Isn't it funny that the English remember the failures more than the successes? I can scarcely believe an article such as this includes nothing on MacCready and the Gossamer aircraft.
Some years ago, I wrote a letter to Mike (Platypus) Bird about the quasi-denial of human powered flight by the heavy aircraft industry; I pointed out that almost everyone on the MacCready team had been involved with hang gliders and the design and success of the first human powered aircraft owed little to traditional aircraft industry and almost everything to low-and-slow hang glider design with minimal wing loading and a crash quick and repair quick philosophy. He pointed out that this was also the same technology as indoor model aircraft and that almost all the same people had been involved with models as kids. In comparison, the Southampton people and their contemporaries normally crashed their aircraft before they ever learned to fly them so progress was glacially slow. MacCready took a few months to achieve more than these people did in decades. D _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
