Is there any sources about history of flying models? I have started to think it’s in some way more significant than actual powered flight by a man. Once you got your model plane flying properly, it was only a matter of time to get a full scale plane to the skies.
Alphonse Pénaud designed a rubber-band powered toy helicopter that the Wright Brothers claimed as their inspiration. He also designed in 1870 what is claimed as the aerodynamically stable flying model. He never managed to come up with the funding to make a full-scale airplane.
The problem is always control. Lillenthal made human gliders which he controlled (until he died) by weight shift. The wright brothers singular contributions were (a) determining that the original published material about lift was incorrect (by building a wind tunnel) and (b) they patented wing warping as a means of controlling aircraft too heavy for the pilot to control by shifting his weight. (IIRC, Curtis Wright invented ailerons instead, then got into a patent fight with the Wright Brothers, the patent trolls of their day.)
So every model aircraft before and since, until radio control, suffered from a basic flaw - no control. Launch and forget. Perhaps learning how a wing worked would be an elementary lesson that translated to building full sized aircraft, but as we know from making paper airplanes, even a flat sheet will fly adequately, and even the basic dart paper airplane can be controlled a bit by bending the back of the wings up a bit. However, at that point we see the plane do a series of ups and downs - but this is actually your paper airplane going up until it stalls, then nosing down until it begins flying again. Larger heavier aircraft don’t stall as gracefully.
But as I understand it, Lilienthal also made models before human-sized gliders. Plus, people had been making kites (using tether and wind to substitute for motion) so some aerodynamics was not unfamiliar.
Oh good grief.
Exactly.
What the Wrights developed and patented was 3-axis control (pitch, roll & yaw), which has been a feature of 99.44% of all heavier-than-air flying machines ever since.
You are quite correct in noting that model aircraft typically are built to be naturally stable, thus needing no active ccontrol. This allows them to execute interesting and even remarkable* flights, but has little to say about how to manage a powered machine big enough to carry humans.
- Duration record for a rubber-band-powered model is over 1 hour.
There were powered model airplanes which has some rudimentary control through two wires connected to a handle. By tilting the handle you could operate the flaps. Pitch control only. Of course you were limited to flying in a circle whose radius was determined by the length of the control wires. I has one of these for about thirty seconds before my little brother got in the way of the plane and I ended up crashing it while avoiding him.
Lawrence Hargrave, who did a lot of aeronautical theorising and experimenting in the 1880s-90s, is recorded as making models of his designs which were flown in meetings of the Royal Society of NSW in this period to accompany his talks.
John Stringfellow flew his model plane in 1848. It was a monoplane with counter-rotating screw propellors.
Although in the movie Flight of the Phoenix they say that “Henson and Stringfellow flew a rubber band-powered that flew x yards before hitting an obstruction”, that statement is wrong on multiple counts. Henson had dropped out of the partnership long before’ I’m not sure if the model hit an obstruction; and it was steam powered. Stringfellow buil;t his own steam engine to power it himself, from scratch.
The plane had a ten foot wingspan. To my astonishment, it had no “tail”, and so lacked lateral stability – he had to fly it in long buildings and in tents. (How can you not think of a tail for stability, especially after it’s revealed as a problem? Boats have keels and rudders!). There were plenty of witnesses, it was recorded in the newspapers, and the model was photographed. That the flight itself was not isn’t surprising – in 1848 the state of photography was pretty primitive, and exposures were long.
I wrote a “Teemings” article about this, but Teemings is, sadly, no longer with us. But you can find plenty about Stringellow on the 'net:
I don’t know of anyone who built a flying model plane before Stringfellow, although it wouldn’t surprise me if there had been gliders. Certainly there were kites. And powered “helicopter” models preceded Stringfellow’s airplane model.
What I found suggests the 1848 model flew along a wire to which it was attached. Was that always the case, or did it also fly free?
It flew free in most of its tests, so far as I’m aware.
From the Wikipedia article: