Speedo

Some athletes who have been sponsored by the Speedo brand include Greg Louganis, Janet Evans, Michael Phelps, Amanda Beard, Dawn Fraser, and Kosuke Kitajima. Business jets are typically flown by commercial pilots, although there is a new generation of small jets arriving soon for private pilots. Analysts attribute this phenomenon to the unique and intriguing interplay of religion, conservatism and human sexuality in the US, as in an essayby Kevin Esser. Piston-powered propeller aircraft (single-engine or twin-engine) are especially common for both private and commercial general aviation, but even private pilots occasionally own and operate helicopters like the Bell JetRanger or turboprops like the Beechcraft King Air. While women's swimwear remains scanty, men's swimwear has evolved into boardshorts that are baggy and long enough to reach the knees, or below. Commercial general aviation pilots use aircraft for a wide range of tasks, such as flight training, pipeline surveying, passenger and freight transport, policing, crop dusting, and medical transport (medevac). In the United States of America, however, the opposite trend has developed since the 1980s. Usually these private pilots own their own aircraft and take out loans from banks or specialized lenders to purchase them.

Men of all ages wear speedos at beaches and pools in Europe, Asia, and South America. Private pilots use aircraft primarily for personal travel, business travel, or recreation. Due to its apparent utilitarian value for both swimming and sunbathing, the bikini-type competitive swimsuits colloquially known as 'budgie smugglers' became popular among non-professional swimmers and beach-goers in many parts of the world. Within general aviation, the major distinction is between private flights (where the pilot is not paid for time or expenses) and commercial flights (where the pilot is paid by a customer or employer). The company also continues to manufacture recreational swimwear, goggles, earplugs, swim caps, towels, robes, sportswear and other logo clothing, watches, sandals, beach volleyball and triathlon products, lifeguard gear, and training supplies for competitive and recreational swimmers. The vast majority of flights flown around the world each day belong to the general aviation category, ranging from recreational balloon flying to civilian flight training to business trips to firefighting to medevac flights to cargo transportation on freight aircraft. Their high-end suits often sell for in excess of $300 American for the Fastskin 2 series. Civil aviation includes both scheduled airline flights and general aviation, a catch-all covering other kinds of private and commercial use.

Though it still manufactures the traditional briefs and racerback designs that made the company famous, Speedo's latest competitive swimwear designs incorporate suits that provide greater coverage to the arms, legs, and even full body for their top end lineup. By the time of the Vietnam War, helicopters had come into widespread military use, especially for transporting and supporting ground troops. The designs employ new fabrics that the company claims will reduce resistance in the water by replicating biological skin characteristics of various marine animals such as sharks. Tankers were developed after World War II to refuel other aircraft in mid-air, thus increasing their operational range. During the late 1990's the company turned its attention to its aquablade and fastskin product lines of competitive swimwear. In order to prevent the enemy from bombing, fighter aircraft were developed to intercept and shoot down enemy aircraft. During the 1970's and 80's new fabrics such as lycra were incorporated into the company's swimwear design. During World War I many types of aircraft were adapted for attacking the ground or enemy vehicles/ships/guns/aircraft, and the first aircraft designed as bombers were born.

The company quickly expanded into the international arena from there until the present, boasting that 70 percent of swimming medals were won by athletes wearing its products in the Olympic Games of 1968, 1972, and 1976. Combat aircraft themselves, though used a handful of times for reconnaissance and surveillance during the Italo-Turkish War, did not come into widespread use until the Balkan War when first air-dropped bomb was invented and widely used by Bulgarian air force against Turkey. The 1956 Olympics in Melbourne saw the widespread debut of the new fabric and the introduction of the style of men's briefs that has become associated with the brand. In the past, gliders and balloons have also been used as military aircraft; for example, balloons were used for observation during the American Civil War and World War I, and cargo gliders were used during World War II to land intruding German troops in many European countries in the 1940/42 period, while Allied troops used them in Europe after D-Day . In 1955 Speedo introduced nylon into its fabric for competitive swimwear. Even the little fabric-covered two-seater Piper J3 Cub had a military version, the L-4 liaison, observation and trainer aircraft. Speedo resumed production after the war and became a publicly traded corporation in 1951. military and the Dakota in Britain and the Commonwealth.

