support service levels amidst a political rift between its manufacturer's home country and most of the world, or infer anything technical from that.


Why did the Avro Vulcan use a delta wing?

It was obvious to the design team that conventional aircraft could not satisfy the required specification; knowing little about high-speed flight and unable to glean much from the Royal Aircraft Establishment or the US, the team at Avro investigated German Second World War swept wing research.
The team estimated that an otherwise conventional aircraft, with a swept wing of 45°, would have doubled the weight requirement. Realizing that swept wings increase longitudinal stability, the team deleted the tail (empennage) and the supporting fuselage, it thus became a swept-back flying wing with only a rudimentary forward fuselage and a fin (vertical stabilizer) at each wingtip.
The estimated weight was now only 50% over the requirement; a delta shape resulted from reducing the wingspan and maintaining the wing area by filling in the space between the wingtips, which enabled the specification to be met.
— Wikipedia

In short, the team didn't know much about high-speed flight (blame Wikipedia). And to reduce the weight, they eliminated the tail-plane, shortened the span, and filled in the space between the wingtips. Achieving their weight target.
For the same area, a wide wing is lighter to attach, as it requires smaller spread spars.
So, for weight reduction, a delta wing wins against a conventional swept-back wing aircraft. In all, great engineering solution to a big problem, with one downside—
—higher fuel burn at those speeds, limiting the range.
The B-52's were known for loitering in the air for extended durations. Their efficient design requires fewer rendezvous' with the tanker. Unlike the famous Vulcan train.
Some numbers (in kg and km):
        empty weight     MTOW      payload+fuel      range
B-52      83,250        220,000      136,750         7,210
Vulcan    37,144         77,111       39,967         4,171

Maintaining the same wing area; saving weight by reducing the heavy structural elements—the tail-plane, big spars, and wing-span. (Eyeballed the scale, only illustrative.)


What is the difference between LP fuel valve and LP fuel shut off valve?

The "LP fuel valve" and "LP fuel Shut off valve" are the same valve just being named differently in different sections of the FCOM.
The valve is located in the wing leading edge and is also sometimes referred to as “spar valve” by engineers who also work on Boeing aircraft.


How do you check for soft or muddy ground on a backcountry landing?

Usually, it's a combination of making a couple of low altitude passes over the landing site and visually observing the conditions of the terrain in the area and personal experience selecting a site based upon the knowledge of the local terrain and soil, recent weather conditions, local flooding, ground vegetation, etc.  It's a bush pilot skill based partly on intuition as well as instruction from senior airmen with experience flying in the area.


Why is 0 ft a valid target altitude for an autopilot?

Quite simply, it's because sometimes you fly below sea level. There's a couple stories out there of aircraft navigation systems acting a bit odd due to their flight below sea level. For example, there is this one, which involves a C-130 landing on an airfield that is 1,210 feet below sea level.

There are numerous areas in the world that are below sea level. For example, flying at sealevel above Laguna Salada, Mexico means you are still 30 feet above the ground! It's added as an additional option to cover a small set of scenarios. A pilot is certainly not expected to select the incorrect altitude setting, as this is something that you should always doublecheck. Beyond that, he should not have enabled his autopilot so soon after takeoff (unless 1,500 was his cruising altitude).


Can a private jet take off without notifying anybody and land on private land in another country?

No, you would need to arrange for customs as you are crossing an international border.


Will 1090 Mhz band become too congested in the future?

There are some areas where the 1090 MHz frequency is already very busy. The area around Frankfurt am Main in Germany and the Los Angeles Basin airspace is the USA are the most congested in the world.

The direct of impact of ADS-B is an increase in the frequency use of 1090 MHz. At the same time it allows a reduction of number of Mode-S radars, it enables the development of a more effective TCAS with reduced interrogation rates (known as ACAS X), and it reduces the number of interrogations needed by WAM systems. On the long term the impact of ADS-B will likely be positive.
But with the increase in number of flights the 1090 MHz congestion will remain a concern.

There are many discussions in the ATC surveillance circles about the topic and the 1090 MHz frequency (and 1030 MHz as well) is are frequently monitored. There are ground based monitors and periodically there are measurement flights to identify areas of high frequency load. Adding new radars to already congested areas is made very difficult by spectrum protection regulations, instead cross-border surveillance data sharing is encouraged. Some countries monitor 1090 MHz transmissions around the clock and the are plans to have a permanent monitoring service of 1030 MHz and 1090 MHz across Europe that will analyse spectrum usages trends and identify rogue transmission.


What exactly happens when I try to maintain the flare when coming to a hover?

If I attempt to continue maintaining the flare, attempting to come to a stop, I will sink and if I don't do anything about it, I will hit the ground. Why?

if you continue to maintain aft cyclic after the flare, you will hit the ground because some of the lift which is being generated will be used to fly the helicopter backwards, and you won't have enough power in to both maintain altitude and also maintain backwards flight (which is what you are commanding with aft cyclic). This is why we level off after the flare: to use all the lift in the vertical direction.

Its the exact opposite of take-off: if you are in a hover on the runway, and push the nose over to the 60KIAS nose-down attitude, you will descend into the runway.

Although I have never tried it, I imagine that at the peak of the flare, if I add (a lot?) of power without changing the attitude (much:), I will not descend into the runway, but rather I will start to fly backwards.


What is the difference between F-16C and JF-17 in terms of role?

Firstly, you should understand that these two fighters are from different countries (F-16 hails from the US and serves with many NATO countries, the JF-17 is a Chinese design), but were developed along closely parallel project focuses. The F-16 was developed with the advent of highly maneuverable and powerful Russian air-superiority fighters such as the MiG-29 in mind.

Designed along the inherently unstable design idea, the F-16 is pretty much the epitome of maneuverable and agile fighting machines. In addition it was meant to be produced in relatively greater numbers than its much faster, heavier, and air-superiority focused cousin the F-15. This is one aspect that it accomplished very very well as the F-16 was quickly run into mass-production via bulk requests from the USAF which, at the time, had much greater funding that it does now. The F-16 turned out as an affordable fighter that was good enough for the USAF, not too good to be banned from international export, and flexible enough to be used in a variety of roles and ensured its use well into the 21st century.

The more obscure JF-17 is a Chinese design meant to do the same thing the F-16 did when it came out. Chengdu wanted a fighter that was rather maneuverable, and was viable and cheap enough to succeed in the international market. What resulted from a joint project between PAC and Chengdu was a fighter that could compete both in real-life maneuvering and technologically with its peers. In addition at only $15 million per unit for a block 1 type JF-17 it is one of the cheapest 4th generation aircraft of its kind available.

The two aircraft were built with similar roles in mind, and in practice fulfill them similarly as a result. The F-16 is in some ways the superior of the two, having benefited from lessons learned in many deployments around the world, but both are designed for multi-role usage, inexpensive operation, and affordability en masse.


How does setting takeoff flaps improve aircraft performance?

I think the term "takeoff performance" in that context means takeoff distance and departure gradient for obstacle clearance.  Obviously, takeoff distance is shorter with takeoff flap than without.  And a departure with takeoff flap will generally, depending on the airplane, have a steeper gradient than without, even though the total climb rate is degraded with takeoff flap out.  On an IFR departure, or a regular airplane clearing trees at the end of the runway for that matter where you fly at best angle instead of best rate, gradient is the key performance factor, not so much rate of climb.

Transport aircraft generally don't start to accelerate to retract flaps at least until reaching 1000 ft agl, to keep the initial climb segment as steep as possible. Some noise abatement procedures for airliners require keeping takeoff flap deployed beyond the normal retraction schedule, typically to 3000 feet instead of 1000 feet.  This is to keep the climb as steep as possible to a higher altitude so as not to upset unusually sensitive neighbours farther away from the airport.

