Quote:
On 2002-06-16 12:45, JayUtah wrote:
As you can imagine, the Wright flyer had very poor lateral stability (no fuselage). And so the Wrights built it with anhedral wings. We tend to think of the Wrights as some bicycle makers who got lucky. On the contrary they knew a lot about what they were doing.
|
Wandering a bit OT here, but there was a news brief on AvWeb last year.
http://www.avweb.com/newswire/news0128a.html
about building the one of the replicas of the Wright Flyer to be flown at next year's celebration. Seems that no one wants to fly it as originally designed, a quote from one pilot stating, "It's like balancing a yardstick on one finger, two at one time. If you lose it, it goes -- quickly." Does make you admire the Wrights all the more, since by all accounts after their glider tests they were fully aware of the problems.