Re: The joy of FORTRAN

Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:

c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> writes:
>

On 3/9/25 3:07 AM, rbowman wrote:

>
  [ snip ]
>

It uses wing warping rather than ailerons. I asked him how he learned to
fly it and he said you keep taxing a little faster and getting a few feet
higher off the ground until you decide to go for it.

>

Wing-warping decidedly WORKS. The downside is that it only works at very LOW
speeds. Beyond that the necessary flexibility works against you - flapping/
oscillation sets in. Seeing this, Curtiss came to the idea of the aileron.

>
The original Tom Swift books date to before Curtiss, so that Tom Swift's
airplane (or was it still aeroplane?) used wing warping.

The Wright brothers and others were trying to fly like the birds could,
right? It doesn't seem surprising to me that they would hit upon wing
warping before thinking of ailerons.
--
-Don_from_AZ-