bronzewhaler82
Senior Airman
- 661
- Feb 19, 2004
jj1982 said:
You jealous troublemaker?
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jj1982 said:Nah, days won't make any difference - you need MONTHS, YEARS FOREVER!!
Uh, Oh...does anyone else feel that perhaps that giving Bronze some sort of authority (Hes not used to it, bless him!) wasnt such a good idea....
cheddar cheese said:cool 8) i watched a programme once where they said that the tiger moth was a WW1 biplane
Type: FDB-1
Country: Canada
Function: fighter
Year: 1938
Crew: 1
Engines: 1 * 750hp P&W R-1535-SB4-G
Wing Span: 8.53m
Length: 6.60m
Height: 2.86m
Wing Area: 18.02m2
Empty Weight: 1306kg
Speed: 420km/h
Ceiling:
Range: 835km/h
Armament: 2x 12.7mm MG
a title which so rightly belongs to the Gloster Gladiator
It was a double-wing, one-seat plane equipped with a reactive engine. The main characteristics were:
Span: 10.30 m
Length: 12.50 m
Lifting surface: 32.70 mxm
Weight: 420 kg
Propulsion force at sea level: 220 kgf
For the first time the main stubs of wings were made of steel instead of wood. The wings were for the first time equipped with mobile surfaces placed ahead of wing to increase lift (*these are mobile surfaces attached to the wing, which have the role to delay the separation of the boundary layer, thus increasing the critical flight incidence and the maximum lifting coefficient; in Romanian it is called volet - e.g volet Fowler, Taghi, Kruger etc.*).
The wings profile had a strong curvature; their shape was rectangular except for the fact that they were, of course, circular at the corners. The gasoline and lubricants were stored inside the upper wings (!) such as the drag was considerably reduced.
The two wings had different lengths and the superior (upper) wing was set ahead of the inferior one, which was shorter, such as the aerodynamic interference between these two surfaces were reduced. This construction, applied for the first time by Henri Coanda, was later called 'Sesquiplan'; it was re-invented 10 years later, being used for Fokker's, Brequet's, Potez's airplanes.
Paul Painleve (1863-1933), Prof. at Sorbone, one of the pioneers of Flight Mechanics, who also flew with Wilbur Wright and Henri Farman even in 1908 - Sextrieux and Gustave Eiffel - 1832-1923, a pioneer of experimental aerodynamics, his first experiences being carried out from the tower which bears his name - were particularly interested in Coanda's machine. However they realized that the hour of the reactive airplane had not come yet (Eiffel: 'This boy should have been born 30 years later.').
The most interesting part of Coanda's plane was the propulsion system, a real revolution in the construction of airplanes engines, that would have to constitute the solution in the future.
The "air-reactive engine", invented and built for the first time by Henri Coanda, composed of a piston-engine with four cylinders, cooled with water; it developed 50 HP (Horse-Power) at 1000 rotations/minute. This piston-engine was connected to a rod which rotated the rotation multiplier; the movement was transmitted to the compressor which gained a rotation speed of 4000 rot./min.. In front of the compressor was placed the obturator - a device very similar to that of a photo-camera; this device could be controlled by the pilot such that the quantity of air that entered the compressor could be regulated. The air entered the burning rooms, (that had a ring-like section and were placed on both sides of the fuselage), from which, through some tubes, burned gases of the engine were evacuated and the propulsion force was generated.
The propulsion force at sea level obtained with this engine was 220 kgf, much larger than that obtained if the piston-engine would have been acted by a propeller.
Many visitors were suspicious about the possibility that this machine could take off since it was missing the propeller. They had never seen such a strange flying machine and never heard about an airplane without a propeller.
After the exhibition closed its doors, on December 16, 1910, Henri Coanda transported his airplane at Issy-les-Moulineaux. Here he only intended to verify the engine, not to fly. So Coanda got into his machine, and after several minutes of warming up, pushed the buttons that commanded the obturator and the rotation speed of the engine. The airplane began to move faster and faster, and flames and fume could be seen along the fuselage getting out from the engine. After a very short time, before Coanda could realize what was going on, the airplane was in the air. Impressed by the flames and worried about the fact that he had never piloted an airplane by then (only planors), Coanda lost the control of his machine which began to loose speed and height. In a short time it stroke the ground and began to burn.
This first flight was described by Coanda in 1964 as follows :
"The machine gained height much faster than I thought; it was not my fault, but after a while it entered a glissade, stroke the ground and burned completely. I was very lucky I was not tied on the chair, such that I was pushed out when the airplane stroke the ground; otherwise I would have burned with it."
This attempt constitutes the first flight of an airplane equiped with an air-reactive engine, the first reactive flight of an airplane in the world. But lacking the financial support Coanda could not improve his invention such that a second reactive airplane made by Coanda could not be seen flying again.
So 30 years before Heinkel, Campini and Whittle, Coanda built and flew the first reactive airplane
Gemhorse said:I do like the Tiger Moth, grew-up with them droning around here, and locally there's a yellow one just like in your picture - There's quite a strong Club of them throughout N.Z.