'The Children of the Wind' - A History of the New Aviation 1971-1996 - Ch II, Pt 2

[Larry Dighera, Moderator]

'The Children of the Wind' - A History of the New Aviation 1971-1996

Here is a serialized account taken from Brian Miltion's magnum
opus, 'The Children of the Wind' - A History of the New Aviation
1971-1996, soon to be published by Endeavour Press, a
London-based epublisher. These first few chapters
chronicling the beginnings of man's quest to fly and how the
forefathers of aviation have influenced contemporary ultralight
aviation have kindly been made available to newsgroup
readers. They will be posted here over the next few months.
This first post is the Table of Contents.

You can learn more about TV presenter, lecturer,
journalist, award winning around-the-world microlight pilot,
author of seven books, and born adventurer, Brian Milton on
his web site <http://www.brian-milton.com/>;. You can also
purchase autographed copies of Brian's literary works there too:
<http://www.brian-milton.com/book>. And don't miss the
extensive collection of aviation videos, including Brian's Around
the World by Microlight flight for which he was awarded the
Britannia Trophy, joining a very distinguished list of aviators
who have won that award including Sir John Alcock, Bert Hinkler
and Sir Alan Cobham. Brian was also awarded the Segrave Trophy,
an award presented to great sportsmen; past recipients include Sir
Malcolm Campbell, Amy Johnson and Jackie Stewart:
<http://www.brian-milton.com/video/>

Additional links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Milton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segrave_Trophy


� Copyright Brian Milton 2013, All Rights Reserved


============= Beginning of Chapter II, Part 2 ==============

The text accompanying the drawing further states that the man is
positioned with his feet at the base of the inverted mast and his
chest at the cross bar; that the machine is to be flown from the top
of a hill whence the wind will raise it and that the aviator will
control it by pulling on guy wires.

From other designs we know that the curved undercarriage is a leaf
spring, for soft landings.

It struck me as ironic that this was his only winged machine that did
not closely follow the structure of a bird wing. For most of his life
the Artist was working on his detailed study "The Flight of Birds",
and his machines were born of these observations. "The Machine lacks
nothing but the life of the Bird and this shall be supplied by Man" he
wrote earlier. And yet this design appears as a purely geometric
shape. After some time I came to see it as a stylized form of the end
two sections of a bat's wing. Being membrane covered rather than
feathered, da Vinci had wisely adopted it for all his later wing
forms. "Let your Wing imitate nothing other than a Bat".

As usual with da Vinci designs, no dimensions are given. Knowing the
position of the pilot's head and the chest on the drawing and taking
the height of a Renaissance man to be 5 foot 6 inches, gives the
overall length of about 25 feet. This I calculated would give a sail
area of approximately 250 square feet. I phoned Ian Grayland and asked
him what sail area would suffice. "Make it 250 and you will be on the
safe side" Ecco!

The wing clearly looks elliptical, but what sort of ellipse? The kite
drawn on the same folio is, he tells us, round. I assumed then that a
meticulous draftsman would have sketched both machines from the same
perspective viewpoint. Having no means of checking this with the
Designer, I adopted that basic form and built a 1/10 scale model and
took it down to the public garden where I live. The moment of truth!
Breathless in anticipation, I climbed on to the compost bin and
launched it. With a quarter of a pound of ballast, it flew 10 metres
or more at a respectable angle of descent.

I now earmarked the next few weeks to constructing the full-sized
machine. Having received the general blessing of Professor Pedratti on
my interpretation of the sketch, I went early one Sunday morning to
the local car park. With a length of twine and a couple of masonry
nails hammered into the tarmac, I described in chalk an ellipse of
approximate dimensions and scalloped off one end for the tail. I was
instantly struck - as every time I look at it - by the beauty of its
shape. I then traced it on to a polythene dust sheet and sent it to
Brian Hayes, sailmaker in Stourbridge.

The next thing to address was the 7.5 metre spine. A telegraph pole
was definitely out! A giant bamboo would have served admirably; it had
been known in Europe since earliest times, but I felt sure that no
8-metre bamboo would have been readily found in nearby Venice in the
1490s.

