The Wright Stuff and The Wright Experience

Cub Driver wrote:
Gregg Germain wrote:

Do I understand correctly that the original Wright Flyer as well as
the replicas, CANNOT fly unless there's sufficient wind?

Sure they can fly. An airplane in the air does not know whether the
wind is blowing or not.

Despite what you probably learned in your private pilot ground
school, this statement is not entirely true.

For all practical purposes, Ed's 55,000 lb. Thud (for example)
probably didn't know whether the wind is blowing or not. But your
700 lb. Cub certainly does.

If you still have your AC-61 23 (FAA Pilot's Handbook of
Aeronautical Knowledge) see page 114. If you don't have it
handy, here is the pertinent excerpt:

"It has been thought that wind cannot affect an aircraft once it is
flying except for drift and groundspeed. This is true with steady
winds or winds that change gradually. It isn't true, however, if the
wind changes faster than the aircraft mass can be accelerated
or decelerated."

It boils down to this: those of us who fly extremely lightweight A/C
are much more intimately acquainted with the subtle nuances of
how wind effects our planes in flight than are our he-man counterparts
who drive their heavyweights around the sky at .9 mach for the most
totally oblivious to what the wind is doing.

But then, coming from a GA background, I also didn't much care about
the wind after takeoff and my 6,000 lb. AeroCommander loaded with
1,500 lbs. of cargo didn't care either. Simply turn the required
amount of degrees into the wind to compensate for drift and be done
with it.

But since taking up flexwing aviation and having flown several
dozen different make & models of delightfully lightweight birds,
I've changed my tune a bit here.

The steady wind at Kill Devil Hill was also essential for the kite
trials that preceded powered flight in the Wright Flyer. Unlike an
airplane, a kite is tethered to the ground and the airstream is
provided not by a propeller but by the differential between the speed
of the air and that of the ground.

This is all true, but it doesn't support your contention that, "an
airplane in the air does not know whether the wind is blowing or
not."

If you don't understand this, try dragging a banner behind your Cub
someday. For maximum effect, try this little experiment by flying from
a steady state wind towards the shoreline so as to experience a
sudden change in wind direction from a tailwind to an onshore
seabreeze.

You're happily cruising along in your Cub headed straight for the
beach with the banner flapping lazily behind and slightly below
your Cub's tailfeathers.

You then fly into the onshore seabreeze airmass and suddenly all the
slack in the banner towline tightens up and the banner streaming
behind straightens out. You exclaim, "This shouldn't be, I'm part of
the airmass!"

Another good example is drifting along in a balloon. You're moving
over the ground, but not a breath of air in the balloon. You are
changing altitudes to catch a wind going another direction, and
suddenly the little flags on the balloon flutter and you feel a little
breeze.

Once again, you protest, "This shouldn't be, I'm part of the airmass!"
The balloon replies, "Yes, grazihopper, but I have inertia and once I
have adjusted to the new wind, we will be floating in silence once
more."

-Mike Marron

Mike Marron wrote:
:Gregg Germain wrote:

: Do I understand correctly that the original Wright Flyer as well as
: the replicas, CANNOT fly unless there's sufficient wind?

: It could fly w/o sufficient wind, but just didn't have the oomph to
: take off by itself due to it's puny 12-hp engine tasked with getting
: 600 lbs. of airplane into the air.

: -Mike Marron

Hi Mike,

Well that's what I meant by "fly" though I didn't use precise
language.

In other words, on a calm day, the Wright Flyer would not take off.



--- Gregg
"Improvise, adapt, overcome."

Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Phone: (617) 496-1558

Gregg Germain wrote:
Mike Marron wrote:

It could fly w/o sufficient wind, but just didn't have the oomph to
take off by itself due to it's puny 12-hp engine tasked with getting
600 lbs. of airplane into the air.

Hi Mike,

Well that's what I meant by "fly" though I didn't use precise
language.

In other words, on a calm day, the Wright Flyer would not take off.

With a long enough runway it could take off in calm air. But since
Kitty Hawk is only about 500 miles from their bicycle shop in Ohio
whereas the Bonneville Salt Flats is more than 1500 miles away,
the 100 ft. dunes and onshore seabreezes at Kitty Hawk worked
out just fine for their purposes.

-Mike Marron

In other words, on a calm day, the Wright Flyer would not take off.

Just so.

Note that much the same was true of most carrier aircraft in WWII, at
least as the planes were arranged on deck. (Parked aircraft took up
much of the available space.) The carrier steamed into the wind at
high speed, giving 25 knots or more over the bow. The most famous
example was the launch of the Dootlittle raiders in April 1942, when
you can see a B-25 actually dipping below deck level as it took off
for Japan.

Today, there is seldom any effort to take off from carriers. Jets are
routinely catapulted.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

With a long enough runway it could take off in calm air. But since
Kitty Hawk is only about 500 miles from their bicycle shop in Ohio
whereas the Bonneville Salt Flats is more than 1500 miles away,

Given that the first flight was shorter than the wingspan of a modern
jetliner, are you sure about this? Perhaps it would have run out of
gas or fallen apart or the pilot jolted off before becoming airborne?
The temps on the salt flats would have been a hindering factor as
well, both aerodynamically and mechanically.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

The wind doesn't affect the Cub when its airborne. *Changes* in
windspeed affect the Cub.

