Soaring vs. Flapping

(patrick timony) wrote:

In another post we were talking about soaring vs. flapping flight.
Does anyone else find it strange that Soaring flight is so rare in
nature but so popular with us for the last 100 years?

Actually, soaring flight is quite common in nature.

I've heard that
the Wright Brothers patented Wing Warping (Flapping) and never let
anyone develop planes using Wing Warping flight. Is that true?

The Wrights used wing warping for lateral control, not net lift. Yes,
they did enforce their patent with vigor and largely succeeded in the
USA until WW I, effectively hampering aircraft development. They
claimed their patent covered all methods of lateral control, not just
wing warping.

Does
that explain why the designs up until the time of the Wright Brothers
were all Bird-like flapping designs and after were all fixed wing
soaring designs?

People made bird-like flapping designs for manned flight because they
saw birds flying and, not knowing any better, thought that was the way
man should fly as well. Interest today in manned ornithopters is
largely academic. Check out this excellent site,

http://www.ornithopter.net/

The research section has a number of informative papers on the subject
of "flapping flight". The media section has an interesting video of a
rather large gas engine powered radio controlled ornithopter in
flight. Also in the media section is a video of a manned ornithopter
flight attempt--Project Ornithopter's best effort to date--which
resulted in a few hops of less than one second duration. By the way,
the engine in their manned ornithopter is a 22 hp engine that has
successfully powered conventional fixed-wing airplanes to over 120 mph
in level cruise.

David O -- http://www.AirplaneZone.com