Why a triplane?

I am not an expert on aerodynamics so I do not know much about the
pros & cons of a monoplane vs. a biplane or triplane.
I've a re-kindled interest in the Red Baron recently and was looking
at a Fokker Triplane replica picts & videos and doing a bit of reading
about it's flying characteristics.
I have not, however, read much about the "advantage" of 3 wings. I can
guess that there would be quite a bit of maneuverability but also a
lot of drag.
Why a triplane? What are some of it's "advantages?" What are some
"disadvantages?"

Ricky

Ricky wrote in news:5f96da3b-7f80-4b6f-aac7-
:


I am not an expert on aerodynamics so I do not know much about the
pros & cons of a monoplane vs. a biplane or triplane.
I've a re-kindled interest in the Red Baron recently and was looking
at a Fokker Triplane replica picts & videos and doing a bit of reading
about it's flying characteristics.
I have not, however, read much about the "advantage" of 3 wings. I can
guess that there would be quite a bit of maneuverability but also a
lot of drag.
Why a triplane? What are some of it's "advantages?" What are some
"disadvantages?"

Well, the Sopwith Triplane was the reason Tony went for a triplane
design.
The Sopwiht had some reasonable level of succes. Sopwith went for it
mostly to improve visibviliy, believe it or not.
In fact, there are no aerodynamic avantages. None at all. The center
plane is almost completely useless. There's a lot of interplane
interference with a biplane, though this can be put to some advantage
with decalage and stagger. Basically, the one plane influences the
other. With a tripe, the top and bottom planes affect the center, which
can't be practically spaced from it's neighbors givng it very little
lift and effectively neutralising it.
There were actually very few DR1s built. A few hundred IIRC.It would
have been forgotten but that Richtofen died in one. All sides tried
them. The Neiuport tripe showed an interesting approach to getting
around the interplane interference problems by a multiple stagger
approach ( look one up, it;s hard to descibe) Albatross, Pfalz,
Armstrong Whitworth and a few others tried them and all abandoned them
eventually. Tony Fokker built a bunch of different tripes, including a
tandem triplane giving a total of six wings!
The biplane was a pretty good way to go and the monoplane was up and
coming, particularly with the Germans, so the triplane was largely
ignored after that.


Bertie

Ricky wrote:
I am not an expert on aerodynamics so I do not know much about the
pros & cons of a monoplane vs. a biplane or triplane.
I've a re-kindled interest in the Red Baron recently and was looking
at a Fokker Triplane replica picts & videos and doing a bit of reading
about it's flying characteristics.
I have not, however, read much about the "advantage" of 3 wings. I can
guess that there would be quite a bit of maneuverability but also a
lot of drag.
Why a triplane? What are some of it's "advantages?" What are some
"disadvantages?"

Ricky
The DR1 was the result of many different designers from different
countries experimenting with more wings at different aspect ratios
trying to get greater maneuverability and rate of climb.
You are correct in that they were slow, specifically the DR1 which had a
top speed of barely over 100mph. The reason was interference drag
between the wings.
The maneuverability was excellect in the hands of good drivers, but the
ham handed could dent the fabric in a nano-second with this crate.
Eventually, the idea for the 3 wings (actually, many airplanes of the
period had even more than 3 :-) went the way of all bad ideas as the
structural issues in monoplane design began to get solved.
Bottom line on the DR1 was that it was something new to be played with
by experienced pilots, but the cons outweighed the pros and the damn
thing was slow as molasses, so it was eventually canned as a viable weapon.


--
Dudley Henriques

Ricky wrote:
I am not an expert on aerodynamics so I do not know much about the
pros & cons of a monoplane vs. a biplane or triplane.
I've a re-kindled interest in the Red Baron recently and was looking
at a Fokker Triplane replica picts & videos and doing a bit of reading
about it's flying characteristics.
I have not, however, read much about the "advantage" of 3 wings. I can
guess that there would be quite a bit of maneuverability but also a
lot of drag.
Why a triplane? What are some of it's "advantages?" What are some
"disadvantages?"

I think you mentioned the main advantage: maneuverability. Also the British
Sopwith Triplane and the German Fokker Dr.I appear to have had good climb
rates relative to their biplane counterparts.

If you think three wings are something, check our the multiplanes of
Horatio Phillips:

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/es...lips/DI113.htm

John Smith wrote:
In article ,
Dudley Henriques wrote:

The DR1 was the result of many different designers from different
countries experimenting with more wings at different aspect ratios
trying to get greater maneuverability and rate of climb.
You are correct in that they were slow, specifically the DR1 which had a
top speed of barely over 100mph. The reason was interference drag
between the wings.
The maneuverability was excellect in the hands of good drivers, but the
ham handed could dent the fabric in a nano-second with this crate.
Eventually, the idea for the 3 wings (actually, many airplanes of the
period had even more than 3 :-) went the way of all bad ideas as the
structural issues in monoplane design began to get solved.
Bottom line on the DR1 was that it was something new to be played with
by experienced pilots, but the cons outweighed the pros and the damn
thing was slow as molasses, so it was eventually canned as a viable weapon.

