Wee Bee

[Monk]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-TE7MOuo7c

Monk

[Monk]

On Dec 25, 1:54*pm, Monk > wrote:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-TE7MOuo7c
>
> Monk

Any plans out there for this build?

[Dana M. Hague[_2_]]

On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:52:51 -0800 (PST), Monk >
wrote:

>On Dec 25, 1:54*pm, Monk > wrote:
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-TE7MOuo7c
>>
>> Monk
>
>Any plans out there for this build?

Why would you want to? It wouldn't be a very good airplane for sport
flying; it was desinged for one purpose only: to be the smallest in
the world (and it isn't even that, any more).

-Dana

--
When Columbus came to America, there were no taxes, no debts, and no pollution. The women did all the work while the men hunted or fished all day. Ever since then, a bunch of idiotic do-gooders have been trying to "improve" the place.

[Richard[_8_]]

Dana M. Hague wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:52:51 -0800 (PST), Monk >
> wrote:
>
>
>>On Dec 25, 1:54 pm, Monk > wrote:
>>
>>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-TE7MOuo7c
>>>
>>>Monk
>>
>>Any plans out there for this build?
>
>
> Why would you want to? It wouldn't be a very good airplane for sport
> flying; it was desinged for one purpose only: to be the smallest in
> the world (and it isn't even that, any more).
>
> -Dana
>


Add to that. it's highly unlikely there were any plans per se drawn for
it in the first place...

[[email protected]]

> Any plans out there for this build?
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Yea Godz! Get serious! You had to be a Super Pilot just to get that
sonofabitch off the ground and a Super-Super pilot to get it back down
again, Whereas, that thing from... forgetful now... up in the top end
of the Other Valley... LOCKHEED fer crysakes. That thing from
Lockheed actually Worked! Oh my how it did. Three young draftees,
Zero flight time, NEVER been in an aeroplane, all three taking that
big step forward when you said it's liable to kill you but if it don't
it could win the war for us -- and all three of them silly-assed kids
taking the Big Step.

And it Worked! Start going slow to learn how to keep it straight and
it kept going and went right up into the air and after their first
landing you couldn't KEEP those kids from flying it, it was so easy to
do and so much fun. And of course, they took them away and parked
them over behind the mock-ups in the locked hanger where they were the
only things made out of metal... Seriously... mock-ups were all WOOD
and the only guy who knew they were there was the Boss Carpenter and
the Major in charge of the program. But we'd already landed and
everyone's Dire Predictions had proved false and so they did what
bureaucracies always do -- THEY CRUSHED THEM. Wouldn't even let us
salvage the engines, which were Lycoming O-145's on two of them and a
Continental A-40 on the other. Crushed them. Fred Weick actually
cried when he heard. Because the thing would NOT spin and as it
neared the ground, at anything less than terminal velocity, it would
very politely flatten out and if you remembered to reduce the power,
it would sit itself down on its tricycle landing gear and probably
blow a tire, because you were probably doingabout ninety.

American brains... and American politics.

You could put 300 pounds in that little sucker and it flew just fine.
No parachutes of course, just One soldier (volunteered) and the
biggest problem was getting them to Come Back!! because once they
learned how to turn, they'd stay up there until the fuel warning
buzzer went off. THEN they would come back, sometimes downwind, and
put it down literally ANYWHERE.... taxiways, SIDEWALK (for crysakes!
Why? Because he thought he could [and did] and all the 'real' runways
were busy, he said, as part of his apology.)

Air-Mobile. 1944. And IT REALLY WORKED. Ask John Thrope about it.
And some of the other REAL engineers. Tough, TOUGH little bird up
there on the north end of the runway, borrowing hangar space from
Lockheed, flying on weekends because it was classified 'SECRET'. But
once you were past the MP's you could do any damn thing you wanted and
there was nobody to stop you because General on down, if they didn't
have a 'yellow pass' "I'm afraid I can't allow that, sir." Because
the MP's never knew when it was a drill or for real, and they turned
away some of the highest of the high.