Leonardo was the first engineer to carry out rigorous load-testing of
beams. As far as I know, Box Beams were unknown to him, so I decided
on a form well-used by him in the design of the portable bridges, the
Truss Beam. This is the triangulated structure of a modern crane boom
or roof span, in fact extensively employed by Roman military
architects.

I made a few breaking strain tests on types of timber. Ramin was
stronger for its weight than spruce, which had been my first choice.
Building the Truss Beam turned out to be a nightmare on account of the
impractical joints.

The bamboo wishbone leading edge was more successful. As far as I
know, no one in these islands has mastered the art of heat-forming
bamboo! Here I was on my own. The design required a fairly rigid
wishbone, 35 feet long. I decided to heat-form the bamboo, each
roughly half-inch diameter and then bunch and bind 7 of them together.
One in the centre and six around the outside gave a nice circular
section. I staggered the joints between the lengths regularly so that
at no point on the circumference were two joints together.

Finally, the spars, the sail and the leading edge frame were complete
and a few friends joined me and several bottles of wine on the roof
for the occasion. It was a festive day, all the pieces fitted
together, nobody fell off the roof and everyone agreed that it was
indeed a splendid sight and did much credit to the Great Man!

At this time I consulted the Safety Officer of the BHGA who explained
the load-testing procedure which normally requires that the airframe
be capable of sustaining five times the pilot's weight. But rightly
surmising that we wouldn't be doing aerobatics, he suggested that
three times would suffice.

I had anticipated a mild ripple of excitement among the good burghers
of Earl's Court at the sight of an 8-metre Renaissance glider
suspended between two trees, but most were too polite to mention it. I
realized that, to the layman, it was just any old hang glider that
someone had been eccentric enough to build in wood.

The words "stressed moment" took on a new meaning as my beloved glider
groaned under the imposition of each new 10-kg sandbag! The bamboo
cross-strut bent too readily; it clearly had to be reinforced. I added
six more bamboo to stiffen it. By the time we reached 200 kg, the nose
was brushing the ground. Bouncing it up and down convinced us that it
would have well withstood the remaining 25 kgs we were aiming for.

I added a 15-foot high superstructure to the trailer of my racing
dinghy which would support the wishbone in a vertical position. The
main longitudinal spar protruded forward at an angle so it overhung
the roof of the tow car. Then we loaded it and drove down to Nick
Minnion's house in Sussex.

A week or so later, it came as a shock when Nick said, "well, let's
try her!" He attached a line to the front of the spar and the other
end to a point towards the tail. His friend and I lifted the sides
and, on command, we trotted forward. We had only gone ten paces when
she was airborne! Up to that moment, it had been the Building Project.
Now suddenly, it became the Flying Project! I almost drowned in the
tide of satisfaction that flooded over me.

Weeks later we took it up to the head of a steep valley on Truleigh
Hill and rigged the control frame, which Leonardo drew as an inverted
mast. The wind was fresh and after bucking around for about 10
seconds, the machine plunged forward at an angle of 45 degrees and hit
the ground quite hard. The bamboo under-frame bent into a U-shape
momentarily but was not broken.

The test pilot's time did not come cheap and it became apparent that
sponsorship would have to be sought before serious flying attempts
could begin. My meagre savings had by this time evaporated. I sent out
30 proposals, well-documented, bound and with colour photographs,
circularized the major PR companies. Everywhere the story was the
same; heavy on encouragement, light on cash! I still find it very hard
to accept that there is no funding for a project like this. The Royal
Aeronautical Society lost my file and then said "No" anyway. The
Science Museum aeronautical department laughed and said they wished
they had the money to revamp their own gallery.

Months passed and by this time Nick Minnion had lost interest in the
glider, the frame of which was mouldering in his garden. This turned
out to be a blessing because I was recommended to Kelvin Wilson, known
for his spectacular hang glider flight from the Angel Falls in
Venezuela, who brought new life to the project and was more keen to
talk about the flying than the money he would make out of it.

Through Kelvin, Michel Carnet, who runs "Sky Systems", arranged for a
local landowner to store the wing in his barn.

The narrow roads through the South Downs turned out to be riddled with
low power lines and overhanging trees. Many times I had to leap out of
Kelvin's car, squint at an overhead cable and make the difficult
decision whether we could pass under. Kelvin was in a cold sweat and
vowed he would sooner fly the Angel Falls blindfold than repeat this
trip!