During World War II the manufacturer shifted nearly all of its production to war materials such as mosquito nets. Many civil aircraft have been produced in separate models for military use, such as the civil Douglas DC-3 airliner, which became the military C-47/C-53/R4D transport in the U.S. The name was made up by a Captain Jim Parsons who won a company competition with the slogan "Speed on in your Speedos.". Combat aircraft like fighters or bombers represent only a minority of the category. In 1928 the name Speedo was first adopted after the firm developed its racerback design of swimwear making it one of the first manufacturers to specifically produce athletic designs. The major distinction in aircraft usage is between military aviation, which includes all uses of aircraft for military purposes (such as combat, patrolling, search and rescue, reconnaissance, transport, and training), and civil aviation, which includes all uses of aircraft for non-military purposes. The company was founded in 1914 by hosiery manufacturer Alexander MacRae as MacRae Knitting Mills in an effort to expand his company into swimwear. They are restricted to rather specialised niches, such as spaceflight, where no oxygen is available for combustion (rockets carry their own oxygen).

. Rocket aircraft have occasionally been experimented with. Its trademark is a red boomerang-shaped logo. In addition to turbine engines like the turboprop and turbojet, other types of high-altitude, high-performance engines have included the ramjet and the pulse jet. Speedo is currently the world's largest selling swimwear brand and manufactures products for both recreational and competitive swimming. Helicopters also typically use turbine engines. Speedo is a swimsuit manufacturer that began on Bondi Beach near Sydney Australia. Pressurised aircraft, however, are more likely to use the turbine engine, since it is naturally efficient at higher altitudes and can operate above 40,000 ft.

During the forties and especially following the 1973 energy crisis, development work was done on propellers with swept tips or even scimitar-shaped blades for use in high-speed commercial and military transports. Piston engines normally become less efficient above 7,000-8,000 ft (2100-2400 m) above sea level because there is less oxygen available for combustion; to solve that problem, some piston engines have mechanically powered compressors (blowers) or turbine-powered turbochargers or turbonormalizers that compress the air before feeding it into the engine; these piston engines can often operate efficiently at 20,000 ft (6100 m) above sea level or higher, altitudes that require the use of supplemental oxygen or cabin pressurisation. Piston engines typically operate using avgas or regular gasoline, though some new ones are being designed to operate on diesel or jet fuel. Water cooled V engines, as used in automobiles, were common in high speed aircraft, until they were replaced by jet and turbine power.

(See also: Aircraft engine.) The piston engine is still used in the majority of aircraft produced, since it is efficient at the lower altitudes used by small aircraft, but the radial engine (with the cylinders arranged in a circle around the crankshaft) has largely given way to the horizontally-opposed engine (with the cylinders lined up on two sides of the crankshaft). Until World War II, the internal combustion piston engine was virtually the only type of propulsion used for powered aircraft. Airships combine a balloon's buoyancy with some kind of propulsion, usually propeller driven. For gliders, takeoff takes place from a high location, or the aircraft is pulled into the air by a ground-based winch or vehicle, or towed aloft by a powered "tug" aircraft.

Balloons drift with the wind, though normally the pilot can control the altitude either by heating the air or by releasing ballast, giving some directional control (since the wind direction changes with altitude). Some types of aircraft, such as the balloon or glider, do not have any propulsion. These designs may have potential but are not yet practical. And finally the flapping-wing ornithopter is a category of its own.

It is (2005) in development in the United Kingdom. This uses a fixed wing with a forced airflow produced by cylindrical fans mounted above. A recent innovation is a completely new class of aircraft, the fan wing. A further category might encompass the wing-in-ground-effect types, for example the Russian ekranoplan also nicknamed the "Caspian Sea Monster" and hovercraft; most of the latter employing a skirt and achieving limited ground or water clearance to reduce friction and achieve speeds above those achieved by boats of similar weight.

Some craft have reaction-powered rotors with gas jets at the tips but most have one or more lift rotors powered from engine-driven shafts. The best-known examples are the helicopter, the autogyro and the tiltrotor aircraft (such as the V-22 Osprey). Here, the lift is provided by rotating aerofoils or rotors. A second category of aerodynamically lifted aircraft are the rotary-wing aircraft.

So far the only significant practical application of the lifting body is in the Space Shuttle, but many aircraft generate lift from nothing other than wings alone. The lifting body configuration is where the body itself produce lift. A variable geometry ('swing-wing') has also been employed in a few examples of combat aircraft (the F-111, Panavia Tornado, F-14 Tomcat and B-1 Lancer, among others). the B-2 Spirit).

Other possibilities include the delta-wing, where lift and horizontal control surfaces are often combined, and the flying wing, where there is no separate vertical control surface (e.g. This is principally an improvement in structures and not aerodynamics. Subsequently most aircraft are monoplanes. The number of lift surfaces varied in the pre-1950 period, as biplanes (two wings) and triplanes (three wings) were numerous in the early days of aviation.

Canards are becoming more common as supersonic aerodynamics grows more mature and because the forward surface contributes lift during straight-and-level flight. The other configuration is the canard where small horizontal control surfaces are placed forward of the wings, near the nose of the aircraft. In a "conventional" configuration, the lift surfaces are placed in front of a control surface or tailplane. Much aerodynamic work was done with kites until test aircraft, wind tunnels and now computer modelling programs became available.

Kites depend upon the tension between the cord which anchors it to the ground and the force of the wind currents. The forerunner of these type of aircraft is the kite. Among aerodynamically lifted aircraft, most fall in the category of fixed-wing aircraft, where horizontal airfoils produce lift, by profiting from airflow patterns determined by Bernoulli's equation and, to some extent, the Coanda effect. With engine lift, the aircraft defeats gravity by use of vertical Examples of engine lift aircraft are rockets, and VTOL aircraft such as the Hawker-Siddeley Harrier.

In the case of aerodynamic lift, the aircraft is kept in the air by wings or rotors (see aerodynamics). In heavier-than-air aircraft, there are two ways to produce lift: aerodynamic lift and engine lift. Several accidents, such as the Hindenburg fire at Lakehurst, NJ, in 1937 led to the demise of large rigid airships. The most successful type of rigid airship was the Zeppelin.

Examples of lighter-than-air aircraft include non-steerable balloons, such as hot air balloons and gas balloons, and steerable airships (sometimes called dirigible balloons) such as blimps (that have non-rigid construction) and rigid airships that have an internal frame. A first division by design among aircraft is between lighter-than-air, aerostat, and heavier-than-air aircraft, aerodyne. Below, we describe classifications by design, propulsion and usage. There are several ways to classify aircraft.

Aircraft fall into two broad categories:. . An aircraft is any machine capable of atmospheric flight. The distinction between a balloon and an airship is that an airship has some means of controlling both its forward motion and steering itself, while balloons are carried along with the wind.

In particular, these aircraft use a relatively low density gas such as helium, hydrogen or heated air, to displace the air around the craft. Aerostats use buoyancy to float in the air in much the same manner as ships float on the water. Lighter than air aerostats: hot air balloons and airships. Mainly used internationally.

STOL stands for Short Take Off and Landing. The abbreviation VTOL is applied to aircraft other than helicopters that can take off or land vertically. Helicopters and autogyros use a spinning rotor (a rotary wing) to provide lift; helicopters also use the rotor to provide thrust. For a glider to maintain its forward speed it must descend in relation to the air (but not necessarily in relation to the ground).

Exceptions are gliders which have no engines and gain their thrust, initially, from winches or tugs and then from gravity and thermal currents. The movement of air over the airfoil produces lift that causes the aircraft to fly. Fixed-wing aircraft generally use an internal-combustion engine in the form of a piston engine (with a propeller) or a turbine engine (jet or turboprop), to provide thrust that moves the craft forward through the air. Heavier than air aerodynes, including autogyros, helicopters and variants, and conventional fixed-wing aircraft: aeroplanes in Commonwealth English (excluding Canada), airplanes in North American English.