That sort of thing is a luxury that jets enjoy because of the massive power reserves. Not so much in a piston twin, which has very little performance reserve when single engine and loaded.  Where an AFM says to do so, you would want to avoid climbing with takeoff flap any more than you have to for obstacle clearance, since if an engine quits, the airplane's climb gradient becomes more of a descent gradient until flaps and gear are retracted, and even then what climb you get is pretty stately - and only if your speed and technique is spot on.

So I don't think the seemingly contradictory conditions you gave are inconsistent in that context.


How is the Flight Plan Data transferred into an aircraft/plane?

First, as other answers have stated, you're not actually required to file a flight plan unless you're flying IFR. That having been said, if you do file a flight plan, there are several ways you can get it programmed into the airplane:

You don't

The flight plan is never loaded into the navigation system at all. It's either on paper or loaded into a tablet, and that's it. This is pretty common amongst small-aircraft private pilots.

Manually

The flight plan is printed or loaded into a tablet to get it out to the airplane, where it's then manually keyed in to the on-board navigation system. This was at one time the only way of loading a flight plan, and is still pretty common across all types of aviation.

Bluetooth

This is a pretty new option for the higher-end GA aircraft and charter aircraft. The flight plan is transferred from a tablet, laptop, or smartphone to the onboard navigation system via a Bluetooth connection.

ACARS or other data link

Yes, ACARS is used by the big airlines to transfer flight plans to aircraft. Note, however, that some commercial aircraft don't have the capability to automatically transfer the flight plan to the navigation system(s), it's printed out by the in-cockpit printer and keyed in to the navigation system as described above.


Can lift be equated to how much air is moved?

First off, your calculation for 9.8 W does not seem to be based on any actual physics. Check the units! I can't tell if you did $P=F\cdot m$ or $P=\frac{F}{m}$, but the result is either the nonsensical quantity of joule-kilogram per meter, or acceleration respectively.

A correct calculation based on keeping something aloft by propelling air downwards would be as follows. To keep something aloft, you need to expel mass downwards at a certain speed. The force to keep the object aloft is $$F=m_{object}g$$ The force generated by downwards momentum transfer is $$F=\dot{m}v$$ with $\dot{m}$ indicating mass flow (kilogram per second) of the air (not the mass of the object). The energy flow (power) required to  impart this momentum on the airflow is $$ P=\frac{1}{2}\dot{m}v^2$$ Here we can draw an important conclusion. The power requirement is arbitrarily small, by increasing the mass flow and decreasing the downwards velocity. Immediately, you can see why helicopters have big rotors and airplane wings are so large: they want to affect as much air mass as possible for increased efficiency. Even flying faster increases lift efficiency (reduced induced drag) by affecting more air per unit of time. Of course, at some point other sources of drag will dominate.

The above calculations assume that force is purely generated by creating a downwards mass flow. This is not exact reality. For example, put your aircraft on the ground, and it does not sink through it even though no mass flow is created. When flying close to the ground, some of the airflow downwards creates a pressure due to hitting the ground below, which helps you keep aloft as well (this is called the ground effect). Other than that, viscosity plays a small role by generating a force opposite the downwards air movement (although viscosity is required for lift generation with an airfoil). However, to answer the main question: equating lift by how much air is moved is a very good approximation.

Let's finally address your idea of using a Bell nozzle. This is a nozzle that is used on supersonic propellants (the 'throat' of the nozzle marks the transition from subsonic to supersonic), and is used to increase the speed as much as possible. This is very inefficient in terms of energy, but since rockets need to carry all the propellant mass (whereas an airplane gets 'free' mass flow by travelling through air), and need extra propellant to carry that propellant up, speed wins instead of mass, and rocket engines are optimised for nozzle velocity.


Under what circumstances is an FAA accident report required?

Generally you do not notify the FAA, you notify the NTSB (the relevant regulations are in 49CFR, specifically 49CFR830).

If you notify the FAA they will contact the NTSB, because the NTSB is the agency charged with investigating aircraft accidents.

If you crash in a cornfield somewhere and notify the NTSB they will probably ask the nearest FSDO to send an investigation team (unless you're a major airline or a fairly high-profile incident).

So ultimately it doesn't much matter which agency you call, but you should be calling the NTSB.

With the administrative stuff out of the way, the reporting requirements are also in that same section of 49CFR. Basically they say:

You are required to notify the NTSB "immediately, and by the most expeditious means available" of any aircraft accident, which is defined as:

  …an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, and in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage.

You are also required to notify the NTSB (again, "immediately, and by the most expeditious means available" of any incident (something that's not an accident as defined above) which meets the following criteria:

  Flight control system malfunction or failure;
  Inability of any required flight crewmember to perform normal flight duties as a result of injury or illness;
  Failure of any internal turbine engine component that results in the escape of debris other than out the exhaust path;
  In-flight fire;
  Aircraft collision in flight;
  Damage to property, other than the aircraft, estimated to exceed $25,000 for repair (including materials and labor) or fair market value in the event of total loss, whichever is less.
  Specific requirements for aircraft with a takeoff weight above 12,500 pounds
  Release of all or a portion of a propeller blade from an aircraft, excluding release caused solely by ground contact;
  Specific requirements for "glass cockpit" displays.
  Specific requirements for TCAS advisories.
  Damage to helicopter tail or main rotor blades, including ground damage, that requires major repair or replacement of the blade(s);
  Specific requirements for air carrier blunders like landing on the wrong runway.

"Immediately and by the most expeditious means available" basically means pick up the telephone and call them: They don't want you dispatching a letter via Pony Express that's going to take a week to get to the NTSB's headquarters while the aircraft is sitting in a field exposed to the elements with evidence literally washing away in the rain.


I suspect this heavy depends on the type of the aircraft, so lets assume we are considering a small airplane.

Absolutely right, it does vary widely. The parameter you're asking about is called glide ratio and it is directly related to another parameter called lift-to-drag ratio or L/D ratio. This is a fundamental characteristic of the aerodynamics of a particular aircraft. L/D ratio varies with airspeed; for determining best engine-out glide performance, the L/D ratio at "best glide airspeed" is used. "Best glide airspeed" is the speed that maximizes the L/D ratio, and this maximum value is known as L/Dmax.

The maximum L/D ratio (L/Dmax) of a Cessna 172 is about 9, so its glide ratio is about 9:1 - for every 9 units traveled forward it will lose 1 unit of altitude. So, it will glide about 9,000 feet for every 1,000 feet of altitude available. This is a fairly typical value for small planes.

To show you how widely variable this is, a modern glider can achieve ratios above 60:1, while the Space Shuttle ranged from about 1:1 at high speed, early in reentry, to 4.5:1 on final approach.

Notably, large transport aircraft tend to have significantly higher L/D ratios than small aircraft: a 747 can achieve an L/Dmax of about 17:1. With an altitude of 33,000 feet (~10,000 meters) that would mean a gliding distance of 100 miles (~170 Km).

  What governs the 'glideability' of the plane?

As above, its lift-to-drag ratio. Very casually speaking this is just a measure of how "aerodynamic" the airplane is, comparing its capability to generate lift with the drag it creates in the process. The better its lifting capabilities, or the less drag it generates, the higher the ratio.

For more information, I highly recommend a free online book on aerodynamics called See How It Flies by John Denker. It is written for pilots, not mathematicians or physicists, so it explains the concepts very intuitively without a lot of equations. It talks about L/D ratio and explains some of the factors that affect it. (I would recommend this book to any pilot anyway.)

