CatholicFlyer

Active member
I know you all are busy at Flite Test and have thousands of these ideas posted that may never be read, but there needs to be two Salutes to three men, 1. Leonardo Divinci and his design and concept of a flying machine and second to the Wright Brothers and building a version of the Plane they flew. So building from the design of Divinci and the Wright Brothers.
 

Hai-Lee

Old and Bold RC PILOT
Yes both deserve our praise and thanks but seriously their are a plethora of early pioneers whose collected work was collected absorbed, corrected, scientifically analysed and built upon by the wright brothers to actually build their first flyer!

Even the Wright brothers mention one of them in their writings, Otto Lilienthal. The only real thing I can point to is that they were the first to use photography to record their efforts seriously!

From 1903 until WWI the Wrights did their best to stop others from using their ideas and designs through the patent courts. Thereby they seriously hampered aircraft development such that laws were passed to nullify their patents when the US entered the war.

Did the Wrights build the first real heavier than air flying machine in the modern and controllable sense? YES
Was the design based purely upon their own work? NO

I admire their work and thank them for it BUT I equally admire the work of ALL of those who spent their funds and even gave their lives to get us to where we are today!

Just my personal and heavily researched opinion!

Have fun!
 

cranialrectosis

Faster than a speeding face plant!
Mentor
Here is one of the finest tributes/builds I have ever seen.

I may never in my lifetime see better craftsmanship than here in this 49 pages of gold.

If you want an example of the talent, skills, time, money, and dedication required to do something like what you are proposing, spend a few hours and read this thread.

Willsonmans Flite Fest 2017 Bugatti 100P
 

Hai-Lee

Old and Bold RC PILOT
Most of DaVinci designs would not be easy to get to fly as they were human powered and the actual power requirements were and remain far beyond what a man can provide. Even the helicopter design lacks controllability with getting airborne the main aim of his designs not remaining airborne.

The ornithopter designs speak for themselves.

So far there have been a number of attempts to get one or more of the designs to fly but all such attempts have resulted in failure.

Sadly DaVinci did not understand the concept of wing loading and based his design efforts upon linear scaling of designs found in nature but we as those who follow should understand how scaling works and its effects upon aircraft designs.

For his time the designs were revolutionary but sadly he lacked the knowledge and science to make the designs workable.

I still love his work and his original thinking!

have fun!
 

sprzout

Knower of useless information
Mentor
There's a whole slew of people who supposedly had powered flight before Orville and Wilbur did. Brazil even had a mention of it in their Opening Ceremony of the Summer Games in 2016, one Alberto Santos-Dumont...Interesting controversy.

Of course, there were lots of things about flight that were sketchy back in the early days of flight, and a LOT of it took place here in California - Hughes Aircraft, Ryan Air, General Dynamics, Northrop, Boeing, Lockheed - all building planes that went on to be work horses and military flight that expanded on.

If you ever have a chance to go to Disney's California Adventure, Soarin' Over California has some plaques inside the entrance to the ride with some historical figures of aviation, from the first African American Aviator, to Amelia Earhart, to Burt Rutan and his experimental planes. It's really kind of interesting and fascinating - but it's small potatoes compared to the Air and Space Museum in San Diego, which has a LOT more, like the predecessor to the SR-71, the Lockheed A-12, out on display outside of the museum.
 

CatholicFlyer

Active member
thanks everyone, I was reading up on the guy in Germany, Otto, who did the Gliders that @Hai-Lee mentioned, his design was okay but like he said on the designs by Davinci it dealt with body weight shifting, all of these historic designs from all these people who help give the world flight, should be built with today's material and today's electronics and engines, to bring them to life again, but also to show how the materials have gotten better and maybe make them more stable in flight.
 

Flying Monkey fab

Elite member
Yes both deserve our praise and thanks but seriously their are a plethora of early pioneers whose collected work was collected absorbed, corrected, scientifically analysed and built upon by the wright brothers to actually build their first flyer!

Even the Wright brothers mention one of them in their writings, Otto Lilienthal. The only real thing I can point to is that they were the first to use photography to record their efforts seriously!

From 1903 until WWI the Wrights did their best to stop others from using their ideas and designs through the patent courts. Thereby they seriously hampered aircraft development such that laws were passed to nullify their patents when the US entered the war.

Did the Wrights build the first real heavier than air flying machine in the modern and controllable sense? YES
Was the design based purely upon their own work? NO

I admire their work and thank them for it BUT I equally admire the work of ALL of those who spent their funds and even gave their lives to get us to where we are today!

Just my personal and heavily researched opinion!

Have fun!


Even the Wrights being first to powered flight is contested so we can say they were the first to widely go public with the news.
 

Hai-Lee

Old and Bold RC PILOT
Even the Wrights being first to powered flight is contested so we can say they were the first to widely go public with the news.

Also consider that no other aircraft pioneer made museums sign a contract denying all other persons input in their designs and made the assertion that they were the sole designers of the first heavier than air flying machine, (now called airplane).

Try doing a search on Whitehead AKA Weisskopf!

have fun!
 

CatholicFlyer

Active member
yeah, it says, 'The No.21 was a wire-braced monoplane with bat-like wings and triangular horizontal tail. There was no vertical fin, and lateral control was intended to be accomplished by shifting the pilot's body sideways.

The wings were constructed with radial bamboo ribs and covered with silk, and had a span of 36 ft (11 m). They had noticeable dihedral, which would have contributed to the aircraft's stability had it ever flown, and could be folded like a fan for transport.

The fuselage was of rectangular box section with constant height, curved to taper inwards at front and rear when seen from above. Four small wheels were fixed to the bottom." be very hard.