S
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SABOT: Any airborne or ground based munition that has a shell to fit tightly into a gun barrel as a gas sealer, which is discarded in flight after the round has been fired.
SAILPLANE: Jargon for a glider-type aircraft.
SCAN: A systematic and repeated closed path tour through the primary flight instruments that a pilot's eyes should follow during IFR (instrument flight rules) flight.
SCRAMBLE: To launch a flight of fighters in a hurry.
SDK: A suite of tools and documentation provided by a vendor or developer to allow other developers to create addons for the product of which the SDK is the subject.
SECOND STATION: A WW2 term, as in "give me second station", the bombardier's request that the bomber aircraft's autopilot be coupled by the pilot to the bombardier's Norden bombsight.
SECTIONAL: A chart using a scale of 1:500,000 used for VFR flight
SEE: Mallard's Scenery Enhancement Editor for FS4 with ASD
SETTLING WITH POWER: An unintentional helicopter flight condition in which the machine is caught in its own downdraft and does not have enough power to climb through the downdraft.
SEXTANT: An optical instrument used in determining latitude and longitude of a point on the surface of the earth. Obsoleted by GPS.
SGA: Mallard's Sound and Graphics Upgrade for FS4
SHORAN: Short Range Navigation, a low-power equivalent of LORAN.
SHORT FIELD TAKEOFF: A takeoff strategy involving acceleration with no flaps (low drag) followed by application of full flaps just before rotation (maximum lift).
SID: Standard Instrument Departure, a specific airport departure route usually used for instrument flights
SIDE FORCE CONTROLLER: A side-mounted joystick-like device that relies on pressure rather than movement to command the pitch and roll axes of an aircraft.
SIGMET: A weather advisory concerning conditions of significant interest to all aircraft, such as severe turbulence, severe icing, etc.
SLANT RANGE: The line of sight distance between an aircraft and a navaid. Especially refers to distances measure by "DME" equipment.
SLATS: Wing leading edge devices that increase lift by increasing wing effective curvature. They may be deployed on command as in airliners to reduce landing speeds, or automatically as in the ME-262 or the F-86 Sabre as a means of staving off stalls during tight turns.
SLIPSTREAM: The airflow over the various surfaces of an aircraft as measured just outside the stagnation layer.
SMART BOMB: A bomb with a self-guidance capability that may be either attached (see JDAM) or built in.
SOURCE CODE: A text file containing statements written in a programming language, to be used as input to a "compiler" of some sort. Source code is often abbreviated as "sources".
SPEEDBRAKES: Any drag-increasing device intended specifically to slow an aircraft. Variously mounted on wings (civil transports, also known as "spoilers") or on fuselages (military fighters).
SPOILERONS: Wing control surfaces that can be used differentially for roll control or together as spoilers. The Boeing 727 depended on spoilerons for roll control at low speed.
SPOILERS: Wing control surfaces that are raised into the slipstream to deliberately reduce lift and increase drag. Sometimes they are also called "lift dumpers".
SQUAWK: Set the aircraft's transponder to a specific four digit code
SQUAT SWITCHES: Electromechanical switches that sense landing gear strut compression, thereby telling such instruments as takeoff configuration warning circuits that the aircraft is on the ground.
STALL: A wing's loss of lift when the angle of attack rises to the point of turbulent flow over the wing. This angle is design-dependent and is largely independent of airspeed.
STALL STRIPS: Wing-mounted indicators of turbulent airflow, often simply lengths of yarn.
STALL-SPIN: The usual result of a stall which is not countered by the application of affirmative stall recovery techniques.
STALL VANE: A metal tab normally facing edge-on into the relative wind that flips up when angle of attack exceeds an angle close to the stalling angle of attack. The vane is used to trigger the stall warning horn in the cockpit.
STAGNATION LAYER: The thin mass of slow moving air that "coats" an aerodynamic surface in motion.
STANDARD RATE TURN: A turn of three degrees per second; also called a two minute turn because a complete circle takes two minutes to complete
STAR: Standard Terminal Arrival, a specific airport arrival route that begins some distance away and puts the plane into a standard instrument landing approach
STATIC AIR PRESSURE: Outside air pressure as measured by a sensor that is completely shielded from the ram effect of the relative wind. See also "dynamic air pressure".
STATIC PORT: A strategically placed cutout in an aircraft's fuselage that allows the measurement of static (ambient) air pressure for use as a reference pressure by other instruments.
STICK PUSHER: A control system that automatically lowers the nose as a stall condition is approached.
STICK SHAKER: A control system that warns of impending stall by vibrating the control column.
STOP AND GO: A procedure where an aircraft will land, make a complete stop on the runway, and then take off again
STRAIGHT IN: An approach and landing where the normal traffic pattern is skipped and the plane intercepts the runways heading and lands straight ahead
STRIP ALERT: To maintain a flight of fighters at the takeoff end of a runway with the pilots in their cockpits, ready for engine start and immediate takeoff.
SUPERCHARGER: A piston engine input air compressor that effectively increases the pressure of high altitude air, thereby restoring the flow of oxygen to the engine that is lost as altitude increases.