  Is it possible, for an airplane with an engine/engines, to leverage this to save fuel while flying, or are they too heavy/otherwise unable to do this?

Since glide ratio is directly related to (indeed it's the same thing as) L/D ratio, you could say that airplanes already do take advantage of it. The higher their L/D at cruise airspeed, the more fuel-efficient they will be (because less thrust will be required to counteract drag in steady-state flight).

If you're asking about shutting the engines off during approach/landing to save fuel, there is another question here on ASE which specifically addresses this. (The answer, in short, is no, it's not practical.)


Admin stuff, emails, chat with a colleague if you are not alone on shift, read up on (ever changing) procedures, eat, read a book, make sure the coffee machine works, meditate, watch TV. Anything goes, really, as long as you keep an eye on the radar and stay close enough to hear the radio and answer the phone. Of course, this is all assuming that there are literally no aircraft in the sector at that time (which happens regularily at smaller airports). Whenever you have any active aircraft, you obviously need to stay quite focused on that.


What is the occasional crackling sound on an A330?

I have recently flown on a China Eastern A330-200 from Shanghai to Beijing and that noise was heard around 10.000 feet both on the way up and on the way down. It sounds awful! Everybody was rather worried, including myself who, despite being a frequent flyer, had never heard that noise. At first I thought it was some fatigue issue of the aircraft skin while "inflating" as internal pressure increased.
But a few days later I flew on a Cathay Pacific A330-300 from Hong Kong to Jakarta, and after hearing that noise again, I asked a flight attendant who told me it was likely ice crystals in the air conditioning tubes that form when the outside air is very humid. She said she heard it many times and it's considered normal on A330's.


Is it possible to interchange different of fuels for turbine engines?

If we are talking generic turbine engines then the answer is yes. Turbine engines will run on a wide range of fuels, I personally have flown a Military Helicopter, that normally runs on Jet A1 using AVGAS instead. The flight manual limited it to 10 hours of operation on AVGAS. Interestingly the same flight manual had other fuel types listed such as Deisel, and automotive gasoline.

The only difference I noticed on the different fuel was a slightly higher exhaust gas temperature for a given power setting.

Heavy duty industrial turbines are often run off crude oil!


Can (part of) the fuel in your tanks be considered "property carried for compensation or hire"?

N707MQ actually has a special type of experimental certificate, according to its registration it is a "Market Survey" aircraft as you note.

The FAA defines this as

  Market surveys:  to conduct market surveys, sales demonstrations, and
  customer crew training for U.S. manufacturers of aircraft or engines.

This does not really provide us any special way to use the aircraft for commercial purpose but is worth noting.

Either way as you state 91.319 pretty clearly prohibits this. Interestingly enough 91.905 even prevents you from getting an FAA waiver to override 91.319 (as its not on the list of things you can have waved).

However 91.319 sub section H may provide us with a solution.

  (h) The FAA may issue deviation authority providing relief from the
  provisions of paragraph (a) of this section for the purpose of
  conducting flight training. The FAA will issue this deviation
  authority as a letter of deviation authority.

As far as I know these tankers are primarily used in our own airspace for training missions which would fall under "conducting flight training".

This article is pretty interesting and covers a similar scenario for using experimental for commercial purposes.


Why does my flightplan generator come up with a very non-direct route between these two airports?

I assume you used some kind of "use airways" option to vector you on an airway flight and generate this path. First and foremost a quick note, this path, for a small single engine trainer is outright dangerous and you should not fly over that much open water when you can easily avoid it.

Its more than likely that the algorithm that generated this is not the best one. For a quick comparison if we throw this into foreflight and have it select an airway path we come up with the following path.

It looks like in some way your software went east first then hit some of the restricted airspace southeast of DC, got confused, did some crazy routing around it. This put you out in the Maryland/Delaware area then took you north again. A turn east to avoid the Philly Bravo, then north again along the coast but staying out far enough to avoid the NYC Bravo. A strange path indeed and it looks as if you may have set it to avoid Bravo airspaces if possible. If you simply set it to generate an airway course from point A to point B then this routing is just the result of poor computing, in my opinion.

  I assume its due to the busy airspace surrounding my flight.

I don't know what flight planner you used (you may want to let us know) but with a PPL you are more than allowed to fly right through all airspaces (Class A even, if you have an instrument rating and your plane can make it up there). The planners I use have never routed me due to "busy" airspace. The only airspace on your route that would be of concern is the DC SFRA which requires a quick online course prior to your flight I order to be allowed to enter.

On any note, if you are going VFR, you can fly direct, weather and airspace clearance permitting. For example, you only need to avoid the TFR over DC right now. You could fly the following course and only ever need a clearance through the Allentown Class C and the DC Bravo.

Side Note: I fly out of KPNE or DYL in the Philly area, I never have an issue getting a clearance right through the Philly Bravo VFR when I request it.

I also see in your comments that you are flying this in a Cherokee 140. Im a bit curious about the 5000 ft. ceiling you list. Is this a limit on your airframe? That plane has a quoted celling of just over 10K. I did my training in Archers and Warriors and have taken them VFR up to 7500 ft. with out issue and plenty of power left to climb. On any note, the highest minimum obstacle avoidance altitude I see on the route is down by the LDN VOR coming in at 4400 ft.


If operating under VFR rules, which your pilot probably is if he's attempting to stop you actually hitting the bridge in question and allow you good enough visibility to take a photograph in the first place, the rules vary slightly by location.

The FAA regulations will be as follows (Note: all emphasis mine - indicating what I believe is the interpretation of your bridge)
:

  An aircraft must maintain an altitude of 500 feet above the surface [and], the aircraft may not be operated closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure.

and

  An aircraft must maintain an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement

Also note that helicopter rules differ slightly.

  Helicopters may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in [the previous quoted sections] if the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface.

source: 14 CFR 91.119 - Minimum safe altitudes: General.

And the UK CAA rules are similar

  An aircraft must not fly closer than 500 ft to any person, vessel, vehicle, building or structure.

and

  [...] it must not fly less than 1000 ft above the highest fixed object within 600m of the aircraft.

So, in summary your pilot can get you within 500ft if it is an uncongested area, 1000ft if its a congested area - closer if he's got a helicopter and can do it without causing a hazard.


What types of attitude indicators are there?

Russian-made aircraft have attitude indicators that work exactly opposite of western ones.

source

with the western style, on the left, the virtual airplane figure is fixed so it's always upright to the pilot and the horizon moves. On the Russian style AI the horizon is fixed so it is level from the pilots POV and the aircraft symbol moves.

Just two ways of looking at it, but if you're used to one the other can be confusing.


When, exactly, were the DC-8’s airbrakes removed?

The DC-8 is equipped with emergency air brake system. This isn't the type of air brakes you might expect on an airplane, but rather on a truck. The captain could pull a handle on the instrument panel to release pressurized air into the hydraulic brake system in the event of hydraulic pressure loss, as explained in this AAIB bulletin. The fuselage air brakes were removed from the first prototype, no DC-8 entered service with them. Although the wing spoilers are not used as speed brakes in flight, reverse thrust is allowed on the inboard engines during descent.


Most time-consuming tasks while a plane is on the ground

Commercial aircraft only make money while in the air, so they should be on the ground as little as possible. How long they are actually on the ground varies with size of aircraft, schedule demands and type of operator.

Transoceanic flights are typically scheduled twice per day for a given aircraft. Schedules are at fixed times and there is usually only enough time for two crossings. This leaves a lot of time to "turn" the aircraft, so the pace is very relaxed.

