Aircraft

A high efficiency airplane which comprises:

• a body, a wing extending laterally from said body, a tail at the rear of said body, and primary, active control members which are located at the trailing edge of said wing and are pivoted for movement relative to said wing at their forward edges and about an axis extending longitudinally of said wing, there being a series of such control members extending the full span of said wing from said airplane body to the tip of said wing on each side of said airplane body, said airplane further comprising means for so scheduling the deployment of said control members that, when said members are deployed to increase or decrease the coefficient of lift of said wing, each succeeding control member nearer said body of the airplane is deployed to a greater extent than the preceding control member, and means for controlling the movement of said trailing edge members as aforesaid, said movement controlling means comprising a separate electric motor for displacing each of said control members, a central processor for calculating the number of turns required for each of said motors to displace said control member operated thereby in accord with a schedule generated by said central processor in response to a pilot controlled input to said central processor, and a separate controller for causing each of said motors to rotate for said number of turns calculated by said central processor.

A high efficiency airplane which comprises:

• a body having a double lobe configuration;
• a tail mounted at the rear of said airplane body;
• a single, high aspect ratio, main wing having a root mounted to the bottom of said aircraft body, said wing being swept back from said root and having a plurality of control members at the trailing edge of said wing, the center of gravity of said airplane being aft of said wing root on a line which passes through a point lying between 44 percent and 70 percent of the mean area chord of said main wing so that, while said airplane is cruising, all vertical loads acting on said wing and said tail are upwardly directed loads, and the control members at said trailing edge of said wing which are located inboard and adjacent said body being sufficiently far forward of said center of gravity so that operation of said inboard control members which increases the coefficient of lift of said wing results in pitch-up of said airplane and operation of said inboard control members which decreases the coefficient of lift of said wing results in pitch-down of said airplane;
• nose landing gear mounted in said aircraft body forward of said center of gravity;
• and
• main landing gear mounted in said double-lobe aircraft body independently of said wing and aft of said center of gravity of said airplane so that downwardly directed loads are maintained on said nose landing gear while said airplane is on the ground.