L-1011 Weight and Balance: Overview

Looking at the Lockheed L-1011 plan form view, we can see that the leading edge Mean Aerodynamic Cord is at the fuselage station 1143.0. The length of the cord, that is from the leading edge MAC tot he trailing MAC, is 293.5 inches long. For convenience of operation, then, we convert fuselage stations into percent of the Mean Aerodynamic Cord, 1,430, dividing that by the length of the Mean Aerodynamic Cord, 293.5. To convert the end result to a percent we will move the decimal point two places the left, and divide by 2,935. This will yield a percent of the Mean Aerodynamic Cord. If we wish to go the other way, that is find the arm; we would simply take the percent of the Mean Aerodynamic Cord and multiply it times 2,935 of the Leading Edge Mean Aerodynamic Cord of 1,143.0 and would have the original arm.

All this, of course, will lead to us being able to compute the center of gravity of the aircraft for any given arm.