LCCs on short flight legs try to turn the aircraft as quickly as possible. You have probably heard that when Southwest was just starting out, they were short a plane and had no financing to get another. They reworked their schedule and squeezed a couple more flights out of their existing aircraft to fill the need.

Aircraft manufacturers publish an expected turn time by station. Here is one for a 737-900:

In this example, servicing galleys and boarding passengers tie for longest elapsed time. Refueling is much shorter. Maintenance does not even appear.

More important than elapsed time for any given task is time on the critical path, since many tasks can be done in parallel. In this case, boarding passengers waits for servicing cabin, which waits for deplaning passengers. LCCs typically do not serve meals, so servicing galleys could be significantly shortened. Similarly, they might use a simplified process to shorten boarding time. You might notice that the tasks that have been shortened by LCCs are on the critical path, as you would expect.


How does the nitrogen generation system in a Boeing 777 work?

The 777 system

As RAC points out, "nitrogen-generation system" is somewhat of a misnomer. All the system does is remove oxygen from the ambient air and blow the rest into the center fuel tank; there is no chemically "new" nitrogen created. The 777 architecture is basically the same as the schematic that mike provides; in fact, all bleed-air aircraft use pretty much the same system. For example, here is an Airbus schematic:

Parker has a breakdown of the major components. Summarizing it and filling in some gaps, we have:

Ozone (O3) converter: Basically a catalytic converter that converts triatomic oxygen (ozone) to biatomic ("regular") oxygen to protect other elements in the system from oxidation.
Heat exchanger: Cools the bleed air (which is really hot when it comes off the engine), again to protect other elements of the system and increase their effectiveness.
Air separation module: Physically removes almost everything but the dinitrogen (N2) in the air. This separation is accomplished by running the air through semipermeable fibrous tubes; because almost all the non-N2 molecules present are smaller than the N2 molecules, those smaller molecules pass through the membranes and are exhausted overboard, leaving only the nitrogen to exit into the fuel tank.
Other: There are various filters to protect components from particulate matter, valves to control the timing and rate of flows, controllers to control the valves, and sensors to inform the controllers.

The 787 system

The 787 is a no-bleed airplane, which means that instead there is an electric-driven compressor to supply the NGS rather than bleed air. This setup requires a slightly different heat-exchanging architecture, but the overall function and operation of the primary system components are similar.


Could TCAS be used as a backup source for position, attitude or air data?

Can TCAS assist in dead reckoning?

First, understand that TCAS runs off secondary (transponder) radar data. Essentially your aircraft with TCAS is like ATC radar, interrogating other transponders, getting their pressure altitude and getting their bearing from your aircraft.  That data combined is processed to create threat advisories.

If displayed on a moving map, the moving map is typically fed positional data for your aircraft from GPS, and the TCAS alert data is overlayed onto the map.

So to address your question, TCAS only provides data about transponders relative to your aircraft.  TCAS does not determine where you are, or where you are going. (Depending upon your display it might appear that way, but that is not part of the TCAS system.)

So the answer to your question is no, TCAS does not effectively create a secondary navigation capability.

Addendum #1
TCAS can only sense altitude through the host aircraft's static port, so if it is iced over, TCAS has invalid altitude information.

TCAS does not sense other air data, such as pitot pressure information (airspeed).

TCAS does not know the host aircraft's position.  Any positional information in TCAS is derived from pressure altitude information the host and all interrogated transponders.  If the host static port is obscured, the information on threats will be invalid, because TCAS displays relative to the host pressure altitude.

In other words, there is no absolute positional information, and all TCAS information is relative to the current host aircraft, and derived from the secondary beacons of interrogated aircraft transponders.


Does Air Force One (VC-25) have retractable staircases on all its exit doors?

There is page by cryptome with documentation about AF1 rescue options.

According to the "TECHNICAL ORDER 00-105E-9, 1 FEBRUARY 2006, REVISION 11." (15 April 2006), slide 71 "AIRSTAIR OPERATION VC-25A", Boeing VC-25 has only two exits equipped with own airstairs, only at doors from lower compartments. Doors at main deck have no integrated airstairs.

Source

First photo in the question shows forward airstairs operation, and there is photo of aft airstairs, used in 2006.

According to this slide from the same PDF, there are 5 pairs of entry doors on main deck by design of the Boeing 747-200 plane; but 3 or them (1R, 3L, 3R) are blocked on VC-25 and can't be used. All doors from main deck have no own retractable stairs.

Also, from here:

  Unlike a normal 747, the plane has its own retractable stairways, for the rear entrance and the front entrance. These stairways open onto the lower deck, and crew members and staff climb internal staircases to get to the upper decks.


Why does the A320 right aileron float on dual engine failure?

Assuming it's zero fuel dual engine failure with no chance of powering up the APU, the plane is left with the Ram Air Turbine (RAT).

1. The emergency electrical configuration only powers ELAC 1, one of the two units that control the ailerons, and ELAC 2 is lost (see below).

(A320 FCOM)

2. The RAT powers only the Blue hydraulic system.

Add those two conditions with the color coded schematic below:

(Airbus Training Manual)

And the right aileron will not be powered. The same schematic can be found in the FCOM under Flight Controls > General > Architecture (27-10-20), the one above is clearer though.


Are controllers aware of TCAS RA taking place?

ATC was and is still generally not aware of RAs before being informed by the pilot
In general ATC is not aware of any RA occurring in aircraft, and is neither aware of the RA content. The crew informs ATC using a phraseology described in ICAO Doc 4444 PANS-ATM, Chapter 12, Para 12.3.1.2:

When the RA occurs, and the crew must deviate from ATC instructions, they inform ATC with "TCAS RA" when possible.
If an ATC instruction is received, which contradicts a current RA, they inform ATC with "Unable, TCAS RA".
The crew then informs ATC when the RA has ended, with "Clear of conflict, returning to (the ATC clearance)", and "resumed" when done.

See instructions to ATC and RTF Phraseology associated with TCAS RAs.
Pilot and ATCO obligations, impact of RAs on responsibilities
RA always takes precedence on ATC and must be followed by the crew (exceptions are investigated). This is because even if the crew has the intruder in sight and another safe maneuver might be executed as well, there is no certainty the visible aircraft is the conflicting one, or is the only conflicting one.
When informed, ATC doesn't provide further instructions to this aircraft before receiving the "clear of conflict" confirmation.
Two issues should not be overlooked:

According to existing regulations, a controller is not relieved from providing a guidance to pilots until informed by the pilot of a RA conflict ("unable TCAS RA" -- a pilot doesn't have to report RAs not preventing to comply with received ATC clearances). Therefore the (legal) responsibilities and obligations of the controller are unclear in the period between the display of the down-linked RA, which can be delayed by technical limits, and the actual report by the pilot which is not instantaneous.

Not all RAs are relevant to ATC, only those which pertain to collision avoidance or conflict with ATC clearances, therefore some filtering must be done either prior to download, or after reception to eliminate "Monitor Vertical Speed", "Maintain Vertical Speed", etc. This filtering may be imperfect and can lead to RA not displayed.

Last but not least, the current view of the controllers federation:

IFATCA is opposed to down linking of any advisories generated by ACAS.
If down linking of ACAS Resolution Advisories becomes mandated, then
IFATCA can only accept this provided that the following criteria are
met:

Clear and unambiguous controller legal responsibilities;
Downlink without delay;
ATC system to be able to receive, process and display the down link to the appropriate control positions;
Compatibility with all ground based safety nets;
Nuisance and false alerts must be kept to an absolute minimum;
ACAS should only be considered as a ‘safety net’.

