Bruce
October 26th 05, 01:13 PM
Again quoting John Campbell.
Well, there you go. What is "soaring", who did it first? How do you
distinguish it from gliding, was it an accident, was it a step on the way to
developing air transportation, was it well documented and so on...? The
"centenary of flight" hoopla centered on Dec. 17, 2003 dredged up all the
usual talk on "how we invented the aeroplane" (title of Wrights' own
book) -- Ader, Weisskopf, weren't the Wrights flying sailplanes with
(patented) aerodynamic control for 2 years and 100s of flights before
12/17/1903 (yes), didn't they fly just as long soaring (1 min., 10/21/1903)
as they first did under power (yes), weren't they glider pilot homebuilders
who added a motor later (yes)? Yet the mainstream public demands a single
date/place/personality checkbox and the well witnessed and photographed
successful consistent demonstration of heavier-than-air unassisted
controlled powered take-off from level ground (the qualifiers grow,
groan...) fits the bill for the "birth of aviation".
It's no "anorak" arcana to know that Orville Wright and Alec Ogilvie (UK)
set out to do some soaring at Kitty Hawk in late October, 1911, and had
landmark results. The official Wright excuse for the expedition was to test
a new pitch stabilization system (a rear elevator and some trim weight and
pendulum servo rigs, it seems) -- without the complications of a motorized
test aircraft (just like later Akaflieg tradition). The Wright #5 glider
was very similar to the 1902 glider (#3) otherwise. I've heard that SSA
member "Bips" Boyer interviewed Orville in Dayton, OH ca 1945 and quoted
him to SOARING as indeed saying something like "we knew soaring was more
fun...". Anyway, Orville's 9:45 min. flight of 10/24/1911 has long fit the
bill as "the first soaring flight":
- E.W. Teale's "The Book of Gliders' (1930) titles a frontispiece photo of
that flight just so.
- Ann Welch's wonderful "The Story of Gliding" gives credit to the flight as
the discovery of slope lift.
- Michael Cummings "The Powerless Ones" says "he had done then what no one
else had ever done".
- The FAI has just had its centenary (10/14/1905) and I believe Orville's
flight was the first officially recorded FAI motorless flight record
(confirmation, please). That's the big why "it's our Dec 17".
- The story of the "remarkable flight" and the potential it indicated for a
new aviation sport of motorless flight was well reported in flying magazines
(there were several) and newspapers of 1911.
- The Darmstadt schoolboys (1909-1913) and their successors at the
Wasserkupe (Ursinus et al, 1920-) wrote of their focus on bettering the
"famous" Wright record. So did the pre-WWI USA University groups at
Cornell, MIT, etc.
- The National Soaring Museum displays a Wright #5 replica built to
commemorate 75 years since the famous flight. The NSM newsletter ran
articles then on the seminal nature of the flight.
- The Wright brothers were among the first inductees into the SSA Soaring
Hall of Fame.
- Orville Wright was an FAI representative in the USA until 1938 and signed
all early "C" badges
- On a logarithmic scale, .1 min. of gliding is nearly a fluke (Montgomery,
1883), 1 min shows some control (Lilienthal, 1896?), ah..., now 10 min
demonstrates soaring (Orville, 1911) -- you just can't glide that long from
"ordinary" hills (Klemperer got 2 min from the top of the Wasserkuppe), 100
min. shows the makings of a lifetime sport like sailing (Martens, 1922),
1000 min. becomes physiological stress, 10,000 min gets beyond what the FAI
considered pointless (Atger, 1952).
Consider this vignette (found in "Wind and Sand", Wescott & Degen, 1983):
".. When the report went forth that I had remained in the air for nearly 10
minutes without the use of any artificial power... Victor Loughead went all
the way to our camp in order that he could "set us right before the world.
.... On his first appearance, he told the reporters that he knew that ... it
would be utterly impossible to remain aloft five minutes without the use of
artificial power." [Orville to Thomas Baldwin, 11/18/1911].
And what of the pilot's impressions?
"In regards to the experiments which I lately made in soaring flight,.. I
will say that this kind of flight, though never before achieved by man, is
very common in birds in southern countries,... as the air is never
absolutely calm... it is possible to use the power of the upward trend of
the air ...A better knowledge of these air currents, so that one could keep
his machine constantly in the rising trends, would enable one to remain
aloft without power much longer than has yet been done. ... " [Orville to
J. Heringa, 11/18/1911].
Frankly, it seems Orville (and Wilbur) "invented" soaring just as they
"invented" 3-axis aero-control heavier-than-air flight in 1902. Dec 17,
1903 seems a meaningless event to sailplane flying, but October 24, 1911 a
major landmark. It is also significant that the latter followed the
creation of the airplane, that Orville "went back" to soaring when aviation
was "established" and soaring was no longer the Wright's original means to
and end to get flying time safely before powering up. Ten years later,
frustrated Germans also "went back" to soaring and look what fun they
wrought.
--
Bruce Greeff
Std Cirrus #57
I'm no-T at the address above.
Well, there you go. What is "soaring", who did it first? How do you
distinguish it from gliding, was it an accident, was it a step on the way to
developing air transportation, was it well documented and so on...? The
"centenary of flight" hoopla centered on Dec. 17, 2003 dredged up all the
usual talk on "how we invented the aeroplane" (title of Wrights' own
book) -- Ader, Weisskopf, weren't the Wrights flying sailplanes with
(patented) aerodynamic control for 2 years and 100s of flights before
12/17/1903 (yes), didn't they fly just as long soaring (1 min., 10/21/1903)
as they first did under power (yes), weren't they glider pilot homebuilders
who added a motor later (yes)? Yet the mainstream public demands a single
date/place/personality checkbox and the well witnessed and photographed
successful consistent demonstration of heavier-than-air unassisted
controlled powered take-off from level ground (the qualifiers grow,
groan...) fits the bill for the "birth of aviation".
It's no "anorak" arcana to know that Orville Wright and Alec Ogilvie (UK)
set out to do some soaring at Kitty Hawk in late October, 1911, and had
landmark results. The official Wright excuse for the expedition was to test
a new pitch stabilization system (a rear elevator and some trim weight and
pendulum servo rigs, it seems) -- without the complications of a motorized
test aircraft (just like later Akaflieg tradition). The Wright #5 glider
was very similar to the 1902 glider (#3) otherwise. I've heard that SSA
member "Bips" Boyer interviewed Orville in Dayton, OH ca 1945 and quoted
him to SOARING as indeed saying something like "we knew soaring was more
fun...". Anyway, Orville's 9:45 min. flight of 10/24/1911 has long fit the
bill as "the first soaring flight":
- E.W. Teale's "The Book of Gliders' (1930) titles a frontispiece photo of
that flight just so.
- Ann Welch's wonderful "The Story of Gliding" gives credit to the flight as
the discovery of slope lift.
- Michael Cummings "The Powerless Ones" says "he had done then what no one
else had ever done".
- The FAI has just had its centenary (10/14/1905) and I believe Orville's
flight was the first officially recorded FAI motorless flight record
(confirmation, please). That's the big why "it's our Dec 17".
- The story of the "remarkable flight" and the potential it indicated for a
new aviation sport of motorless flight was well reported in flying magazines
(there were several) and newspapers of 1911.
- The Darmstadt schoolboys (1909-1913) and their successors at the
Wasserkupe (Ursinus et al, 1920-) wrote of their focus on bettering the
"famous" Wright record. So did the pre-WWI USA University groups at
Cornell, MIT, etc.
- The National Soaring Museum displays a Wright #5 replica built to
commemorate 75 years since the famous flight. The NSM newsletter ran
articles then on the seminal nature of the flight.
- The Wright brothers were among the first inductees into the SSA Soaring
Hall of Fame.
- Orville Wright was an FAI representative in the USA until 1938 and signed
all early "C" badges
- On a logarithmic scale, .1 min. of gliding is nearly a fluke (Montgomery,
1883), 1 min shows some control (Lilienthal, 1896?), ah..., now 10 min
demonstrates soaring (Orville, 1911) -- you just can't glide that long from
"ordinary" hills (Klemperer got 2 min from the top of the Wasserkuppe), 100
min. shows the makings of a lifetime sport like sailing (Martens, 1922),
1000 min. becomes physiological stress, 10,000 min gets beyond what the FAI
considered pointless (Atger, 1952).
Consider this vignette (found in "Wind and Sand", Wescott & Degen, 1983):
".. When the report went forth that I had remained in the air for nearly 10
minutes without the use of any artificial power... Victor Loughead went all
the way to our camp in order that he could "set us right before the world.
.... On his first appearance, he told the reporters that he knew that ... it
would be utterly impossible to remain aloft five minutes without the use of
artificial power." [Orville to Thomas Baldwin, 11/18/1911].
And what of the pilot's impressions?
"In regards to the experiments which I lately made in soaring flight,.. I
will say that this kind of flight, though never before achieved by man, is
very common in birds in southern countries,... as the air is never
absolutely calm... it is possible to use the power of the upward trend of
the air ...A better knowledge of these air currents, so that one could keep
his machine constantly in the rising trends, would enable one to remain
aloft without power much longer than has yet been done. ... " [Orville to
J. Heringa, 11/18/1911].
Frankly, it seems Orville (and Wilbur) "invented" soaring just as they
"invented" 3-axis aero-control heavier-than-air flight in 1902. Dec 17,
1903 seems a meaningless event to sailplane flying, but October 24, 1911 a
major landmark. It is also significant that the latter followed the
creation of the airplane, that Orville "went back" to soaring when aviation
was "established" and soaring was no longer the Wright's original means to
and end to get flying time safely before powering up. Ten years later,
frustrated Germans also "went back" to soaring and look what fun they
wrought.
--
Bruce Greeff
Std Cirrus #57
I'm no-T at the address above.