Once again I agree with Matz. I once saw a picture and description of a nice flying model of Henson's Aerial Steam Carriage, powered by CO2. Models of Snoopy's doghouse have flown, along with witches on brooms, lawnmowers, etc.

Unless a machine is thoroughly documented, i.e., every piece of structure, every angle, the materials used, the way they were intended to be operated, it is so easy, based on current knowledge, to make unacknowledged assumptions about design and introduce subtle changes. What we consider a good drawing for a model is completely useless for this purpose. Given what we know, faced with a little uncertainty about a part or an angle, why would you make it so it wouldn't fly? Curtiss modified the Langley machine and flew it off the water on floats. The changes were not even subtle; it was a complete fraud, but it fooled the aviation experts at the most prestigious aviation journals at the time and convinced them that Langley's original machine was "capable of flight" (it still fools people like Seth Schulman). Then he did the same thing with the Goupil Duck and got it off the ground. Since then we have seen "reproductions" of the Whitehead, Pearse and other machines. It's like Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki. They prove nothing, and only serve to mislead.

It is like writing bad history, in which the historian draws conclusions about historical figures based on things the historical figures could not have known at the time. The only antidote is to immerse oneself as thoroughly as possible in the details of the time, and to maintain constant vigilance against the things we know simply by living in the present day.

The same is true of flying skills. The challenge for the RC pilot is nothing like the challenge faced by early aviators. The Wrights crashed over and over because they were encountering difficulties no one even knew existed. Even forgetting about adverse yaw and spiral mode instability, we don't realize how much we know about flight just from the times we live in. Go back and read what Wilbur read, like Chanute's Progress in Flying Machines, and the misconceptions will amaze you. French observers of Wilbur's flights at Le Mans gasped in dread and amazement when he banked the plane. It hadn't occurred to anyone else that you could do such a thing. A perfectly normal maneuver we see every day looked like certain disaster to them.

Matz, I will check out your other posts on the Wright Brothers machines!

Jim