RA downlink decisions and implementation progress
Due to the responsibility and limitations issues, the adoption of RA display at controller working position is variable among countries, in spite of technical studies confirming the interest (detailed further down), and modern ATC systems being able to receive and manage downlinked RA. Current status for some countries (source):

USA and UK and France don't use it (UK CAA clearly forbids any use).
Czech Republic and Hungary have tested the technology early and use it.
Luxembourg is conducting studies for using it.

Where it is used, the RA data is only for information, and doesn't change ATCO responsibility for collision avoidance, e.g. for Hungary the regulation has been complemented (source):

The TCAS RA Downlink shall be ignored from an operative point of view.
In  other words, it is only for situational awareness and informative
purposes, and the controller shall not consider RA Downlink when
issuing a new  clearance.

UK CAA forbids ANSP to use RA downlink (ibid):

There are currently no ICAO, European or UK pilot procedures, ATC
procedures or legal responsibilities for the use of ACAS RA Downlink.
However, this subject is under consideration by Eurocontrol.
There is no assurance as to the integrity of the RA downlink and
absent or false downlink data could be a possibility.
A downlinked RA without adequate discrimination may lead the ATCO to
inappropriately cease the provision of ATC instructions. However,
under current ICAO procedures, the controller will continue to provide
ATC instructions during RA events that do not deviate from the
clearance or instruction unless such a clearance is at variance with
the RA, at which point the pilot will report ‘UNABLE, TCAS RA’.

Studies conducted to include ACAS RAs in ground-based safety nets
There has been several accidents involving RAs not followed by crews, among them a tragical collision over Switzerland (2002 Überlingen) where the risk was not spotted in time by controllers due to a calamitous chain of events. RAs were issued by both TCAS, one pilot followed its RA, the other followed ATC urgent descent instruction against RA. The BFU report noted "an automatic downlink, integrated in the TCAS equipment, carrying information about issued RA’s to the respective ATC units has not been activated yet" and has recommended to allow RA downlink to inform ATCOs:

To enhance the performance of ACAS
ICAO should initiate the development of down-linking RAs to ATC, using
such technologies as SSR Mode S and Automatic Dependent Surveillance -
Broadcast (ADS-B)

Studies on the feasibility and operational benefits of RA downlink have been conducted in the USA, in France (1994), and in Japan and lately from 2003 to 2007, with the FARADS project which concluded possible short-term downlink solutions would be useful:

With Mode-S RA reports, the controller will be aware about the RAs in
95% of the cases within 9 seconds of their occurrence. Thus, the
downlink of RA information was found to be sufficiently timely to
allow for a significant increase in the controller’s awareness of the
RA encounter.

In the course of this project, RADE-1 and RADE-2 experiments had taken place at Brétigny (France), and concluded in RA downlink benefiting to ATC, without creating a cognitive tunneling around the RA. it also indicated RA downlink could not be deployed without being included in existing ground-based safety nets.
ATC uses ground-based safety nets, which purposes are similar to aircraft ACAS and GPWS, e.g.

Short Term Conflict Alert (STCA): operational since around 2013. An alert in STCA is supposed to take place about 30s prior to a TCAS RA, however this is more complex, and the RA may happens before the STCA alert.

Area Proximity Warning (APW), Minimum Safe Altitude Warning (MSAW) or Approach Path Monitor (APM), all operational since around 2016

RADE-2 experiment showing labels with RA data on first line (source)
Eurocontrol project PASS studied the inclusion of ACAS RA into STCA, and more generally the mutual compatibility and interaction of both systems. In the final report (2010):

An optional real-time experiment with both controllers and pilots
in-the-loop was planned to complement the findings of Phase 1 and to
help define operational requirements supporting an overall operational
concept for joint  STCA/TCAS operations. This optional work was
however not launched due to lack of funding.

The work done concluded the interaction between STCA and ACAS should be considered by ANSP. A few early adopters (Czech Republic, Hungary, Japan, Luxembourg) are experimenting, to answer the question, yes the type of RA is displayed, and whether the aircraft is advised to climb or descend, as visible on the picture above. This is the current status, and obviously everybody is waiting for ICAO (representative of all countries) clarification on the topic.


At uncontrolled airports, there is rarely enough traffic for signals to be needed, and pilots should (though are not required to) communicate with each other on CTAF—an option that cars do not have.
In the air, if you're close enough to see a turn signal, you are way too close and need to immediately follow the collision avoidance procedure.
More generally, aircraft are a lot more like boats than cars, and boats don't have turn signals either.


Did any metal airplane use a Maxwell slot?

Finally! The Vought OS2U Kingfisher (first flight 1938). At least the OS2U-2 model...

Production variant with minor equipment changes and powered by a 450 hp (336 kW) Pratt & Whitney R-985-50, 158 built. [emphasis mine]

... had default Maxwell slots, thanks to a wartime NACA report.[1] The report makes no mention of the plane's model, but another report does in the references section.[2]
I thought, it can't be true, it must have been a NACA modification. But no, the first reference explicitly lists the modifications done. The first of which is what I needed:

Modification 1.– Auxiliary slats were mounted ahead and above the normal leading edge of the wing root, overlapping the inboard end of the original Maxwell slot arrangement by about an inch (fig. 11). [happy-emphasis mine]

And that's not all. The PDF is a 90 MB color scan, so, photos, naturally:

Photos are hard to come by, but I found one that shows the popped-up leading-edge from behind:

Source: ww2db.com; the plane was available in land/sea configurations.

1: Adams, Betty. "Flight Measurements of the Effects of a Wing Leading-edge Slot and Other Modifications on the Stability, Maximum Lift, and High Speed of an Observation Airplane." (1943). https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19930093568
2: Adams, Betty. "Flight measurements of the effect of various amounts of aileron droop on the low-speed lateral-control characteristics of an observation airplane." (1943). https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19930092611


What are the pros and cons of a straight wing plane?

I assume you mean unswept vs swept-back wings.

Pro:

Easy to manufacture
More efficient at low-subsonic speeds

Con:

Unstable at transsonic and supersonic speeds (see Mach tuck)

More details about wing sweep (including forward sweep) that should answer your question: Swept wing


What high-lift devices are used on the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400?

The Dash8 - Q400 - Aeroplane General PDF (courtesy of smartcockpit.com) indicates on page 27 that there are inboard and outboard flaps.

Reading through the Dash8 - Q400 Flight Controls PDF (also from smartcockpit.com) indicates that:

  Two single-slotted inboard and outboard fowler flaps are attached to the trailling edge of each wing (Figure 12.8-1).page 43

There is no indication of slats or any other high-lift device.


What does it mean when a track "straddles north"?

So the problem is that cruising altitudes are assigned based on heading E or W. If the desired track is within a few degrees of north or south, the heading needed to maintain the track could 'straddle' north or south. With some tracks/wind combinations two aircraft flying the identical route at different airspeeds could fall into opposite hemispheres. Traffic in the reverse direction has the same issue, possibly resulting in opposing traffic at the same altitude. So which altitude do you assign/use?


What are the factors behind crew pairing and crew rostering?