Didn't AIR&SPACE magazine do an article last year with photos showing
the interference drag on each will resulting from the others?

Not sure. I didn't see it anyway. I know there have been several
articles on the DR1 but I'm not really a history buff and I do miss
seeing a lot of these things.


--
Dudley Henriques

On Feb 1, 7:20*pm, John Smith wrote:
In article ,
*Dudley Henriques wrote:

The DR1 was the result of many different designers from different
countries experimenting with more wings at different aspect ratios
trying to get greater maneuverability and rate of climb.
You are correct in that they were slow, specifically the DR1 which had a
top speed of barely over 100mph. The reason was interference drag
between the wings.
The maneuverability was excellect in the hands of good drivers, but the
ham handed could dent the fabric in a nano-second with this crate.
Eventually, the idea for the 3 wings (actually, many airplanes of the
period had even more than 3 :-) went the way of all bad ideas as the
structural issues in monoplane design began to get solved.
Bottom line on the DR1 was that it was something new to be played with
by experienced pilots, but the cons outweighed the pros and the damn
thing was slow as molasses, so it was eventually canned as a viable weapon.

Didn't AIR&SPACE magazine do an article last year with photos showing
the interference drag on each will resulting from the others?

Yeah, they did. They said the same things Bertie mentioned. The
middle wing was useless due to the interference.

Phil

On Sat, 2 Feb 2008 00:57:21 +0000 (UTC), Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Ricky wrote in news:5f96da3b-7f80-4b6f-aac7-
:

The Sopwiht had some reasonable level of succes. Sopwith went for it
mostly to improve visibviliy, believe it or not.

Ironic... knew a guy locally who had a Fokker DR-1 replica. His biggest
complaint was how BLIND the plane was. Then again, Sopwith used some fairly
narrow-chord wings, and had the pilot sitting back from them.

In fact, there are no aerodynamic avantages. None at all. The center
plane is almost completely useless. There's a lot of interplane
interference with a biplane, though this can be put to some advantage
with decalage and stagger. Basically, the one plane influences the
other. With a tripe, the top and bottom planes affect the center, which
can't be practically spaced from it's neighbors givng it very little
lift and effectively neutralising it.

One would have thought the Fokker D-6 (essentially a biplane DR-1) would have
quickly superseded it, then. But I suppose Fokker finally getting the Mercedes
engine let him jump to the bigger D-7.

There were actually very few DR1s built. A few hundred IIRC.It would
have been forgotten but that Richtofen died in one.

Ah, but Werner Voss was first, and established the reputation of the type. He
lasted as long as he did, in his last dogfight, because of the maneuverability
of the Tripe. OTOH, he might have lived if he'd been flying something that
COULD have run away from the SE-5s....

All sides tried
them. The Neiuport tripe showed an interesting approach to getting
around the interplane interference problems by a multiple stagger
approach ( look one up, it;s hard to descibe)

http://wwi-cookup.com/dicta_ira/nieuport/triplane01.jpg

Ron Wanttaja

Ron Wanttaja wrote in
:

On Sat, 2 Feb 2008 00:57:21 +0000 (UTC), Bertie the Bunyip
wrote:

Ricky wrote in
news:5f96da3b-7f80-4b6f-aac7-
:

The Sopwiht had some reasonable level of succes. Sopwith went for it
mostly to improve visibviliy, believe it or not.

Ironic... knew a guy locally who had a Fokker DR-1 replica. His
biggest complaint was how BLIND the plane was. Then again, Sopwith
used some fairly narrow-chord wings, and had the pilot sitting back
from them.

Yes, OI understand Sopwith did it for that reason, in fact, I believe,
without one in front of me, the the center wing didn't quite reach to he
fuselage ging some added vis there. The chord/gap ratio on the Sopwith
was considerably larger as well and it had a sharp stagger, so it's
middle wing might have actually done a little bit, but Sopwith couldn't
have thought all that much of it or he would have made more than the
very few he did. Again, i think maybe a few hundred, whereas over 10,000
Camels were built.

In fact, there are no aerodynamic avantages. None at all. The center
plane is almost completely useless. There's a lot of interplane
interference with a biplane, though this can be put to some advantage
with decalage and stagger. Basically, the one plane influences the
other. With a tripe, the top and bottom planes affect the center,
which can't be practically spaced from it's neighbors givng it very
little lift and effectively neutralising it.

