Aviation Glossary

At Dauntless, our editorial staff maintains the web's largest unified glossary of aviation terms. This glossary is built from a combination of official, quasi-official, and proprietary sources (including original material that we develop oursselves). Uniquely, we often provide multiple definitions of a given term so that you can find that which best applies to you. In order to maximize your learning efficiency, this glossary (and similar ones for our international users) is incresingly fully integrated into our aviation learning apps, including our FAA written test prep and FAA practical test prep software and apps. If you like this glossary, you'll love them with their polished learning environments and world's best and clearest content (please do give them a try.).

Dampen

The effect of a component or configuration that tends to reduce the natural oscillations of an object or system and restore the system back to stable equilibrium. All physical systems can exhibit rotational dynamic oscillations, such as in pitching the nose up and down. Without damping in such systems, the oscillations will continue indefinitely. As applies to gyroplanes, damping may be affected by a horizontal stabilizer, the offset gimbal/trim spring configuration, the pilot, friction or even an autopilot system.

source: Glossary of Gyroplane Terms

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Disclaimer: While this glossary in most cases is likely to be highly accurate and useful, sometimes, for any number of editorial, transcription, technical, and other reasons, it might not be. Additionally, as somtimes you may have found yourself brought to this page through an automated term matching system, you may find definitions here that do not match the cotext or application in which you saw the original term. Please use your good judgement when using this resource.