On 2006-03-01 20:42, Jose wrote:
-snip-
When you consider how hard gremlins are, and how soft feathers are, it's
a natural that feathers repel gremlins, and lift is sometimes
erroniously attributed to feathers. Many researchers have been down
this path, and there is a large body of accepted literature in support
of the feathers theory. At low speeds, the feather theory and the
gremlin theory give pretty much the same answers, but at high enough
speeds the relationship breaks down and the feather theory gives
erronious answers. This is where gremlin theory shines (it should be
noted that lift fairies are just gremlins gone bad).

Gremlin theory holds the potential for explaining a lot of aviation that
is otherwise unexplainable, but experiments are difficult and fraught
with peril. However, I would be happy to conduct the appropriate
research. Send grant money to Jose, care of Usenet.

Jose

I'm with you on the gremlins theory; since the feathers theory can be
proven to work or not in at least two disparate ways:

1. Why is is that a feathered prop does not provide more lift than an
unfeathered one? If the feather theory was correct, it would make sense
to feather all props to increase lift.

2. Manned flight would have been possible long ago, by just applying
feathers to the human body; while some think this is difficult to
achieve, I've read several successfull reports using tar for this
purpose. (It is the removing thereof that is the difficult part.)
None of the tarred aviators seemed to fly wery well afterwards, so the
feathers have been demonstrated not to work in this case.

(I note that the excact mass of feathers may have been too small,
according to calculations in this group, so I invite anyone to try this
method for themselves, to prove or disprove it.)

/Rolf