It is very, very complicated.
It is so complicated that an entire department is dedicated to this task. Below I would provide a glimpse of crew rostering.
Basics
Most airlines provide roster on a monthly basis. The flights that will be flown are well planned beforehand. From this, a minimum number of crew must be on each flight, for example a Captain, a First Officer, and certain number of flight attendants. Many requirements and restrictions must be meet. For example:

Crew must be qualified to perform their duties (more on that below).
Duty time, rest time, ground time, turn-around time must be legal, and preferably, reasonable.
Mandatory crew may be different for different aircraft types. For example, a B777 on a long haul flight may require 2 Captains, 1 First Officer, 1 Second Officer and 10 flight attendants. A A320 on a short flight would require 1 Captain, 1 Second Officer, and 4 attendants.
Generally speaking, cabin crew can be swapped between aircraft types, such as between Airbus and Boeing. Pilots are current (legally qualified to fly commercially) only on a specific type.
Crew are sometimes assigned to ad-hoc duties, such as accepting delivery of a new aircraft.
Besides flying, crew would also have training duties, line-check duties and simulator duties.

Constraints
Mostly for safety reasons (and also for risk reduction), some pairing combinations are not allowed either legally or by company requirement. For example:

A pilot aged 60 or above must be paired with another pilot below the age of 60.
A newly joined Captain (defined as having flown X sectors or less) must not be paired with a newly joined First Officer or Second Officer.
Similarly, the percentage of newly joined cabin crew (defined as having flown X sectors or less) should not exceed a certain number.
Some flights may call for an experienced crew, for example a new route (no one has landed at that airport before) or charter flight.

Qualifications
There are various qualification requirements that must be fulfilled for a crew to legally perform duty on commercial flight. For example,

Captain must have made a takeoff and landing within the previous 30 days.
First Officer or Second Officer must have made 3 takeoffs and landings within the previous 90 days.
Certain qualifications (e.g. takeoff and landing requirements above) expire, but can be renewed on a commercial flight. You'd want to plan it so that the pilot has a chance to attempt it during duty hours, instead of going through additional training after it has expired.
Certain qualifications must be renewed through training, for example in a simulator. You'd also want to plan it so it is renewed before flying status is invalidated. Remember that the trainer may also have flying duties as well.
Route may require additional ratings. For example crew must be ILS CAT-III trained to use it. If it flies over Chinese airspace crew must be trained to fly metric system. If it flies over the Atlantic crew must be trained to fly North Atlantic Tracks.
Line-check needs to be performed every X number of days.
Crew must possess the necessary nationality or Visa for the departure / destination airport.

Ad-hoc / stand-by
Unforeseen circumstances such as mechanical problems, adverse weather, on-route diversions, crew sickness etc. may require last minute changes to the roster list. This is undesirable, so a certain number of crew would be on "stand-by" duty, meaning there is no duty assignment on that particular day, but they must be available at a particular airport within X minutes shall the need arises. There are legal requirements on stand-by time and duty time after stand-by as well.
If the department does not plan well, there may be insufficient number of crew members (i.e. not enough manpower) to serve all flights.
Improvements
Fatigue is becoming more of a hot topic in aviation. Just because a duty assignment is legal and within company policy, does not necessary mean it is good. Software can be used to analyze factors such as timezone shifts, jet lags, day night patterns etc. to identify and avoid possible fatigue scenarios.
On certain routes, it may be beneficial to assign crew who can speak certain foreign languages. For example, if statistics show that a portion of the passengers on a route are Koreans, it would be better to assign it to cabin crew who can also speak Korean. It may even be a company requirement that the cabin crew together must speak a few chosen languages, so at least there is someone who can translate.
How it is done
As you can imagine, given this many constraints, the roster is done by software. It is mainly a constraint satisfying problem, which can be solved by many well-established algorithms in computer science.
Some rules are "hard rules", meaning they are legal requirements. Some are "soft rules", they are best accommodated to provide optimal performance but may be violated when necessary. For example it is preferable to fairly allocate flight and duty time. It is also preferable to fulfill any route preference requested, but that may not be possible given other constraints.


What does Airbus means by long product cycles?

A long product cycle means that the lifecycle of a product spans a long time. Aircraft models are often produced for more than 30 years (the 737 and 747 are now approximately 50 years in production).

At the same time, the capital expenses to build a production line are enormous. And in starting up a production line there are always teething troubles which take time and money to iron out. Therefore it would be a waste of capital to move a production line from the UK to mainland EU.

That only is viable when a new aircraft model is introduced and an old model is phased out. New models don't appear every year and it seems that most of the current models are still selling well so unless there will be a huge cost associated with keeping the production line in the UK (e.g. taxes, increasing labour cost, unfavourable exchange rate) no changes are to be expected soon.


What is the historical reasons to start Belgians registrations with "OO-"?

Since nearly all aircraft have radios, the simplest solution was to make aircraft tail numbers the same as their radio callsigns. Belgium was allocated radio callsigns with the prefixes ON through OT by the ITU, though for whatever reason, they use only prefix OO for aircraft.


Occulted top cockpit windows are quite misleading in identifying this one.

It is a Percival P-50 Prince 2

(source)

It may very well be this exact one:

(source)

Description in source image tells: N206UP, 1953 Percival P-50 Prince 2, C/N: P50/10, Standing in a private garden near Antelope Acres CA

Also provides a googlemaps link


Is an aeroplane's design only functional?

The question is very broad so I gave a quick overview, please comment and I will elaborate further by editing my answer.
Jet liners are purely designed for function, they are all about transporting x amount of passengers for the lowest cost per mile. That trend started after the oil crisis. The Boeing 747 was originally developed as a cargo airplane such that when we would by flying supersonic they could be converted from pax to cargo. This all went south and supersonic flying was not the future anymore. The 777 program was one of the first jet fully optimized to fit as many pax in it as possible, just look at two seat plans, one for the 747 and one for the 777

Boeing 747

Boeing 777

As can be clearly seen by the picture above is that the 777 has far less space left with no seats thus fitting in more pax per square meter.

In the private jet world design is still functional but there is more freedom to waste some fuel on unnecessary bits if this makes your aircraft stand out. This would result in aircraft like the:
Beachcraft Starship

Piaggio Avanti

They both feature a more complex design involving a Canard configuration which has advantages but also major drawbacks

Moving over to private jets a similar trend as in the civilian market can be seen where designs are more alike due to the simple fact that jets are expensive and you will most probably only see the inside as it is parked in a hangar anyways and you can't drive it over the boulevard so everyone can see it

Honda Jet, interesting looking aircraft but still mostly functional as mounting the engines aft reduces the noise inside the cabin, high mounted engines allows for unpaved runways and reduces the risk of FOD from the runway.


Why are trailing-edge control surfaces usually split?

Same reason you have split ailerons on most big airliners. The inboard surfaces deflect at higher speeds and the outboard ones are locked, reducing the twisting (torque) forces on the wings. It also allows for finer control (in fly-by-wire cases) as well. Like a lever, a small deflection of the outboard surface results is higher rate pitch/roll (in this delta wing elevon example) compared to same deflection of the inboard surface.


What is the actual exhaust velocity of the exhaust from the J58 engines at cruise (Mach 3.2)?

It's not a cut and dried single figure but  this
SR-71 PROPULSION SYSTEM - P&W J58 ENGINE (JT11D-20) seems to have enough information to allow you to arrive at a reasonable figure with 'some work'. If I had to choose one information source to get a feel for the answer this would be on the short short list (so far :-) ). Unlike most other sources, the result will be at least somewhat meaningful, if not overly accurate.

It also seems to make it 'clear enough' that if someone gives you a simple unqualified numerical answer it will be meaningless, or wrong, or both :-). It's a 44 page PDF slideshow - but has enough detail to show how different the J58 is to what you may expect.

He also supplies these references which will almost certainly be interesting, and possibly also useful.

