Oct 24 is our Dec 17

Happy birthday, soaring. The "first" soaring flight was the 9 minutes and
45 seconds of hovering over Kitty Hawk dunes by Orville Wright, in the
Wright "No. 5" glider on October 24, 1911. This was no milestone on the way
to powered flight, "started" on December 17, 1903 (by Orville also, with
brother Wilbur). By then, Bleriot had flown the English channel, major
airshows had taken place, the Wright aeroplane company was filling plenty of
orders. Yet Orville went soaring. Beating this first FAI glider duration
record took almost 10 years (Wolf Klemperer, 8/30/21, 13:03 min) and was a
major motivation for the Wasserkuppe meetings.

John, if I didn't know you were an excellent pilot
and instructor, I'd swear you were an Anorak.
Chris.
At 05:12 25 October 2005, John H. Campbell wrote:
Happy birthday, soaring. The 'first' soaring flight
was the 9 minutes and
45 seconds of hovering over Kitty Hawk dunes by Orville
Wright, in the
Wright 'No. 5' glider on October 24, 1911. This was
no milestone on the way
to powered flight, 'started' on December 17, 1903 (by
Orville also, with
brother Wilbur). By then, Bleriot had flown the English
channel, major
airshows had taken place, the Wright aeroplane company
was filling plenty of
orders. Yet Orville went soaring. Beating this first
FAI glider duration
record took almost 10 years (Wolf Klemperer, 8/30/21,
13:03 min) and was a
major motivation for the Wasserkuppe meetings.

Chris Rollings wrote:
John, if I didn't know you were an excellent pilot
and instructor, I'd swear you were an Anorak.
Chris.

Was it Orville who said in effect "we knew soaring was more fun, but
power flying was where the money was"?

I forget the exact quote or which brother was supposed to have said it.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. |
org | Zappa fan & glider pilot

Well, the German Otto Lillienthal was soaring 10 years before the Wright
brothers and the Wright brothers were indeed inspired by him.

http://www.lilienthal-museum.de/olma/ehome.htm

Nils

John H. Campbell wrote:
Happy birthday, soaring. The "first" soaring flight was the 9 minutes and
45 seconds of hovering over Kitty Hawk dunes by Orville Wright, in the
Wright "No. 5" glider on October 24, 1911. This was no milestone on the way
to powered flight, "started" on December 17, 1903 (by Orville also, with
brother Wilbur). By then, Bleriot had flown the English channel, major
airshows had taken place, the Wright aeroplane company was filling plenty of
orders. Yet Orville went soaring. Beating this first FAI glider duration
record took almost 10 years (Wolf Klemperer, 8/30/21, 13:03 min) and was a
major motivation for the Wasserkuppe meetings.

Chris Rollings wrote:
John, if I didn't know you were an excellent pilot
and instructor, I'd swear you were an Anorak.

I think that inside almost every glider pilot, there is an Anorak trying
to get out. I know I have to suppress my inner Anorak constantly, and
not always successfully, I might add (but RAS knows that already). By
the way, I love the British term "Anorak". Dictionary.com won't give you
thier defintion, however, but maybe there is FAQ on a UK gliding website
that does.


Happy birthday, soaring. The 'first' soaring flight
was the 9 minutes and
45 seconds of hovering over Kitty Hawk dunes by Orville
Wright, in the
Wright 'No. 5' glider on October 24, 1911. This was
no milestone on the way
to powered flight, 'started' on December 17, 1903 (by
Orville also, with
brother Wilbur). By then, Bleriot had flown the English
channel, major
airshows had taken place, the Wright aeroplane company
was filling plenty of
orders. Yet Orville went soaring. Beating this first
FAI glider duration
record took almost 10 years (Wolf Klemperer, 8/30/21,
13:03 min) and was a
major motivation for the Wasserkuppe meetings.









--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

I think that inside almost every glider pilot, there is an Anorak trying
to get out. I know I have to suppress my inner Anorak constantly

If I remember correctly the term Anorak was used to describe a jacket,
as for example a light weight Parka.
What other uses does it have?
Udo

"Udo Rumpf" wrote in message
:

I think that inside almost every glider pilot, there is an Anorak trying
to get out. I know I have to suppress my inner Anorak constantly

If I remember correctly the term Anorak was used to describe a jacket,
as for example a light weight Parka.
What other uses does it have?
Udo



Here's what Google came up with using the search criteria "define:
anorak"

Definitions of anorak on the Web:

* a waterproof jacket of cloth or plastic, usually with a hood, of a
kind originally used in polar regions; a parka.
http://www.artistwd.com/joyzine/aust...strine/a-5.php
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=0&oi=define&q=http://www.artistwd.com/joyzine/australia/strine/a-5.php
* Loose, hooded garment of fabric or fur worn in Arctic regions and
adapted from the Eskimo original.
www.fashionfix.net/storefront.asp
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=1&oi=define&q=http://www.fashionfix.net/storefront.asp%3FpgID%3D13
* parka: a kind of heavy jacket (`windcheater' is a British term)
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=2&oi=define&q=http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn%3Fs%3Danorak
* An anorak or parka is a type of heavy jacket with a hood, generally
lined with fur or fun fur, so as to protect the face from a combination
of sub-zero temperatures and wind. Although of Inuit origin, the word
"anorak" is mainly used in Britain, while "parka" is the almost
universal name in the United States and Canada. "Parka" is used
interchangeably with anorak in Britain. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorak
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=3&oi=define&q=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorak
* In British slang, anorak has come to mean "geek" or "nerd", for
example from the use of anoraks as the invariable wear of train
spotters, and then by extension to refer to anyone with an unfathomable
interest in detailed information regarded as boring by the rest of the
population - aided by the intuition that only a geek would wear
something so terminally unfashionable.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorak_(slang)
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=4&oi=define&q=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorak_%28slang%29
* Anorak is a British parody on a tabloid. Its slogan is "Keeping an eye
on the tabloids". Some claim Anorak is a real newspaper.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorak_(newspaper)
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=5&oi=define&q=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorak_%28newspaper%29

Nils, do you really believe that gliding = soaring???
Bela

Nils Hoeimyr wrote:
Well, the German Otto Lillienthal was soaring 10 years before the Wright
brothers and the Wright brothers were indeed inspired by him.


As I recall Otto did not do any soaring, i.e sustained flight. His
flights were more or less straight glides tho he did encounter thermals
once in a while.

Plicher in England predates Lillienthal for making straight glides and
even may be credited with being the first to use a yaw string.

Robert Mudd

Well, the German Otto Lillienthal was soaring 10 years before the
Wright...
Nils, do you really believe that gliding = soaring???...
As I recall Otto did not do any soaring, i.e sustained flight...

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.