And here we are today, SIXTY-FIVE years later and they're still
treating it like a big f**king SECRET.

-R.S.Hoover

[Monk]

On Dec 28, 8:59*am, Dana M. Hague > wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:52:51 -0800 (PST), Monk >
> wrote:
>
> >On Dec 25, 1:54*pm, Monk > wrote:
> >>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-TE7MOuo7c
>
> >> Monk
>
> >Any plans out there for this build?
>
> Why would you want to?

I don't know. I thought of this conecpt, flying prone, before about
twenty plus years ago while in High school. Then I came across this
bird.

Monk

[[email protected]]

On Dec 28, 5:59*am, Dana M. Hague > wrote:
>
> Why would you want to? *It wouldn't be a very good airplane for sport
> flying; it was desinged for one purpose only: *to be the smallest in
> the world (and it isn't even that, any more). *
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Because the guy making the engines (McCulloch? Some damn thing... two-
stroker) ...hadn't received a Stop Order!! Seriously! VE day and no
Stop Order, the VJ Day and STILL no Stop Order, and they're cranking
out that crazy little engine as fast as they can... ball-bearing
crankshaft and a Ford carburetor and they were going right from the
assembly line to New/Surplus distributors because the warehouses were
all full and we had enough drones to train another wars-worth of
gunners and then some, because The Jets Are Coming (was on everyone's
lips) and guys were backing off, lookking at Ol Betsy, wondering how
they convert her to run a Jet Engine because the Supply Guy over at El
Segundo... who worked for Jack What's-his-name -- finally got
permission to install a Real jet engine in the Project Plane instead
of that copy of an English Nine (or Neine, or whatever... ) because we
already knew that the Russians were going co-axial instead of
centrifugal and it turned the Fat Bellied Project Plane into an F-86
and just in time, too. Except no one told PW or whoever, to stop
building those centrifugal jets, which is why Grumman had to go with
them for the Super Panther (which became the F9F dash 8). But they
thot it would become New/Surplus the same way.

Those were some very, VERY crazy years, just after the War... because
the war was NOT over, inside the X-sheds, despite what everyone was
saying. We had all those German jets up at the dry lakes and the real
Bob Hoover was blowing everyone away and the Riding School was going
full blast (and I got some pitchers to prove it). And the Window of
Opportunity came roaring along and everyone was looking for a New Car
and a bigger refrigerator and an automatic washing machine (it had
Spin Dry!) and all that other Neat Stuff and the Window went roaring
right on passed... and we missed it. Not once, but several times.
Chopping up brand new airplanes, melting them down to make the wiring
for the next Levittown, so's they'd burn down when the aluminum wires
reacted with the brass fittings... and the General in Alaska asked,
what as I supposed to do with all these airplanes, now that we won't
allow those Russian ladies to fly them outta here... and Washinton
said: Burn them. And that's what he did. Except for half a dozen
less one, which landed at A****er and got 'arrested.' (I didn't know
you could 'arrest' a DC-6. But they did. The others made it to El
Segundo, then to Tijuana in the middle of the night where they got
stuffed full of P-51's before going to Mexico, where they set until
they got charts for Natal and Ghana and places like that. Then they
disappeared. But the P-51's ended up flying wing with the Me-109's
and the Focke-Wulf-190's (?) Is that right? Mustangs and Fw-190-3's
in the same formation? And everyone is fighting to get to fly the
German iron because it's got an ejection seat! ...which is pretty damn
dumb because no one is wearing a parachute anyway!!

And they were fighting Spitfires?

Go on, pull the other one. But that's what happened, trying to keep
promises that were made in 1917 and had been broken by both sides...
and still are, come to think of it.

