A cannonball isn’t powered.
[quote="md-2000,]…and eventually reach the point where RUD (Rapid Unplanned Disassembly) is likely.
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Is that anything like “re-kitting?” I like your version better.
Did you read the subsequent discussion elaborating that active control was part of the flight?
Yes, my confusion of the definition has been alleviated thanks to the replies of many posters.
Obviously I didn’t think a cannonball counted anymore than a bullet being fired or a baseball being thrown. I remember visiting the Wright Brothers Museum as a kid and tried to remember the very careful definition of “flight” from that time.
Wasn’t one of the criteria that you land at at least the same elevation you left the ground? IIRC, the park ranger said that if you took off from the top of a hill, stayed aloft for 20 minutes, flew to 15,000ft., and then did all sorts of tricks, but then landed on a strip at the bottom of the hill that scientists of the day would have said, “Nice glide.”
Earleir in the thread it was mentioned that the Wrights’ first flight involved flying into a stiff wind to get the airspeed to get airborne. Regardless, the engine and propeller added sufficient extra speed to get airborne, as opposed to, say, a kite.
As for “landing at the same altitude” it was probably meant to eliminate something like Lilenthal’s glider flights, where essentially he was gliding down a hill. Motor or not, if the reason you got speed and got airborne was gravity and the net path was downhill, then there qould be some question if it was flight under its own power. After all, hang gliders, unpowered, do get more altitude than the launch site thanks to updrafts. But if you can’t take the same craft to Chicago or Kansas and also get airborne, are you actually performing powered flight? And of course, there’s the debate “is it flying if you used the wind for an assist?” But the same craft eventually would launch from arbitrary locations and under arbitrary wind conditions, so i would suggest the answer is “yes”. they just used the winds the first few tests to ensure they had the Wright stuff.
Ground effect improves lift (air is compressed between wing and ground) so the logical continuation of the debate is “can the craft get out of ground effect - and if not, is it really powered flight, or a form of hovercraft?” The last flight of that first day got to 10 feet so probably fairly high out of most ground effect benefit.
The most interesting thing was that the Wrights were not “winging it”. They did wind tunnel tests, calculated things like drag and lift, to determine what power they needed and what thrust the propellers should be giving, etc.
That’s exactly what I said to the pilot on my last flight from Denver back to Seattle.
Nitpick - the Wrights’ original control system used two levers that both moved forward and back, not side to side. One controlled pitch, the other controlled roll, but which was which, and which direction was left or right, you had to remember and was not intuitive. This confusing system caused problems. I can’t remember when they finally switched to the Louis Blériot invented four-axis joystick.
Ground effect is why people debate whether or not the Spruce Goose really “flew”, or whether the Soviet ekranoplans count as aircraft.
Didn’t the Wright Flyer also include a cradle for the pilot’s hips? I think it was one stick for the elevator, one for the rudder, and the hip cradle controlled roll. I don’t know what was the first plane to use a two-axis joystick and rudder pedals.
[quote=“Robot_Arm, post:28, topic:945143, full:true”]…
Didn’t the Wright Flyer also include a cradle for the pilot’s hips? I think it was one stick for the elevator, one for the rudder, and the hip cradle controlled roll. I don’t know what was the first plane to use a two-axis joystick and rudder pedals.
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First off, I was wrong about the inventor. The joystick and pedals design was first used on a Blériot plane, but was invented by his collaborator Robert Esnault-Pelterie. This was in 1908 and refined for the Channel Crossing in 1909.
The early Wright control inputs indeed involved a hip cradle that combined roll and yaw together. Later, after a crash, the two brothers had competing cockpit input configurations. Wilbur had a two-axis joystick with horizontal movement replacing the hip cradle. Orville kept the two levers, but added a knob on one for yaw control. IMHO, as high as I hold the Wright Brothers in esteem, their control inputs were stupid.
As an interesting aside – according to a documentary I saw years ago, the Wrights’ earlier work building bicycles gave them the idea that a plane doesn’t necessarily need to be inherently stable. Much like a bicycle, their plane required constant, small inputs from the pilot to keep it going straight. That gave them the edge over most of the other inventors working on powered flight who were looking at the problem from more of a shipbuilding perspective, with the goal to make something that was inherently stable.
Which are what fighter planes are. Deliberately.
Fighters are unstable, or at least not as stable, which I think is what you meant?
Yes. Not really an aviation buff of much, but I think that makes them quicker to react because they are not inherently trying to fly straight and level. Glad to be corrected. Don’t know where I heard that.
Yes, that’s right. Lots of stability means easy to fly but not very manoeuvrable because the plane is resistant to change. Unstable means it requires a lot of attention to fly, but it is manoeuvrable. The development of fly-by-wire systems meant that fighters could be designed with pure manoeuvrability in mind as the computer can take care of all the tiny control inputs required to keep it pointing in the direction the pilot wants.
The early Wright control inputs indeed involved a hip cradle that combined roll and yaw together. Later, after a crash, the two brothers had competing cockpit input configurations.
Was that the same crash after which they started adding dihedral to the wings to improve stability?
Fighter aircraft weren’t always like this. It takes computers and sensors to avoid departing from controlled flight, and they weren’t really up to the task (at least for production aircraft) until the development of the F-16 in the late 1970s:
For more info on relaxed/negative stability:
I recall reading the stealth fighter was sufficiently dynamically unstable that without the computer assistance would be impossible to fly.
Side note: a friend reported flying a WWII era German fighter without trim adjustment. If you stopped active control, it sharply rolled and turned: a known characteristic of many pre-trim aircraft.