Summer of 1993 arrived and still not a whiff of sponsorship. On the
previous outings we had been so under-manned I had not taken photos. I
therefore decided to revitalize the now rather sad-looking spars and
kite her again for the cameras.

I spent a pleasant few days in Truleigh sawing through dodgy joints
and regluing them. Finally, the machine was ready and a date fixed
with Kelvin and the guys at Sky Systems for the kiting, which was to
happen in an adjacent field.

October 21 dawned, as forecast, grey and windy. A friend had kindly
volunteered to record the event on his video gear. By mid-day the Bird
was partly rigged and lying in the field. We then tried to fix the
heavy bamboo cross-spar into its iron sockets. It wouldn't go! We
exerted all our strength and still it overhung by 9 inches. We lopped
off the surplus inches with a hack-saw. There was no way that a
terylene sail could have shrunk, so the spar must have grown! Bamboo
is incredibly virile stuff.

Kelvin arrived and, for the first time, inspected the machine
assembled. He selected a small slope on the undulating stubble field
and with Michel Carnet held the wing aloft in the wind, gauging its
balance. Next they paid out the mooring lines and the Wing rose 20
feet into the air.

"Where do we hang on?" he said

"Don't!" I shouted. "It's not safe. It's been sitting in the barn for
two years. I have to rebuild the main spar. Let's just kite her!"

The instructors at Sky Systems clearly had other ideas and the bit
between their teeth. In the face of such mass expertise, who was I to
argue?

A few seconds later Leonardo da Vinci's Hang Glider, after a gestation
of exactly 500 years, lifted into the breeze, carrying with it the
suspended body of Mike Millwood and, unless I am mistaken, the spirit
of its creator.

It took me a while to take in the indisputable fact that it had made
its first man-carrying hop! The experts said favourable things about
the stability of the Wing. I am presently engaged upon rebuilding the
'spine' with more solid joints. I am aware that the control frame as
sketched by Leonardo is awkward, to say the least, but we are looking
forward to renewed flight tests.

My aim is that, if it proves as stable and manageable as we are
hoping, we shall fly her on the hill outside Florence in Italy
specially marked down by the Master for the inaugural flight of his
first full-sized Machine.

"The Great Bird will make its first flight from the back of the Swan
(referring to Mount Ceceri = Swan) filling the whole world with
amazement and all the records with its fame and it will bring eternal
glory to the nest where it was born".


I too find it beyond belief that a project like this cannot attract
any sponsorship at all, given the cretinous things PR agencies get
excited about and pour their client's money into. How could the Royal
Aeronautical Society actually turn down such an opportunity? And
surely Italians have enough pride in their history to test whether or
not their own Leonardo da Vinci was more than 300 years ahead of the
German, Otto Lilienthal? Michael Pidcock is still searching for the
money to make Leonardo's dream work.

Back in history, manned flight was first achieved in balloons through
the work of the Montgolfier brothers. The first two men to fly were
the Marquis d'Arlandes, and Pilatre de Rozier (1754-85), both
Frenchmen. Pilatre de Rozier was also the first man to die in a
balloon, in an accident on June 15, 1785 - about four years before the
French Revolution - trying to cross the English Channel. He fell at
Wimereaux, where the French erected a 'Needle', and is buried at
nearby Wimille (NE of Boulogne) in a large tomb. Every time I bumble
down the French coast in my trike microlight I lean over to try and
find the Needle marking where de Rozier fell; I have still to discover
it.

But balloon flying, while exciting and sometimes dangerous, isn't
floating through the air on wings, choosing where to go and getting
there. That is the core of man's dream of flight, and throughout the
nineteenth century, with all the hope and vision of the Victorian Age,
men laboured to realize that dream.

After Leonardo, the next man to get close to actually achieving flight
was a Yorkshire baronet, Sir George Cayley (1773-1857). French
historians see him as the true father of modern aviation. His work can
be seen in an historical line of development that goes through
Stringfellow and Penaud to Lilienthal and the Wright Brothers. Cayley
spent most of his life on his Brompton estate, northeast of York,
laying down many of the rules of flight, and discovering the unique
properties of curved wings. But much of his work was ignored at the
time, and outside a small circle of real flyers, he was almost unknown
until 50 years ago.