Funny kinda war. The idea was to 'transfer' the DC-6's to Don
Douglas, cuz of some sort of political BS in CANADA? Yep, in Canada.
Because they wanted to put Rolls Royce engines in them and call them
British Built... without bothering to check the MTBO of the Rolls as
compared to those nice round engines. So someone said 'Get it outta
here,' meaning to move it to where it couldn't be seen from the
highway. (Remember the camouflage netting? The stuff OVER the
highways? Yeah... me too :-) And this Jewish Bag-man was running
around in a blue, 1940 Ford Sedan with a pig-skin 'doctor's bag'
except it was full of MONEY, and in the back seat was two guys who
would look at you but NEVER SPOKE. (Talk about eery!) One worked for
my 'Uncle John,' the other one worked for Harry Hopkins. Give them a
nice, clean, just off the assembly line P-51 and he would give you
lots of MONEY. They you would put the Mustang into the DC-6, along
with miscellaneous stuff, most of which was yellow with GERMAN dials
and came down from Palmdale (Why? Because they had lotsa airplanes
but not enough GPU's and tow-bars that fit and stuff like that). Then
came the Vanishing Act, down to Mexico, across the Caribbean and
finally across the Atlantic, then Africa and the neatest one of all,
pulling a Fuel Stop at a BRITISH field out in the desert where you
couldn't do anything because everything that wasn't booby-trapped was
mined! Then the man in the funny shorts would say 'Good luck, chaps."
and you were free to take off at night and fly past the hotels so that
you had to look UP to see their top floors... and ended up... not in
British-controlled Palestine but in Money-Bag controlled 'Israel.'
Where they grew oranges!

Seriously: 'Product of Israel' My dad figured they cost about ten
dollars per orange by the time they got to New York, where you could
buy one for a dime.

Dad wasn't political, he was a mechanic, who had tickets for
everything from Armstrong-Siddley (??) to Junkers-Jumo (all marks,
including some truly goofy stuff such as the Jumo 205C which didn't
have an ignition system to FLY... but needed one to START) and for
the Daimler-Benz DB-605 (most marks but not all), and had a habit of
****ing people off because after working on the airframes and the
powerplants he'd walk away, leaving them to mount the bomb racks and
gun pods and all that sort of stuff, saying "Not my war," wiping his
hands on a grease rag. So they refused to pay him. So he shrugged
and hitch-hiked home and in later years, refused to work for them
until they paid him, which they never did, so he never did.

-R.S.Hoover

[Karl-Heinz Künzel]

But the P-51's ended up flying wing with the Me-109's
> and the Focke-Wulf-190's (?) Is that right? Mustangs and Fw-190-3's
> in the same formation? And everyone is fighting to get to fly the
> German iron because it's got an ejection seat! ...which is pretty damn
> dumb because no one is wearing a parachute anyway!!

Just to put things right...

He 162, He 219 and Do 335 were equipped with those (Heinkel) ejection
seats...

Regards KH

[Morgans[_2_]]

> wrote

> And here we are today, SIXTY-FIVE years later and they're still
> treating it like a big f**king SECRET.

I'm afraid I got totally lost, on this one.

What are you saying; that there is a little GA airplane out there that is
hands down better than everything else, and it is a big secret?

What is/was it, or what was it called, and where can information be found
about it?
--
Jim in NC

[[email protected]]

> What is/was it, or what was it called, and where can information be found
> about it?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roger that.

I've only seen it mentioned a couple of times. Saw a picture of it
once.

The deal was, someone looked at how much it cost to deliver a
paratrooper and said they could come up with an AIRPLANE that could do
better than that... and they did. But it's roll-out came after D-Day
and there was a lot of pressure to kill the program, but three
examples with different aft sections survived the war... and were then
crushed & smelted.

It was just a simple little one-seater that could be shipped
disassembled. Bubble canopy. Fixed trike gear. I could ran on mogas
and could deliver 300 pounds anywhere within 200 miles (calm air
assumed). 'Rudder' pedals were tied to the nose-wheel !! It came in
three ddifferent models. One had a V-tail the others were
conventional but the differences had to do with something else --
range, load or armament. No gauges to speak of. The 'pathfinder' was
meant to be a series of Piper Cubs and the thing was meant to land
virtually anywhere with 'one flip or less' Meaning a nose-over was
acceptable (and the only thing the pilots were trained for).

The official story is that it was never flown except by pilots but the
'real' story is that at least three "Army sergeants" meaning they
weren't recruits, with no prior aviation experience managed to fly
them using only the instruction manual for their 'flight training.'
And every time I mention it I get a ration of **** so to hell with
them. I'll bet you dollars to donuts Leeon Davis knew what I was
talking about :-)

And if that sounds kooky, it doesn't even BEGIN to come close to some
of the wacky ideas that were proposed AND tested, such as using
pigeons as 'emergency navigators,' affixing a one-ounce THERMITE
charge to a BAT and a bunch of other equally strange stuff. My dad
happened to know quite a bit about this program because he helped
fabricate an A-40 engine mount for one of the three after it suffered
a prop-strike.

-Bob

[Morgans[_2_]]

> wrote in message
...
>
>> What is/was it, or what was it called, and where can information be found
>> about it?
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Roger that.
>
> I've only seen it mentioned a couple of times. Saw a picture of it
> once.
>
> The deal was, someone looked at how much it cost to deliver a
> paratrooper and said they could come up with an AIRPLANE that could do
> better than that... and they did.

Interesting. I don't doubt the existence of something like that, for an
instant. If all you had to do was steer it down the runway, and then sorta
land it, with a flip being considered acceptable, that would make it easy
for a non aviator to steer around in the air.

The mental picture I keep getting, is a whole flock of them buzzing away
towards an objective, at night, (for stealth like many paratrooper landings
of the time did) and how many would crash into another. I wonder if they
put bumpers on them? <g>
--
Jim in NC

[Dana M. Hague[_2_]]

On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 11:18:05 -0800 (PST), Monk >
wrote:

>I don't know. I thought of this conecpt, flying prone, before about
>twenty plus years ago while in High school. Then I came across this
>bird.

Flying prone is one thing, though I don't see the attraction... it's
been done more than once (not counting all the hang gliders), but the
Wee Bee is so marginal that flying prone is the only option.

-Dana
--
......they want you to send your money to the Lord,
but they give you their address.....

[Peter Dohm]

Sorry for the top post, but I couldn't decide what the trim...

Seeing Fred Weick's name mentioned, I think I can make a fair guess about
the concept: oodles of dihedral, ailerons and rudder both controlled with
the yoke, widely spaced main undercarriage with a generous travel, and
plenty of weight on the nose wheel.

I will bet there was plenty of visual similarity to the subsequent Ercoupe
as well.

Peter


> wrote in message
...
>
>> Any plans out there for this build?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Yea Godz! Get serious! You had to be a Super Pilot just to get that
> sonofabitch off the ground and a Super-Super pilot to get it back down
> again, Whereas, that thing from... forgetful now... up in the top end
> of the Other Valley... LOCKHEED fer crysakes. That thing from
> Lockheed actually Worked! Oh my how it did. Three young draftees,
> Zero flight time, NEVER been in an aeroplane, all three taking that
> big step forward when you said it's liable to kill you but if it don't
> it could win the war for us -- and all three of them silly-assed kids
> taking the Big Step.
>
> And it Worked! Start going slow to learn how to keep it straight and
> it kept going and went right up into the air and after their first
> landing you couldn't KEEP those kids from flying it, it was so easy to
> do and so much fun. And of course, they took them away and parked
> them over behind the mock-ups in the locked hanger where they were the
> only things made out of metal... Seriously... mock-ups were all WOOD
> and the only guy who knew they were there was the Boss Carpenter and
> the Major in charge of the program. But we'd already landed and
> everyone's Dire Predictions had proved false and so they did what
> bureaucracies always do -- THEY CRUSHED THEM. Wouldn't even let us
> salvage the engines, which were Lycoming O-145's on two of them and a
> Continental A-40 on the other. Crushed them. Fred Weick actually
> cried when he heard. Because the thing would NOT spin and as it
> neared the ground, at anything less than terminal velocity, it would
> very politely flatten out and if you remembered to reduce the power,
> it would sit itself down on its tricycle landing gear and probably
> blow a tire, because you were probably doingabout ninety.
>
> American brains... and American politics.
>
> You could put 300 pounds in that little sucker and it flew just fine.
> No parachutes of course, just One soldier (volunteered) and the
> biggest problem was getting them to Come Back!! because once they
> learned how to turn, they'd stay up there until the fuel warning
> buzzer went off. THEN they would come back, sometimes downwind, and
> put it down literally ANYWHERE.... taxiways, SIDEWALK (for crysakes!
> Why? Because he thought he could [and did] and all the 'real' runways
> were busy, he said, as part of his apology.)
>
> Air-Mobile. 1944. And IT REALLY WORKED. Ask John Thrope about it.
> And some of the other REAL engineers. Tough, TOUGH little bird up
> there on the north end of the runway, borrowing hangar space from
> Lockheed, flying on weekends because it was classified 'SECRET'. But
> once you were past the MP's you could do any damn thing you wanted and
> there was nobody to stop you because General on down, if they didn't
> have a 'yellow pass' "I'm afraid I can't allow that, sir." Because
> the MP's never knew when it was a drill or for real, and they turned
> away some of the highest of the high.
>
> And here we are today, SIXTY-FIVE years later and they're still
> treating it like a big f**king SECRET.
>
> -R.S.Hoover