Connors, Jack, The Engines of Pratt & Whitney: A Technical History, AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.), Reston, VA, 2010, pp. 321-332.
St. Peter, J., The History of Aircraft Gas Turbine Engine Development in the United States: A Tradition of Excellence, ASME, New York, 1999, pp.264-275.
Campbell, David H., F-12 Series Aircraft Propulsion System Performance and Development, AIAA No. 73821, 1973. Also found in AIAA Journal of Aircraft, Vol. 11, No. 11, November
1974, pp. 670-676. Note: This paper presents information only up to Mach 3.0 due to security restrictions at that time.
California Institute of Technology, Course Ae107, Case Studies in Engineering: The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, Spring 1991. Published by Cal Tech for course students and presenters only.
Anderson, J. Thomas, unpublished training course syllabus, How Supersonic Inlets Work: Details of The Geometry And Operation Of The SR-71 Mixed Compression Inlet, 2013.

If you do want a single misleading and probably wrong figure :-) then this book say 18,587 m/s at Mach 3.2 (table 1 page 175)

More M&PW answers:

Page 39-40

and here

Somewhere in here probably :-).

Related;

Comment in passing bottom of page 1

and

Here


The answer to your question has a lot to do with how waves generated by a moving object propagate. You can see a full explanation here but the short answer is the Doppler Effect which causes pitch to change as the object moves buy you.

Here is a nice explanation

Edit:

My knowledge is a bit rusty but basically you are talking about a mechanical wave propagating through a fluid (the atmosphere) which will absorb some of the energy (eventually all of it). I would also thing that as the speed of sound changes the frequency of the wave would change much like the changes light has when it crosses different mediums.


Why would a passenger airliner be missing windows in the fuselage?

Most of them are where there is a divider between sections or there is a lavatory there.

Here are the layouts for the Garuda A330-200 and -300. As you can see the divider between the classes (Between Blue row 11 and green row 21) and the lavatories (Between rows 31 and 32) are located where the missing windows are in the video.

-300:

-200:

Images by Garuda Airlines


Turbofans on commercial airliners are tested against hail, up to 'golf ball size', and ice is harder than a golf ball.

Think back to Taca 110, that lost both engines while descending through a hailstorm reported to be up to golf ball size. What killed the engines wasn't the impact of the hail, but the amount of water ingested into the engines. It seems that the engines had been tested for water and hail ingestion at cruising speed... not at near idle, which was the power setting during a descent. Once identified, that problem was rectified quickly with mods to the engines.

Nor does the golf ball have the sheer mass of a goose, such as the flock of geese that took out both engines of USAir 1549.

Most likely, a golf ball striking a running turbofan would be sliced up by the front fan, and centrifugal force would tend to fling the fragments outward where they would exit via the bypass, and not through the turbine engine.

So I'd have to say, very unlikely, only to allow for the chance in a billion that the sliced up fragments of a golf ball might actually enter the compressor stage and cause a problem in one engine.

The greatest problem from a golf ball being ingested by a turbine, is figuring out what rule of golf applies... how do you mark your card? (WTF probably doesn't meet approved guidelines)


A320: Why do SDACs supply all three DMCs?

The Hydraulic System is displayed only on the lower ECAM which is supplied by the DMC2. Nothing about the hydraulic system is shown on the upper ECAM supplied by the DMC1.

That is not true. If DMC1 or DMC2 fails, DMC3 takes over. But if the display fails, the other display takes over. So the hydraulics page can be displayed on the upper display. It can even be displayed instead of the MFD or even PFD if both ECAM displays fail. Similarly for all the other ECAM pages.


What is NASR, The FAA's System for Managing Aeronautical Information?

NASR contains the current information upon which Air Traffic Control and other FAA activities depend. NASR supports the management of NAS data used by the FAA, chart producers (including Jeppesen), military and other Government entities to produce a variety of aeronautical publications. Downloads from Foreflight use this data, but may be reformatted to suit the application and would not come directly from any NASR database.

In addition, NASR data is accessed by commercial air carriers, flight planners, and flight systems developers as required by FAA regulation to support the safety-of-flight mission.

The data is available on a 28 day subscription basis. Legacy flat files show the data content, though other forms are available. Definitions for each table are here. The tables are:

Airports and Other Landing Facilities (APT)
ARTCC Boundary Descriptions (ARB)
ARTCC Facilities (AFF)
ASOS/AWOS(AWOS)
ATC Tower and Satellite Airport Communications (TWR)
ATS Non-Regulatory Airways (ATS)
Coded Departure Routes (CDRs) (CDR)
Country Codes
Enroute National Fix Program
Significant Points (NATFIX)
Fix/Reporting Point/Waypoint (FIX)
Flight Service Station Communications Facilities (COM)
Flight Service Stations (FSS)
High Altitude Redesign (HAR)
Significant Points (HARFIX)
Holding Patterns (HPF)
Instrument Landing Systems (ILS/MLS) (ILS)
Location Identifiers (LID)
Miscellaneous Activity Area (MAA)
Military Training Routes (MTR)
Navigation Aids (NAV)
Parachute Jump Area (PJA)
Preferred Route / Tower Enroute Control (TEC) Routes (PFR)
Regulatory Airways (AWY)
Standard Terminal Arrival / Standard Instrument Departure (Complete Set) (STARDP)
State Codes
Standard Terminal Arrival / Standard Instrument Departures (AFSS Subset) (SSD)
Weather Reporting Locations (WXL)


There are a number of factors that can contribute to short take off landing (STOL) ability.

The Zenith page has some information:
http://www.zenithair.com/stolch801/design/design.html

Wing Shape

A more "cupped" wing shape generates more lift at a slower speed, enabling a shorter take off. This sacrifices the aircraft's top speed. Note that this limitation can be mitigated by making the wing shape changeable with slats and flaps.

There are other modifications that can be made to a wing shape to favor STOL characteristics. For example, there are a variety of STOL kits that can be added to existing aircraft. These range from wing tips to other airfoil shape changes.

Wind Speed

By taking off into a higher speed wind, the takeoff distance is decreased. With a strong enough headwind (and a skilled pilot), a STOL aircraft and appear to take off vertically with little or no runway needed.

Power to Weight Ratio

The more powerful the engine is compared to the weight of the overall aircraft, the less runway is required to achieve takeoff speed.


Is it possible to build 'Contra-rotating' EDF?

The primary reasons you'd want contra-rotating pairs with conventional (unducted) propellers are cancellation of torque/P-factor, and delivering more power with a limitation on diameter (tip speed, usually, or landing gear height).

Neither of these really applies to ducted fans; it's easy to null out the slipstream rotation with fixed vanes in the duct, and flow is always perfectly axial so there's no P-factor to worry about.  Further, pitch can be built high enough to absorb the needed power without supersonic blade tips, and generally is.

Bottom line, there's nothing to be gained from the extra weight and complexity of contrarotating fans in a duct compared to just using a slightly larger fan and motor to deliver the increased thrust you're chasing.


Is it possible to recover from a flat spin?

The F-14 is special; to stop the flat spin you need to pull on the stick. Then the spin can be recovered from.

This is different from what you learn about regular spins, where pushing the stick would be a better recovery method. In a flat spin, the forward fuselage dominates the aerodynamic forces, and we all know there are no control surfaces which could influence this flow. Wings and horizontal surfaces are fully separated, and elevator deflection is mostly useless. As others have pointed out before, a flat spin can only be stopped by shifting the center of gravity forward or deploying a spin chute. The F-14 was an exception.

Spinning the F-14

Early on, the Navy lost several F-14s due to flat spins. They then studied the phenomenon at Pax River, and in the end Bill Bihrle found out that the elevator shields airflow from the two vertical tails of the F-14 when the stick is pushed, but moves out of the way when the stick is pulled full aft. You have to know that the elevator of the F-14 is a full-flying surface, and the movement range is from -20° to +70°. At +70° it is almost in line with the airflow in a flat spin, and now the vertical tails are no longer in the wake of the elevator. They now can reduce the high yaw rate, which in turn reduces the high pitch-up moment of the rotating fuselage. With the lower inertial pitch-up moment, the elevator then has to be moved back to neutral, and the drag from wing and elevator is enough to pitch the aircraft fully down and out of the spin.

Naturally stable flying wings never enter a flat spin; their spin modes are all fairly steep due to the lack of a strong inertial moment from the lengthwise distribution of masses.

Influence of mass distribution

I guess I now need to explain the inertial moment which causes the high pitch attitude in some aircraft. The axis of the spin rotation is close to the aircraft's nose, and the tail has the biggest distance from this axis. In a flat spin the axis of rotation is even more back, close to the center of gravity. All parts of the aircraft rotate with the same yaw rate, and the centrifugal force from this yawing motion grows linearly with distance from the spin axis. This difference in centrifugal force along the lengthwise coordinate of the aircraft pulls the aircraft in a near-horizontal attitude.

Watch this movie of the spinning XB-70 to get an idea how it looks. Depending on elevon settings, the spin axis is somewhere between the cockpit and the forward tip of the wing triangle. With the damaged configuration (watch without sound for no distraction) you get a typical flat spin with the spin axis close to the center of gravity since there are few suction forces acting on most surfaces - only drag and the nose vortex (more on that below) remain.

How to avoid flat spins

If you have a configuration which is prone to flat spins, you need to change the shape of the fuselage tip. A rotating fuselage tip at high angle of attack will produce vortices at its side, and the yawing moment of these vortices will grow stronger with increasing yawing motion. This is why a flat spin is self-stabilizing. One way to suppress these vortices is the placement of small spoiler strips along the nose (which fixes the vortex position and reduces this self-stabilizing effect), and another is to make the nose shape flatter.

Unfortunately, this can only be done long before take-off.

Answer to your question

Regarding the "Top Gun" scenario: If the F-14 is at high angle of attack and the jet wash hits it asymmetrically, the airplane could enter into a spin. But from there it is still some way to the fully developed flat spin, and I would expect that a skilled pilot could recover from this momentary upset.


How do stealth aircraft reduce the Heat Signature?

The short of it is that it's really hard to hide the heat signature of a device that is powered by burning large amounts of kerosene and shoving those gases out behind it. IR stealth is therefore a secondary concern (or lower) to designers of stealth fighters, primarily because the IR signature only matters at much closer ranges where stealth technology itself has reduced value (you can hide from radar, and camouflage to an extent, but you can't disappear entirely from visual range).

However, there are some things that can be done to make an aircraft less than blindingly obvious to IR sensors. Here are a few:

High bypass. Not all of the air that enters a turbofan engine's intake enters the actual combustion chamber. Bypass air helps to cool the hot combusted air before it exits, reducing the IR signature.

The A-10, not a "stealth" aircraft in the slightest, nevertheless operates in situations where MANPADS (shoulder-fired SAMs) are a big threat, so to reduce its IR signature it uses some of the highest-bypass turbofans ever put on a military single-seater, at a 6:1 bypass ratio. These high bypass engines, however, reduce performance at high altitudes and high airspeeds; neither disadvantage is a problem for the low, slow A-10's mission profile, but for a more high-performance air superiority fighter this is a big deal.

High-performance jet engines in fighters tend to be relatively low bypass compared to airliner engines for this reason. The F-15 and F-16 were powered by a P&W turbofan with just 0.36:1 bypass ratio, however this only increases IR signature by requiring higher fuel flow rates for the same thrust at lower speeds (lower bypass also reduces the effect of afterburners because there is less unburned bypass air to feed the additional combustion).

The F-22 mitigates the efficiency losses of a turbofan with a variable bypass intake system, allowing it to function as a turbofan with similar bypass to other fighters (about 0.3:1) at low speeds and altitudes, but converting to a near-turbojet configuration (almost zero bypass) at high altitudes and supersonic speeds, which is more fuel-efficient than an afterburner (and so allows the F-22 to supercruise).
Exhaust baffles. The thing designers typically want to avoid at all costs is exposing the actual point of ignition and primary combustion in a jet engine to the ground; this makes the hottest part of a plane's visible IR signature within the plane itself instead of the stream of hot air behind it, allowing easy targeting by IR SAMs. Imagine being an SA-13 "Gopher" mobile SAM launcher and having these twin fireballs from an F-15E for a target:

To hide this massive heat source, stealth aircraft are designed with exhaust vents that mask the exit point of the engine's exhaust from observation by the ground. There's really not a lot you can do design-wise to mask the IR signature from directly behind the aircraft; it's the pilot's job to ensure nobody ends up at that angle within missile range.

Northrop is a fan of directing exhaust out over the top of their fuselage designs. Here's the B-2; you can see the heat plumes of the exhaust trail, but the source of actual combustion is well within the engine housing, and with the aircraft at any altitude the exhaust vent itself would be totally obscured:

Here are the exhaust channels of the YF-23, which incorporated lessons learned from the B-2; notice the similarities in the strategy for directing the exhaust out over the top of the aircraft's trailing edge:

The F-22 Raptor uses a similar theory of tucking the engines way back behind exhaust ducts, but these ducts can move to vector thrust or open to allow afterburners, so for greatest effect the ducts are placed to the rear instead of over the top of the fuselage as Northrop's designs tend to:

EMR-absorbing materials. A basic part of stealth design is the use of materials that absorb radar, and designing the aircraft's surfaces with angles that minimize the number of surfaces providing a direct return at any angle, while remaining aerodynamic. Other materials can absorb other frequencies in the EMR spectrum including IR; the Space Shuttle's lower and leading surfaces were covered in special ceramic tiles that could absorb enormous amounts of thermal energy while being cool to the touch. A similar material, not quite as effective but also less delicate, is used to protect the exhaust ducts of stealth fighters, and this has a secondary effect of lowering the radiant heat signature of the engines because the exhaust nozzles stay cooler. The radar absorbing material used elsewhere has some capacity for absorbing heat on leading edges, which helps avoid good lock-on by all-aspect IR missiles, but it's not the material's primary job.

In summary, designers do try to minimize IR signature, but tactically, if an enemy can launch an IR missile at you you have already failed at being stealthy. An infrared missile launch requires the launcher to tell the missile where to look, and that means they must at least be able to look at you themselves (using helmet-cued AA missiles), if not point the missile itself or the tracking radar at you. The idea of stealth is to minimize the amount of time the enemy knows that you exist by being invisible on radar, so they can't see you coming until they spot you visually, at which point they're either already dead or have mere seconds to react. Then for a ground run it's "one pass and haul ass" to avoid reprisals from anti-aircraft systems, while for an air-to-air engagement the first plane to launch a missile has an extreme advantage (and thus the advantage starts with the first plane to know where the other one is).


How are backlit aircraft panels (for simulators) made?

This video says the following:

  Here's my Tonson TS-3040C CNC making an EFIS panel for my flight
  simulator. For the lettering I am using a 0.4mm End Mill and for
  cutting out I'm using a 1mm End Mill. RPM is 10000 and movement is
  300mm / Min. The material is Cast Acrylic which I have given one coat
  of black paint and two coats of grey paint.

So that's at least one method, but there are probably more...