On Oct 7, 6:53 pm, Jim Logajan wrote:
flightoffancy wrote:
I thought I had read in numerous books during training that the primary
component of lift is the air that gets knocked downward by the wing. I
was calling that "downwash". Maybe my concept of downwash is wrong,
maybe it's a separate consideration from the air that gets knocked
downward by the airfoil. Hell I might not be remembering any of that
correctly.

You appear to have the essential concept right. But aerodynamicists call it
"turning" the flow, which is different from what they call "downwash."
Here's NASA's explanations:

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/lift1.html

And if you click on "turning" you can see this explanation of the term (and
hopefully why "turning" was chosen):

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/right2.html

And this is what aerodynamicists call "downwash" :

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/downwash.html

I wanted to thank you again for these NASA links. IThe more I read,
the more it becomes clear that is *not* universal concensus on the
basic mechanisms of flight, not even among experts.

-Le Chaud Lapin-