But they don't help it fly.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

Cub Driver wrote:

The wind doesn't affect the Cub when its airborne. *Changes* in
windspeed affect the Cub.

But they don't help it fly.

Typical "heavy iron" mindset of a pilot who simply drives around
burning holes in the sky and never discovers the joys of surfing the
wind.

In any event, no offense but I couldn't disagree more and it sounds to
me that you just don't like the wind. Happiness is a limp windsock and
all that jazz.

-Mike (perhaps a few soarplane lessons might help?) Marron

Cub Driver wrote:
Mike Marron wrote:

With a long enough runway it could take off in calm air. But since
Kitty Hawk is only about 500 miles from their bicycle shop in Ohio
whereas the Bonneville Salt Flats is more than 1500 miles away,

Given that the first flight was shorter than the wingspan of a modern
jetliner, are you sure about this? Perhaps it would have run out of
gas or fallen apart or the pilot jolted off before becoming airborne?

Perhaps. But then, neither of us can definitively state one way or
another that it would NOT have been possible to takeoff under
its own power in calm air given a long enough runway.

The temps on the salt flats would have been a hindering factor as
well, both aerodynamically and mechanically.

I just checked the mean temperatures of the Wendover UT area
(closest I could find to the salt flats) and didn't see any reason why
temps would have been a hindrance (esp. in the wintertime).

-Mike Marron

om: Cub Driver lo

The most famous
example was the launch of the Dootlittle raiders in April 1942, when
you can see a B-25 actually dipping below deck level as it took off
for Japan.

That was Travis Hoover's plane. He was the second off after Doolittle.
Apparently the pitch up of the deck as he launched put the nose up too high and
he dropped down to pick up air speed. Whether that was done with conscious
intent or whether that's just the way the inert mass behaved when trundled off
the front end of a flight deck depends on whose telling the tale. Apparently
timing the launch to coincide with the correct angle of the pitching deck was
critical and it took a near miss for the navy guy waving the flag (whatever you
call him) to get the timing exactly right, the progress of a B-25 down the
flight deck not being exactly the same as that of the single-engine jobs the
navy was used to launching.


Chris Mark

In article ,
"patrick mitchel" writes:

Sorry for taking so long for the reply, but there's only so many hours
in the week, and I've had a lot to do at my Day Job.

Peter Stickney wrote in message
They also took the most systematic and scientific approach to solving
the problem of heavier than air flight than anybody who'd gone
before. When they realized that Lilienthal's data was incorrect, they
derived everything from scratch, using various test rigs adn their own
wind tunnels. By 1903, they knew more about air propeller efficienfy
adn stability and control than anyone. They also took the same
systematic approach to flying. They began flying gliders at Kitty
Hawk in 1900, and spent 1900, 1901, and 1902 perfecting the control of
their aircraft, and learning to fly. (As an aside, that's one of the
things that amazes me about nearly all of the early experimenters,
(Adler, Langley, Maxim), or would-be experimenters (Whitheead, ahd
that bloke in New Zealand whose name escapes me at the moment) All of
them seemed to be of the idea that all they had to do was build their
machine, jump into it, and fly it. It doesn't work that way,
especially with the poor understanding of stability, and lack of
3-axis control that they had. Manley's (Langley's Test Pilot)
swimming improved quite a bit, though) After tje extensive
experiments of 1900-1903, I'd say that by Dec 1903, the Wrights had
more flight time than anyone else.

Why did they choose a canard....seems to me that all the natural analogs
have a "tail" in the trailing position. All the soaring birds and the like.
Was there something about "seeing" the pitch attitude that gave them
confidence in that approach? Regards Pat

Well, birds with canards, (With the possible exception of the
semi-mythical Woose Grock (Wrongwayus invertibuttacus) or Inverted
Grouse of the North Woods, whose backward flight causes hunters to
pull lead in the wrong direction, and is mostly known by its taunting
call of EEOOOMISSSSDMEE, EEOOOMISSSSEDMEE) have a hard time eating.

Seriously, though, I think they did it for reasons of efficiency. A
fixed wing all by itseld, wants to pivot in a "nose down" direction.

The conventional tail of an airplane or bird balances this by
generatnig lift in the direction opposite that of the wing. So,
although it balances the pitching moment of the wing, it increases the
amount of work that the wing must do. A canard (Forward Stabilizer)
can achieve the same goal while generating lift in the same direction
as the wing. therehy helping out with the lift. The drawbacks are
that the canard can disturb the airflow over the wing in some
configurations, (Or help teh airflow in others), and it adds to the
length of the airplane, since it has to be stuck out far enough ahead
of the wing to get a proper amount of leverage. After 1909, the
Wrights wnet to a more conventional layout, with the stabilizer in
back, with the rudder.


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster