Great photos.

I recently discovered how to walk around the cabin (without a camera addon). It's cool to see CS has modeled the parts where you don't normally see.

Aren't those the wing vortices? They change the airflow.

Hehe Lou I wish I had you as my teacher in the early 60's..
I am pretty sure that I would have end up in a Russian space station or something similar to that..  
Your teachings are legitness, if you understand my bad term..  

Now lets see how the boys answer on this tricky question...

One advice guys:
*Most stuff on a aircraft, can be used for more than one thing only!*
*Those stuff will operate both positively and negatively, at the same time  *

So make sure that you give Lou more than just one answer, "Why"...
Trust me he will not be satisfied with it  ´
Give the whole story, "pro's/con's/why/how/when"
And then I promise you! He will say to you, that you have answered correctly with great extend to it as well... 

Hope this doesn't confuse you guys who want to answer Lou's tricky question...

pj747 said: They are called vortex generators. They help move the air on top of the wing so it gets as close to teh airfoil during the air's entire trip over it so that for landing it helps lower the stall speed to allow for slower approaches and shorter landings. One of our family friends's friends whose our aquaintence lives in McCall Idaho (I think) helped develop the VG's for the Beechcraft Baron.


They are called vortex generators indeed, but you said they help move the air...not really correct.

The small tabs are set at an angle from each other and in rows. What they do is GENERATE turbulence in the air flow which slows the air down a bit and helps to keep the flow of air attached to the contour of the wing, re-energizing the boundary layer. In this case on the 707 they are used to delay flow separation. They are placed at parts of the wing that are somewhat critical. Usually, they are installed on the front third of a wing in order to maintain steady airflow over the control surfaces at the trailing edge of the wing such as the aileron as is the case in the 707 wing.

The 727 has them all over the place including the vertical stabilizer. That helps improve the air flow over the rudders.




from AVWeb
"The use of vortex generators is nothing new. First used in England, VGs have been used on transport jets for decades, and on bizjets since Bill Lear invented them. But historically they were used as an aerodynamic "band-aid" to deal with localized mach buffet problems at the high end of the airspeed envelope. MacDonnell Douglas engineers would routinely scoff at the VGs on Boeing jets and brag, "see, we don't need those things because we got our aerodynamics right in the first place."

The idea of using VGs to improve the low-speed performance of general aviation aircraft came from an ex-Boeing engineer named Paul Robertson."  

More reading: http://www.avweb.com/news/reviews/182564-1.html