Rudders, a photo from Noord-Holland, Zuid

Photographer's Note

On the Schiphol Airport terrace, this pattern of three KLM planes gave me the idea.

Ok, it was simply because I had my camera and one hour 'til my flight ;-)

Nobody heeft deze opmerking als nuttig gemarkeerd

Critiques | Translate

vilius (642) 2006-10-16 14:23

Strictly speaking, these are vertical stabilizers. A rudder is relatively small moving part of a vertical stabilizer used to control yaw with rudder pedals. At high air speeds auto rudder function is enabled. Boeing aircraft (featured here) have aluminium stabilizers which are elastic enough to withstand shear forces. Airbuses have composite stabilizers which will break off if you violently turn the rudder right and left for some time (for example, to counter turbulence, which was the reason of one crash in US). Therefore Airbus aircraft now have rudder warnings on their instrument panels. OK, it was more like a note really. :-)

Regarding the photo, I believe the compo is not ideal and it is cluttered with all kinds of small vehicles which are disturbing. Airplanes are extremely beautiful creatures, but their grace is best seen in flight - at takeoff and landing... Cheers - Vilius

[2]

dragonslayero (3592) 2006-11-11 18:21

Hello Marko

Airplanes... I love airplanes. And one great detail about them the is the sometimes very lively tail art.
KLM is proparbly the exception, as far as I know they are the only company to still keep the original logo.
Your choice of isolating the blue letters is a great idea.
The overall scene looks a little cluttered but I still feel the tail logo is getting the full attention.

Ok a little technical stuff, vilius mentions rudder warning. I want to deepen that info a little.
With a lot of motion in the rudder most rudders will break off, no matter if it is aluminium or composite. There is however a fail safe system that is upposed to counter this to a certain extent.
Due to the effect called "dutch roll" (achieving roll on the aircraft when using rudder) most aircraft are installed with a "Yaw damping system".
See the workshop for illustration and further explanation.

Odd Jarle

[workshop] [compare]

kittyhawk (1802) 2006-11-15 9:03

Hello Marko,

I really think the B&W photo with the blue leters is a great idea, I allso like the composition.

This photo reminds me of my time as ground crew at stavanger airport, I some times miss that work. Now, I work on the mechanical bit of the air crafts, the engine to be precise. I've spent lots of time loading and un loading these aircraft, and now I work ovehauling their engines.... (Sorry, I lost my train of thought.) I would allso recomend Odd Jarles critique, and WS for more info about the technical bits vilius mentiones...

Thank you for sharing this image, very nice work. Bouth shoting and editing.

Friedly,

- Halgeir