Horizon, Thursday 11th at 21:00hrs.
 

Horizon at 21:00hrs.





Percy Pilcher. The first ever plane designer.

Tonight, Thursday 11th December at 21:00 on

BBC2 is a programme on Percy Pilcher

who in 1899 designed a triplane but was never

allowed to fly it.

Tonight's programme shows a replica being built

and put to the test.

angel
 

unlucky p.p. ended up flying with the angels.
at least he's been recognised at last......

I've just watched the program and was rather disappointed they stretched their case too far. I've no problem with people trying to do this sort of thing, in fact I would have jumped at the chance to be involved with the building of such a "replica", but overall I felt they changed too much to really prove anything.

If I understood correctly...

No drawings exist of the machine they built for the program. They worked what it might have looked like from drawings of another plane with 4 wings. I wondered why they didn't build the plane with 4 wings that they have drawings for?

They filled in large triangular cut-outs in the trailing edge to increase the area.

They added wing warping and even then control looked marginal (perhaps due to lack of any yaw control?).

They added a seat to make the weight shift control work better.

They used a modern motor and fuel not a copy of his original. (Aside: Do drawings of his motor exist?).

All in all they did what Glenn Curtis tried to do to the Langley machine all those years ago.

Anyone want to build a replica of Penauds amphibian of 1876? Drawings exist (see below). It has elevators, a rudder, contra-rotating props and even retractable undercarriage

http://www.flyingmachines.org/pengau5.jpg

Spot-on, cwatters!

My thoughts entirely.
Everything was based on, well we spotted the problem, so I am sure Percy would too. Even if we have had 103 years more experience.
But it was still an interesting program. I had no idea the guy existed before. Fair play to the bloke for what he achieved :ok: