Talk:Leading-edge slat

Moved

This article was moved to its present title to allow the creation of a disambiguation page at Slats as a result of too many disambiguation notes accumulating on the top of the old location. - Ahunt (talk) 13:51, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Flaps VS Slats

Guys, there is a difference between a flap and a slat, the flap can usually be found at the trailing edge of the wing, whilst the slat is usually located at the leading edge of the wing. Most civilian airliners (except for the supersonic Concorde, including the smaller STOL, or bush type will have both, whereas in military aviation the presense of both or one of either does not usually indicates the role for which the aircraft was designed for. An example being the conventional wing strike fighter F/A-18 Hornet, it has slats as well as modified version of flaps, known as flaperons. Compare that to a delta wing Mirage III, the latter has no flaps and the lack of a horizontal stabilizer, or bettern know as tailplane, meant that flaps cannot be used, resulting in a long takeoff run and a high landing speed for the type. So to set the record straight, stop using flaps to pass off as leading edge slats. Please reword if you ever come across such errors in any aircraft article pages because it is extremely misleading. Thank you~! --Dave1185 (talk) 10:36, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you have a good point here. Unfortunately some companies, like Boeing, use the term "leading edge flaps" to refer to devices on the front of the wing. It all adds confusion! - Ahunt (talk) 14:12, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

• I don't care much about Boeing, they can say a lot of things about this or about that but it doesn't mean anything when it comes to avaition tech, Boeing just has it better in terms of marketing when it comes to airliners, period. And even then, they have lagged far behind the Europeans in terms of fuel economy when you look at the A380 and the B744 (hey, I should know very well since I service both the 380 and 744~!). Amongst the many engineers, machinist and techinicians around, the common sense and indeed, knowledge of cutting edge military aviation (as far as the fighter mafia is concerned), lies in other greater companies (not in size but in their know-how) such as Chance-Vought, General Dynamics, Grumman, Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas and Northrop. Only exception was the Boeing P-26 Peashooter, then again... it was the inter-war years and Boeing was just plain lucky to get that contract from USAAC. I grew up reading Gunston, Flight international, Orbis, Jane's, et al... and they all say the same thing when it comes to flaps and slats. So either someone (being gay or not, I don't know!) in Boeing is trying to buck the trend or they are screwing us up. IMO, Wikipedia should at least set the record straight by correcting this kind of stupidity in such ambiguity of naming convention on paper. (PS: Except for the Krueger flaps, none of my tech boys ever said the flaps when they were actually referring to the slats~!) --Dave1185 (talk) 16:04, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I work for United airlines as a mechanic. As a point of clarification Boeing uses the term "leading edge flap" for a gapless device which is located on the inboard portion of the wing leading edge. Slat is a contraction of Slot (a gap) and Flap (camber altering part). The gapped outboard devices are still called slats. Randy50.131.79.211 (talk) 07:21, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Beg to differ. Slat is no such contraction. The OED (slat, 4(a)) defines it as " A long narrow strip of wood or metal, used for various purposes." They note that the word has been used in this way since the 18th century. The slot is the gap between the wing leading edge and the slat, when open.TSRL (talk) 18:00, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Research

The connection between the content of this section and slats is not obvious. Slats, and their fixed relatives, slots have the specific task of delaying the stall onset as the angle of attack is increased, allowing higher C_L values to be reached. It's not obvious how flexible wings do this, though it is easy to see how they might change the wing camber in a subtler way than flaps, often used in conjunction with slats. But replacing slats? It may well be possible but it needs more explanation, or a separate article.TSRL (talk) 22:11, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Circulation

The use of the term "circulation" has no place in this article as it clarifies nothing and seems only to exist as a bloviation. Remove it. CredibleSources (talk) 02:09, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

The term used in this context is a central tenant of the cited on-line ref and is also linked in the article itself: Circulation (fluid dynamics). - Ahunt (talk) 02:14, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

merge from slat selection

I believe the present article is short enough to accommodate a merge from slat selection. Pichpich (talk) 18:47, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

SUPPORT Slat selection has no notability outside the concept of the leading-edge slat. Dolphin (t) 20:57, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I ran into this article in NPP and decided to redirect it here. I did not see anything worth merging, but if anyone disagrees the content is available in the article history still. You don't need my permission to merge it over. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 15:12, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Courtesy ping to @Pichpich: and @Dolphin51: who may be interested. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 15:13, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

No complaints from me. Thanks Trainsandotherthings. Pichpich (talk) 15:58, 18 April 2024 (UTC)