Stewart Stremler wrote:
begin quoting Andrew Lentvorski as of Mon, Aug 08, 2005 at 02:41:58PM -0700:
Maciej Ceglowski does a *beautiful* deconstruction of why I almost never
agree with what Graham has to say.
http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
Ooooh, I like this site.
http://www.idlewords.com/2003/12/100_years_of_turbulence.htm
...is good, too.
-Stewart
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This part is interesting:
"A second problem was the idiosyncratic technique the Wrights used to
turn the plane. On modern planes, a pilot banks the wings by moving
small control surfaces on the trailing edge of the wing called ailerons.
The Wrights rejected ailerons in favor of wing warping, where the actual
wing shape would be changed by the judicious pulling of wires. This
technique was as elegant as it was ultimately ineffective."
But it is an idea that currently has a lot of R&D devoted to its
development:
"*The shape shifters* - Ever since the Wrights came up with the idea of
steering in the air by bending the wing tips of their aircraft - “wing
warping” - aircraft designers have dreamed of being able to alter the
contours of their creations while on the move. The shape of an
aircraft's tail and the length of its wings, for example, determine its
flying characteristics, so being able to alter them during flight could
make existing designs more versatile, and turn specialist aircraft into
workhorses capable of all kinds of tasks."
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/aviation/dn7552
RBW
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