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The Last Airplane
Recent problems mentioned here brought me a lot of mail on a variety of topics. Within the sphere of Flying on the Cheap and low-cost methods of construction, someone asked if I'd ever considered some kind of Last Ditch airplane, an absolute minimum flying machine for people who are determined to build and to fly their own airplane... until Fate steps in. Airplanes are usually defined by their mission and powerplant and even a simple machine can be fairly complex. But in this case the 'mission' need be no more than a single safe flight of the builder/ pilot and the powerplant was assumed to be something made from VW components and would probably be of stock displacement. We swapped a few messages defining such a machine and its fabrication but there were no surprises; it is a doable thing. Then the guy sunk the hook: “I wonder what it would look like?” That's the easy part: Form follows function. A minimum flying machine would look like a Chuck-Bird, Chuck Beason's delightful little parasol. There are a other designs that could serve as your precursor but all fail the 'minimum' test at one point or another. -R.S.Hoover |
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