The Wright Stuff and The Wright Experience

Cub Driver wrote:
Gregg Germain wrote:

Do I understand correctly that the original Wright Flyer as well as
the replicas, CANNOT fly unless there's sufficient wind?

Sure they can fly. An airplane in the air does not know whether the
wind is blowing or not.

Despite what you probably learned in your private pilot ground
school, this statement is not entirely true.

For all practical purposes, Ed's 55,000 lb. Thud (for example)
probably didn't know whether the wind is blowing or not. But your
700 lb. Cub certainly does.

If you still have your AC-61 23 (FAA Pilot's Handbook of
Aeronautical Knowledge) see page 114. If you don't have it
handy, here is the pertinent excerpt:

"It has been thought that wind cannot affect an aircraft once it is
flying except for drift and groundspeed. This is true with steady
winds or winds that change gradually. It isn't true, however, if the
wind changes faster than the aircraft mass can be accelerated
or decelerated."

It boils down to this: those of us who fly extremely lightweight A/C
are much more intimately acquainted with the subtle nuances of
how wind effects our planes in flight than are our he-man counterparts
who drive their heavyweights around the sky at .9 mach for the most
totally oblivious to what the wind is doing.

But then, coming from a GA background, I also didn't much care about
the wind after takeoff and my 6,000 lb. AeroCommander loaded with
1,500 lbs. of cargo didn't care either. Simply turn the required
amount of degrees into the wind to compensate for drift and be done
with it.

But since taking up flexwing aviation and having flown several
dozen different make & models of delightfully lightweight birds,
I've changed my tune a bit here.

The steady wind at Kill Devil Hill was also essential for the kite
trials that preceded powered flight in the Wright Flyer. Unlike an
airplane, a kite is tethered to the ground and the airstream is
provided not by a propeller but by the differential between the speed
of the air and that of the ground.

This is all true, but it doesn't support your contention that, "an
airplane in the air does not know whether the wind is blowing or
not."

If you don't understand this, try dragging a banner behind your Cub
someday. For maximum effect, try this little experiment by flying from
a steady state wind towards the shoreline so as to experience a
sudden change in wind direction from a tailwind to an onshore
seabreeze.

You're happily cruising along in your Cub headed straight for the
beach with the banner flapping lazily behind and slightly below
your Cub's tailfeathers.

You then fly into the onshore seabreeze airmass and suddenly all the
slack in the banner towline tightens up and the banner streaming
behind straightens out. You exclaim, "This shouldn't be, I'm part of
the airmass!"

Another good example is drifting along in a balloon. You're moving
over the ground, but not a breath of air in the balloon. You are
changing altitudes to catch a wind going another direction, and
suddenly the little flags on the balloon flutter and you feel a little
breeze.

Once again, you protest, "This shouldn't be, I'm part of the airmass!"
The balloon replies, "Yes, grazihopper, but I have inertia and once I
have adjusted to the new wind, we will be floating in silence once
more."

-Mike Marron