Pilotage

pilotage: see air navigation.

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pilotage [′pī·lət·ij]

(navigation)

The procedure of using landmarks, such as cities, towns, rivers, railroads, and prominent highways, to guide an aircraft to its destination

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Pilotage 

(Russian, pilotazh), the spatial maneuvering of airplanes or gliders to perform various figures in the air. Pilotage is subdivided into elementary, advanced, and aerobatic flying— depending on the degree of difficulty of the maneuver—and into solo and formation flying—depending on the number of airplanes or gliders. Pilotage has been most highly developed in the dogfights of fighter planes, where a plane must quickly take the most advantageous position for attacking the enemy or escape from the zone of enemy fire.

Elementary maneuvers include the 360° turn, the horizontal eight, the S-turn, the spiral, slipping, acceleration, deceleration, and dives and steep climbs where the flight-path angle with the horizon is less than 45°.

Examples of advanced maneuvers are the chandelle, the wingover, the semihalf-wingover, the barrel roll, the Nesterov loop, the oblique loop, the Immelmann, the hammerhead stall, and dives and steep climbs where the flight-path angle with the horizon is greater than 45°, and all the elementary maneuvers when performed by a group of planes in close formation.

Aerobatic maneuvers include the controllable roll, the one-and-a-half and multiple horizontal or ascending rolls, the one-and-a-half loop, the double Immelmann, the double ascending turn with a half-roll, the vertical eight, the spin, the possible combinations of advanced maneuvers or of elements of such maneuvers, all advanced maneuvers when performed by a group of planes, and all types of inverted flight.

G. S. KALACHEV