One would have thought the Fokker D-6 (essentially a biplane DR-1)
would have quickly superseded it, then. But I suppose Fokker finally
getting the Mercedes engine let him jump to the bigger D-7.

I don't think the D-6 was quite as good as the Albatros, but it was
probably better than the Triplane in most ways. I think the Triplane had
it;s limited success as a sort of accident. Fokker was fond of just
grabbing bits they had developed and grafting them to other bits and
then lengthening this, shortening that until he came up with something
that worked. I have a two inch thick book of everything the Germans
built in WW1 including all the experimentals and the Fokker creations
are just nuts. I have the book out now and the tandem wing triplane is
the V8. I had remembered it as a tandem triplane, but the rear set were
bipe wings. Way too narrow a gap between the planes in the back. And it
still has a stab! There's a few pics on the net, but this guy obviously
has a fetish for tripes and you can see several as well as a Wight
Quadraplane and the Neiuport Triplane.

http://www.wwi-models.org/Images/Werner/RC/index.html

There were actually very few DR1s built. A few hundred IIRC.It would
have been forgotten but that Richtofen died in one.

Ah, but Werner Voss was first, and established the reputation of the
type. He lasted as long as he did, in his last dogfight, because of
the maneuverability of the Tripe. OTOH, he might have lived if he'd
been flying something that COULD have run away from the SE-5s....

Yeah, Werner Voss's was one of the prototypes. His wasn't a DR1, but a
F1, sort of a production prototype. Not a lot of diffrence between that
and the DR-1 production aircraft, though. All the big name German aces
wanted one when it came out first. It was sort of a weapon of choice. A
kind of fad-ish status symbol.
The first prototype of the Triplane, the V3, had no interplane struts at
all, and no balance area on the ailerons. The wings were fully
cantilever and the struts were added to boost pilot confidence more than
anything else. At least one or two of the F1s lost the upper wing in
flight with a fatal crash ensuing.
I always loved the japanese kite face on Voss's airplane.
One last bit of DR1 lore is that Manfred von Richtofen had four of them.
He also preferred the French Gnome engine over the Oberursel whaich was
basically a copy of the Gnome anyway. His airplanes were all equipped
with Gnomes captured form downed airplanes.
There's a raging debate amongst WW1 nerds about the color schemes of his
aircraft. The standard on the DR1 was to cover it in blue fabric and
then paing the upper sides with a worn out brush in a mix of silver and
olive in a diagonal streaky way giving a sort of camoflage. Richtofen,
of course, painted his red, but each of his airplanes had a different
degree of red on it. The one he died in seems to have been the reddest,
but it may have been only the upper surface of the upper wing ( there is
a phot of that airplane with him in it before his death) and another
with all upper surfaces red. There is a poor photo of one tha appears to
be a solid color, but it might be that in the shade, the blue bottom may
just appear to be the same shade as the top. The debate rages on!
Without me, I might add. I'm just glad those guys are out there doing it
for me.


All sides tried
them. The Neiuport tripe showed an interesting approach to getting
around the interplane interference problems by a multiple stagger
approach ( look one up, it;s hard to descibe)

http://wwi-cookup.com/dicta_ira/nieuport/triplane01.jpg

Cool eh? They knoew how to fudge an airplane back then!


Bertie

Phil J wrote in
:

On Feb 1, 7:20*pm, John Smith wrote:
In article ,
*Dudley Henriques wrote:

The DR1 was the result of many different designers from different
countries experimenting with more wings at different aspect ratios
trying to get greater maneuverability and rate of climb.
You are correct in that they were slow, specifically the DR1 which
had a

top speed of barely over 100mph. The reason was interference drag
between the wings.
The maneuverability was excellect in the hands of good drivers, but
the ham handed could dent the fabric in a nano-second with this
crate. Eventually, the idea for the 3 wings (actually, many
airplanes of the period had even more than 3 :-) went the way of
all bad ideas as the structural issues in monoplane design began to
get solved. Bottom line on the DR1 was that it was something new to
be played with by experienced pilots, but the cons outweighed the
pros and the damn thing was slow as molasses, so it was eventually
canned as a viable weap
on.

Didn't AIR&SPACE magazine do an article last year with photos showing
the interference drag on each will resulting from the others?

Yeah, they did. They said the same things Bertie mentioned. The
middle wing was useless due to the interference.

Yeah, to be fair a lot of what I said was form that article. IIRC they did
a computer analysis of the Fokker and found it wanting.

Bertie

After reading more on this I have found that the German's were very
concerned with the ability of their aircraft to get above the enemy as
quickly as possible. An attack from above (especially from out of the
sun), was found to be an extremely effective method of victory. The
amount of lift generated from 3 wings was found to enhance climb
performance quite significantly, thus affording German pilots the
abilty to attack from above as was desired.

Ricky