Cayley was an old man when he got around to building some of the
flying machines he designed. In 1852, then 79 years old, he built a
boy-carrying glider, allegedly flown by a 10 year-old son of one of
his servants, in a hop from the top to the bottom of a hill. Cayley's
coachman, John Appleby, was persuaded to pilot a bigger machine, again
from the top of a hill. He survived the experience, but promptly
offered his resignation ("Sir, I was engaged to drive coaches, not
flying machines!").

Yorkshire Television made a programme about Cayley, using original
drawings to build again the type of machine John Appleby flew. In 1974
Derek Piggott, a famous sailplane pilot, persuaded it into the air,
towed by a car. Both machine and pilot landed safely.

Other British pioneers include William Samuel Henson, who on April
1st, 1843 published a picture of his Aerial Steam Carriage in
'Mechanic's Magazine'. It was a monoplane, with fixed wings and a
tail, driven by propellors, and way ahead of its time...but it was
planned to be driven by a steam engine. Henson built a model with a
colleague, John Stringfellow, but it did not fly. Henson married, and
emigrated to the USA in 1848.

John Stringfellow (1799-1883) came from Chard in Somerset. With
Henson, he designed a steam-powered monoplane in 1848. A model built
to the design achieved a flight of 130 feet (wingspan 10 ft, length
5ft 6ins). Stringfellow abandoned his aviation work for 20 years, but
the foundation of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1866 rekindled
interest. Stringfellow designed a beautiful steam-powered triplane
model in 1868, 28 sq ft wing area, the engine of which is now in NASA
Museum in Washington, having been purchased by the American pioneer
Samuel Langley.

In Scotland, in 1868, a Mr J.M.Kaufmann, of Glasgow, designed and
built a steam-driven 'flapper' which also had fixed wings. When power
was actually applied to flap the wings, it fell to pieces, but it did
feature in the Crystal Palace Exhibition.

France, as was to be expected, was a hotbed of experimentation, and
led the way through the nineteenth century in daring and imagination.
General Resnier de Goue (1729-1811) is one example. Born in Angouleme,
at the age of 72 in 1801 he glided on wings of his own design off the
ramparts of Petit-Boulieu, 100 ft above the ground and 225 ft above
the river, and landed safely in the Charente River. On a later flight
he broke his leg, but the splendid fellow lived to be 82.

Another French general, Felix du Temple de la Croix (1823-1890),
patented an aircraft in 1857 which had flown as a model. He claimed
that it took off from the ground on a site in Brest on the Atlantic
coast under its own power. Of two models, one was powered by
clockwork, the other by steam. Neither were built full-scale, so his
life was never at risk.

The first powered flight in the world was made on September 24, 1852,
by Frenchman Henri Giffard, but it was in a cigar-shaped balloon. He
used a 3-HP steam engine to travel 17 miles from the Paris Hippodrome
to Trappes.

The earliest known photograph of a heavier-than-air machine was one
built by Jean Marie Le Bris, who experimented along the French coast
at Brest between 1856 and 1868. He is alleged to have made a flight in
his glider to a height of 300 feet, and landed safely. A second flight
broke his leg. Le Bris, formerly a sea captain, ran out of money, gave
up flying experiments, became a special constable, and was murdered by
ruffians in 1872.

Another Frenchman, Louis-Pierre Mouillard (1834-97), designed and flew
a glider in Algeria, but frightened himself silly with his one
successful flight. His writings, especially "L'Empire de l'Air"
influenced a lot of people, including Octave Chanute and the Wright
Brothers.

The most tragic and brilliant of the pre-Lilienthal Frenchmen was
Alphonse Penaud (1850-1880). He grew up to be a handsome young man in
1870, son of an admiral but unable to join the French navy because of
a disease of the hip. In his ten years of development, he was said to
have been more inventive and show more achievement than any other man
in a comparable field of endeavour. In April, 1870, he invented the
twisted rubber band method for propelling model aircraft, still in use
today, which he flew in the Tuileries Gardens. His originality and
designs dominated the 1870s. He won a prize for his theory of flight
from the French Academy of Sciences, and was one of the first to
recognize the importance of Sir George Cayley. In 1873 he designed a
man-carrying powered aircraft that foreshadows the
=============== End of Chapter II, Part 2 ==============