Can You Ace This Aviation Quiz?

In 1783, the French Montgolfier brothers launched a hot air balloon and flew just over a mile. The era of human aviation had begun.

Air traffic control’s primary purpose is to keep pilots and their planes away from one another. Otherwise, you know ... boom.

Pilots rely on airspeed indicators to understand how fast the plane is moving. The device may register speed in knots or MPH.

Biplanes are planes with two sets of wings. They are unmistakable as they soar through skies filled mostly with planes that have just one set of wings.

Several other inventors created variants of aircraft into flight before the Wright brothers. But thanks to their 1903 efforts, Orville and Wilbur really were the first to put a heaver-than-air, controlled plane into action.

Control towers are the tall towers at airstrips across the world. There, air traffic controllers can better see the planes that they help guide in and out of the airport.

Fighter aircraft have one primary purpose — shooting down other aircraft. They are typically heavily armed with machine guns and missiles.

General aviation is an overarching term referring to all unscheduled, civil flights. It can refer to pilots out joyriding, hang gliders zooming from clifftops, or non-airline commercial air traffic.

Altimeters are vital tools on aircraft. They note altitude, the plane’s distance from the ground.

The airfoil refers to the shape of the plane’s wings. As airfoils move through air (or any other fluid), they begin generating the forces necessary for flight.

As airfoils move through a fluid, like air, they generate a force called lift. Lift helps planes get off the ground.

The flaps are the hinged flaps found on the wings. Pilots control the flaps to change the plane’s lift characteristics.

Just as soon as hot air balloons were proven to work, military generals wanted them for combat. Balloons offered high vantage points to scout enemy lines.

Drag — or air resistance — is essentially a type of friction. Aircraft are aerodynamically designed to reduce drag and increase engine efficiency.

Huge airliners that soar at tens of thousands of feet leave long contrails behind them. Those contrails do in fact help create high cirrus clouds.

Since its introduction in the 1950s, the B-52 Stratofortress has been used for long-range bombing missions all over the world. Its heavy-duy construction and powerful engines mean it can carry 70,000 pounds of bombs.

RPMs is revolutions per minute, an engine speed indicator. Pilots who push their RPMs too high may ruin their engines and then wind up crashing the plane.

Heading refers to the direction a plane is pointed. Pilots who can’t figure out heading should probably give up flying before they wind up as part of a crater.

The jet stream is the series of powerful winds high above the ground. Pilots can use the jet stream to speed up their flights and save fuel ... or they may find themselves fighting fierce headwinds.

It’s false. Five years after the Wright brothers pioneered controlled flight, Orville crashed a plane, killing his passenger, Thomas Selfridge -- now known as the world's first airplane fatality. Orville survived.

As the contrails turn to flames and a plane begins its inexorable death spiral toward terra firma, there’s one universal thing that all pilots scream: "Mayday!" It means, "I forgot to sign my will!"

“Pitch" is the term for the tilt of a plane’s nose. Amateur pilots create a pitch that aims their plane straight at the ground, which is why their careers are short-lived.

ROC is rate of climb. It refers to the speed at which a plane is gaining or losing altitude, and it is often denoted by Feet Per Minute (FPM).

Flight recorders are black boxes. They record all of the plane’s system functions and pilot inputs, including the frenzied radio calls right before a crash.

The primary flight control behind yaw is the rudder, which points the plane left or right. Yaw is used to support pitch and roll, helping contribute to coordinated flight.

Planes "taxi" about the tarmac at an airfield. The taxiway is the paved strip from the parking area to the runway.

Aeronauts are the men and women who fly lighter-than-air aircraft, like a balloon.

Transponders are radio devices that send and receive signals. On a plane, they help air traffic controllers identify specific aircraft.

The rudder is a hinged vertical section on the tail of the plane that controls "yaw." It essentially helps change a plane's direction.

Rotating the plane on a longitudinal axis means "rolling" the plane. If your commercial airline pilot executes a roll, you should probably ask for a refund.