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Aviation History
1912
1912 - 1056.PDF
l/UGHT swung pendulum fashion from the top member of the fuselage. It is connected to the tail, a plane surface shaped like a triangle with its apex clipped by a system of steel rods. The main idea of this system is that when the pendulum seat is hanging perpendicularly relative to the line of flight, the tail is in a position which makes for a horizontal flight path. Should the machine tend to climb, the pendulum seat changes its position relative to the rest of the machine and in doing so automatically readjusts the tail to restore " Flight" Copyright. M. tVToreau's automatic stability mocoplane, ,— . the machine to normal level flight. Should the machine dip the same thing occurs, only of course in the opposite sense. Employing a system of this type it is, of course, necessary to have supplementary elevator controls to carry out such manoeuvres as ascending and descending. This, on the Moreau machine, is effected by an auxiliary lever to the right of the pilot. The machine's lateral Mability is to a certain extent natural owing to the design of the wings, but further control is maintained by a lever projecting downward from the framework above, operating ailerons. By M. Moveau's system it is possible to cut the automatic device out of action and maintain control simply by the use of the levers. Improvements have been made on the first model with which M. Moreau experimented. He found that, should the engine stop in mid-air, the pilot's seat swung forward with its own inertia and set the tail for ascent—a very uncomfortable position to find oneself in with one's engine stopped. On the present machine he has fitted a device which detects any tendency on the part of the pendulum seat to swing forward by virture of its inertia, and which immediately locks the pendulum seat, thus preventing the machine from getting cabri owing to engine stoppage. He has found, too, that if the machine encounters a strong gust head on there is a similar tendency for the monoplane to assume a cabri attitude. To obviate this, a small aluminium plate is fitted in front of the body normally NOVEMBER 16, 1912. to the relative wind, which plate detects any sudden gust and locks the pendulum seat. From a constructional point of view the machine does not possess a great deal of interest, excepting in its chassis which is extremely flexible. The skids themselves are mounted so that they may give fore and aft, parallel to the bottom members of the body, against the restraint of shock absorbers. Sanchez Besa. THE biplane they are exhibiting shows, in its methods of construction and the design of its details, an extraordinary amount of Voisin influence. But we can scarcely think that the general design is of the same origin. Primarily it seems that the machine has been designed as a hydro-biplane of the Donnet-Leveque type, for it has a fuselage somewhat of the same type as the coque of that machine, and its main planes are arranged wholly above it. A 75-h.p. Renault is used, which is stowed away in the fuselage and which drives by chain transmission a propeller set practically level with the top plane. The landing gear with which it is fitted is purely Voisin. If the machine were a hydro-aeroplane we could probably understand why this disposition had been adopted, but as the machine shown is purely one for use over land, it would ba rather interesting to know why the designer has departed so radically from what is recognised as the best possible arrangement of such factors as centres of gravity, of head resistance, and of thrust. Sloan. THIS is a tractor biplane which does not setm to have changed in any respect from last year's machine excepting in that a 150-h.p. Laviator engine is fitted in place of last year's 100-h.p. Gnome, and that the peculiar curvature of the main planes is less accentuated. Its main points are that it has a box girder fuselage of wood, cross braced with wire, that its tail is of conventional lifting type with rear flap elevators protected from the ground by a bent skid, that its main planes are braced in the ordinary manner with two ranks of struts, and that its landing carriage is of a type descendant from the Henry Farman. Sommer. SOMMER is showing two machines—a 75-h.p. Renault engined biplane and a 50-h.p. Gnome-engine monoplane. In neither case, we regret to say, do the machines show any advance on the types that were shown twelve months ago. For the biplane, a gocd deal of steel is used in its construction, although not nearly to the same extent as was evident in the extremely neat and promising biplane with the single lank of struts between the planes, that Sommer exhibited on his stand last year. The skeletons of the main planes, the tail and the front elevator, and the strutting of the cellule are of wood. The tail outriggers, elevator outriggers and chassis are of steel tubing. Sommer has abandoned his original idea of mounting The 80-h.p. R.E.P. hydro-monoplane, with its single main float. To the left is a R.E.P. Avion packed ready for road transport. IOS6
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