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Aviation History
1911
1911 - 0555.PDF
JONE 24, 1911. (/QcEU EXPERIMENTS AT RAJPUTANA. By H. S. WILDEBLOOD ABOUT a year ago I set myself, during the little leisure I was able to obtain, to study the theory of flight with the object of building a full-sized machine and, if possible, introducing improvements on existing types, which, however successful for spectacular displays, can scarcely be considered as safe as it is necessary for them to become before they become popular, as a means of locomotion or sport, with even the British sportsman of the polo-playing, pig-sticking type, to say nothing of the larger pleasure-loving section of our sporting race. To this end I made numerous models of rough construction but sufficiently well put together to test the theories that occurred to me during the work. Fortu nately I was helped by two natural circumstances which aided me considerably, the existence of the high winds which blow in the hot weather in Rajputana, where my experiments were carried out, and the presence of numbers of kites which soar by the hour in winds of all velocities and which scarcely ever flap their wings. Oddly enough is not possible, I almost hear you say, and indeed so it appears at first sight; but examine a bird's wing with its feathers and quills, the latter approaching the outer edge of, the flexible feather more and more as we near the outer edge of the trailing wing tip and examine the theory of wind pressure on such a structure, and you will, I think, agree that the point LEFT TRAILING (FLEXIBLE) ». PLANE FIG-2. AEROPLANE TILTED DOWN ON RIGHT CENTRE'-^ OF (SRAVlTy RIGHT TRAILING ^LBIUBLS 1 PLANE / FIXED EDGE UPWARD WINO PRESSURE TRAILING PLANES 1 FIG .1, however, I believe that the results arrived at were largely founded on pure theory and afterwards tested by model experiment and confirmed as far as possible by the structure and movements of birds. The great need, it appeared to me, was to design an aeroplane that would be less liable than the existing types to capsize laterally when flying across a strong wind. After many experiments with models of end less variety and after many failures I was at last rewarded by seeing a model, which had turned numerous somersaults during its previous flights in the strong monsoon winds, suddenly endowed with life and sailing across, against and with the strongest and most unsteady gusts, in which I could sometimes scarcely keep my balance when throwing it, in a way that told me I had discovered what I had so long been looking for. It was a little thing which had been added to my model, merely a trailing plane behind each end of the main plane, STIFF EDGE FIG .5- the outer edges of the trailing planes consisting ot stiff canes as indicated by the double lines and the rest of the planes consisting of canvas free to move up and down to a certain extent, except along the edge by which it was fixed to the cane, but that little thing had enabled my model to fly parallel to the earth's surface across a monsoon gale, when merely thrown by hand at quite a low velocity. The thing DOWNWARO WIND PRESSURE C.G. NO WIND PRESSURE • e— ON THIS PLANE FIG. 3. AEROPLANE TILTED noWN ON L.6FT GREATER PRESSURE 1 / e.<v HG.-K WIND SMALLER PRESSURE VERY DBCIPEP TILT DOWN ON LEFT is not unworthy of attention. Since the strong winds, which are the greatest danger to airmen, must necessarily blow more or less parallel to the earth's surface as a general rule, it follows that a tendency to retain an aeroplane or BALANCING PL.ANE5 RUDDER RUDDER /RUDDERS MOVE OUTWARDS! FIG. 6- bird's wings in the stream lines of such winds is a useful one as tending to keep the machine parallel to the earth's surface. In the structure of the bird's wing and in the model de scribed above such a tendency is arranged for and acts as follows. When the aeroplane is tilted as shown m the sketches the air pressure on the trailing planes or 557
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