[[email protected]]

> The mental picture I keep getting, is a whole flock of them buzzing away
> towards an objective, at night, (for stealth like many paratrooper landings
> of the time did) and how many would crash into another. *I wonder if they
> put bumpers on them? <g>
> -----------------------------------------------------

I donno Jim. Maybe the one with the different tail came with a built-
in parachute.

The Thing was, despite all the hype about paratroops, while the
POTENTIAL was there, given Crete (for the other side) D-day and
'Market Garden,' on the basis of cost vs effectivess most 'airborne'
troops ended up perform normal infantry roles, which raised the
question: Should we train ALL infantry to jump from airplanes? Or,
do we even need the capability? Because based on... Market Time?
Market Garden? (Can't remember ****) Someone in the British
Parliament said we could have saved everyone a lot of time, trouble
and MONEY if they'd simply landed their gliders inside the POW camps,
because that's were x-percent of the troops ended up anyway. And
American congressmen weren't far behind, pointing out how many
THOUSANDS of C-47's we had assigned to give someone a ride they never
took, and when they DID take the ride (Sicily, Normandy) they often
ended up at the wrong place anyway.

If you broke it down into numbers of airplanes and the amount of
training, its seems we could have gotten the same bang for our buck by
simply stuffing volunteers into a little mass-produced airplane,
wishing them well and crossing your fingers.

-Bob

[[email protected]]

In rec.aviation.piloting > wrote:
>
>> The mental picture I keep getting, is a whole flock of them buzzing away
>> towards an objective, at night, (for stealth like many paratrooper landings
>> of the time did) and how many would crash into another. Â*I wonder if they
>> put bumpers on them? <g>
>> -----------------------------------------------------
>
> I donno Jim. Maybe the one with the different tail came with a built-
> in parachute.
>
> The Thing was, despite all the hype about paratroops, while the
> POTENTIAL was there, given Crete (for the other side) D-day and
> 'Market Garden,' on the basis of cost vs effectivess most 'airborne'
> troops ended up perform normal infantry roles, which raised the
> question: Should we train ALL infantry to jump from airplanes? Or,
> do we even need the capability? Because based on... Market Time?
> Market Garden? (Can't remember ****) Someone in the British
> Parliament said we could have saved everyone a lot of time, trouble
> and MONEY if they'd simply landed their gliders inside the POW camps,
> because that's were x-percent of the troops ended up anyway. And
> American congressmen weren't far behind, pointing out how many
> THOUSANDS of C-47's we had assigned to give someone a ride they never
> took, and when they DID take the ride (Sicily, Normandy) they often
> ended up at the wrong place anyway.
>
> If you broke it down into numbers of airplanes and the amount of
> training, its seems we could have gotten the same bang for our buck by
> simply stuffing volunteers into a little mass-produced airplane,
> wishing them well and crossing your fingers.
>
> -Bob

Almost all the mass airborn assaults by everyone that has tried it
were pretty much a disater.


--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

[Morgans[_2_]]

> wrote

V: The Thing was, despite all the hype about paratroops, while the
POTENTIAL was there, given Crete (for the other side) D-day and
'Market Garden,' on the basis of cost vs effectivess most 'airborne'
troops ended up perform normal infantry roles, which raised the
question: Should we train ALL infantry to jump from airplanes?

Jim: Usually, you think of paratroopers as an advance wing of the attack,
or to put men over the top of resistance, or unless there was no way to get
troops in, otherwise.

V: If you broke it down into numbers of airplanes and the amount of
training, its seems we could have gotten the same bang for our buck by
simply stuffing volunteers into a little mass-produced airplane,
wishing them well and crossing your fingers.

Jim: Interesting concept, at the very least. I think there are times that
such a use could have been made, but the stealth of such a landing would be
pretty minimal, I would suppose.
--
Jim in NC

[[email protected]]

On Dec 28, 6:23*pm, "Morgans" > wrote:

> Jim: *Interesting concept, at the very least. *I think there are times that
> such a use could have been made, but the stealth of such a landing would be
> pretty minimal, I would suppose.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roger that.

What was the 'stick' for a DC-3? I read somewhere that the push for
the C-46 -- even the name 'Commando' -- was driven by the fact you
needed a whole damn air force of DC-3's to put a credible number of
troops on the ground AND in the correct positions. C-46, the stick
was about twice that of a C-47... but at about 4x the cost, thanks to
tooling amortization of the latter by pre-war civilian demand. So
when they DID get the required amount of lift... it was stolen! The
C-46 went to air-supply the China theater because the DC-3 couldn't
make it over the Hump with a credible cargo on-board.

The DC-3 was just what the air lines wanted; cheap to build,
economical to operate, and with a load capacity that was a close match
for the markets & routes of that era. But turn it into a weapon of
war and you find you needed so damn many of them that ANY idea of a
'stealthy' insertion was little more than a bad joke. Indeed, good
pre-event intel virtually pin-pointed the drop zone... as it did for D-
Day... if the German CinC hadn't been a total Fruit Loop, consulting
his astrologer fer crysakkes!

-Bob

[Charles Vincent]

Monk wrote:
> On Dec 28, 8:59 am, Dana M. Hague > wrote:
>> On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:52:51 -0800 (PST), Monk >
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Dec 25, 1:54 pm, Monk > wrote:
>>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-TE7MOuo7c
>>>> Monk
>>> Any plans out there for this build?
>> Why would you want to?
>
> I don't know. I thought of this conecpt, flying prone, before about
> twenty plus years ago while in High school. Then I came across this
> bird.
>
> Monk

There was a young aviator who looked to have a promising career in
aviation ahead of him that had the same idea. His incarnation of the
WeeBee had a bigger engine and had him strapped to the bottom of the
fuselage rather than the top. There was a web site that detailed his
vision and its fortune, but I can't find it at the moment. A friend of
his hosted it as I recall (BlueSkyGirl?)

Charles

[cavelamb[_2_]]

The Northrop MX-324 rocket powered test plane was flown in the prone
"head first" position.

It landed on skids.

John Meyers was the test pilot on it and commented that during landing
he had to put his chin about 1 foot off of the ground at about 100 mph.

He said it was a "mind expanding experience"...

[Monk]

On Dec 29, 1:52*pm, cavelamb > wrote:
> The Northrop MX-324 rocket powered test plane was flown in the prone
> "head first" position.
>
> It landed on skids.
>
> John Meyers was the test pilot on it and commented that during landing
> he had to put his chin about 1 foot off of the ground at about 100 mph.
>
> He said it was a "mind expanding experience"...

From the looks of this picture, he's as high off the ground as any
spamcan driver. http://www.airfields-freeman.com/CA/MX-324_undated_color.jpg

Monk

[Monk]

On Dec 29, 9:22*pm, Monk > wrote:
> On Dec 29, 1:52*pm, cavelamb > wrote:
>
> > The Northrop MX-324 rocket powered test plane was flown in the prone
> > "head first" position.
>
> > It landed on skids.
>
> > John Meyers was the test pilot on it and commented that during landing
> > he had to put his chin about 1 foot off of the ground at about 100 mph.
>
> > He said it was a "mind expanding experience"...
>
> From the looks of this picture, he's as high off the ground as any
> spamcan driver. *http://www.airfields-freeman.com/CA/MX-324_undated_color.jpg
>
> Monk

Never mind. This picture puts in better perspective.
http://northrop.host.sk/images/MX-324_with_Harry_Crosby.jpg

Monk

[Morgans[_2_]]

"Monk" > wrote

Never mind. This picture puts in better perspective.
http://northrop.host.sk/images/MX-324_with_Harry_Crosby.jpg

After looking at the two pictures, I would put his eyeballs at between 3 and
4 feet off the ground.

Still, that's quite a perspective, since it is your melon that is out in
front of almost everything else, and it is what would get smushed, if
anything "bad" happened. Hmmm.

Also, I have never read about it's flight characteristics, but the small
fin, and the fact that it would be totally blanketed in a spin, I would bet
a very mean flat spin could develop, if it was ever spun.

I had never seen that one before. Interesting, and probably slick as snot!
It would be fun to build one with the pilot sitting like a sleek glider
pilot, and with a pusher prop.
--
Jim in NC

[cavelamb[_2_]]

Morgans wrote:
> "Monk" > wrote
>
> Never mind. This picture puts in better perspective.
> http://northrop.host.sk/images/MX-324_with_Harry_Crosby.jpg
>
> After looking at the two pictures, I would put his eyeballs at between 3 and
> 4 feet off the ground.
>
> Still, that's quite a perspective, since it is your melon that is out in
> front of almost everything else, and it is what would get smushed, if
> anything "bad" happened. Hmmm.
>
> Also, I have never read about it's flight characteristics, but the small
> fin, and the fact that it would be totally blanketed in a spin, I would bet
> a very mean flat spin could develop, if it was ever spun.
>
> I had never seen that one before. Interesting, and probably slick as snot!
> It would be fun to build one with the pilot sitting like a sleek glider
> pilot, and with a pusher prop.


Rocket powered maybe? See the3rd pic down.
http://www.strange-mecha.com/aircraft/FW/Northrop.htm


But THIS is the sweetie...

N9M was a scaled down pre-design version of the XB-35/49

N-9M 1942 = 1-2pC flying wing; two 260hp Menasco C6C; span: 60'0"
length: 17'10" v: 257/100/x range (est): 500 ceiling (est): 21,500'.
One-third-size flying scale model of B-35. Gross wt: 7000#, endurance:
3.2 hrs. POP: 1 N-9M, 1 N-9M-A, and 1 N-9M-B with two 300hp 8-cyl
Franklin O-540-7. Although officially test models for USAAF, s/ns were
never assigned. The first N-9M crashed on 5/19/43, killing test pilot
Max Constant. The N-9M-B was restored by the Planes of Fame Museum in 1994.

http://www.aerofiles.com/north-n9m.jpg
http://www.aerofiles.com/north-n9mx.jpg
http://www.aerofiles.com/north-N9Mcockpit.jpg


For a synopsis of ALL Northrop work...
http://www.aerofiles.com/_north.html


Richard

[Fred the Red Shirt]

On Dec 28, 6:52*pm, Dana M. Hague > wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 11:18:05 -0800 (PST), Monk >
> wrote:
>
> >I don't know. *I thought of this conecpt, flying prone, before about
> >twenty plus years ago while in High school. *Then I came across this
> >bird.
>
> Flying prone is one thing, though I don't see the attraction... it's
> been done more than once (not counting all the hang gliders), but the
> Wee Bee is so marginal that flying prone is the only option.
>

A couple of guys from Dayton Ohio had the same idea, probably a bit
before OP was in High School.

--

FF