I was polishing my trustie miata and I looked up and ther was an old model aeroplane I made at least 5 years ago,I thought I had better take a picture of it before it disintigrated, it actualy flew once with a rubber powered motor ,it landed bad and the undercarraige was distroyed ,so I rebuilt it and hung it up,never to fly again.

Airplanes of that era, being only 13 or so years after the Wright Bros. were horrible in most respects.

They had only a very elementary understanding of aerodynamics and aircraft structural requirements, and less about stability and control.

A guy here in Columbus who made a ton of dough as one of the very first Volkswagen distributors back in the late 50s thru the 70s had an authentic replica of a Fokker Triplane.  The only thing different was that is used a 1930s vintage radial engine instead of the old rotary.

This guy had been a WW II fighter pilot, and was a very good pilot.  He told me that the Fokker was so unstable that it scared him to fly it.  He could not let go of the controls for a heartbeat before the thing was all over the sky.

The rotary engines of the WW I day were quite something.  A rotary engine has the crankshaft fixed to the firewall, and all of the rest of the contraption, cylinders and all, rotate about that fixed crankshaft.

The amount of torque they generate is horrid - they also had no throttle - you only had a kill switch to regulate the power output - either all or nothing.  That's why you hear the engines "burping" as they land, as the pilot works the kill switch off and on to regulate the power.

The young men who took to the skies in WW I were a breed unto themselves - and were a breed with a very short life expectancy.  Far more were killed in training and routine flying than ever met their end in combat.

The famous French Neuport, maybe the best handling of the WW I fighters, if you can call anything "best" of that era, would shed its wings in a dive with regularity.  And all of this was before fighter pilots wore parachutes.

The amount of torque they generate is horrid - they also had no throttle - you only had a kill switch to regulate the power output - either all or nothing.  That's why you hear the engines "burping" as they land, as the pilot works the kill switch off and on to regulate the power.


Ya know, Id heard about airplane engines that spun around the mounted crankshaft, but it never even crossed my mind that a throttle would be impossible. I cant understand how its possible to decide to build something thatway. What events caused the first builder to decide to do it that way instead of mounting the block to the firewall? I just wonder,, anyone have an idea?

Yup! DR-1 Triplane



Here's a DR-7 Biplane



Often touted as being one of the very best fighter planes of WW1

For those interested in the early years of aviation and WW1 air warfare in particular, Cpt. Eddie Rickenbacker's (American WW1 Ace) book Fighting the Flying Circus makes for fascinating reading as does Up and At 'Em! by fighter pilot Harold Hartney

I'm partial to the D-IV albatross.

mick wrote on 08/23/10 at 10:03:06:



& you give me grief about the way I write.

bill67 wrote on 08/23/10 at 11:23:16:


Tactics, they ran better and only attacked when they had an advantage.

Same thing in Nam, only they didn't have to dodge sams too.

Bill -

The Mig-15 was lighter, not heavier, than an F-86.  It could out turn the Sabre, but the Sabre was faster in a dive.  The real number, the kill ratio, was about 10 to 1 in favor of the F-86.  Our pilots and tactics were far superior.  Also, the Mig 15 could not survive much battle damage - it was fairly fragile.

In Vietnam, it was another story.  The old workhorse F-4 was a pig in a fight.  It had been designed as a bomber intercepter, not a dogfighter.  The original models didn't have a gun; only missiles.  Later versions got a gun mounted on an external pod, then the E model got an internal gun.  It was fast, but suffered in maneuverability.  It was living proof that given enough thrust, a barn door could be made to fly.

With the F-4, we had to keep the fight vertical to take advantage of the thrust in both climbing and diving.  But if a Mig-19 or -21 could turn the fight horizontal, we had our hands full.  The kill ratio was horrible, and the Navy started the Top Gun school, and the Air Froce started operation Red Flag to improve pilot training, then the tables turned in our favor once again.

The best way to deal with a Mig was to enter a slight dive, about negative 15 degrees deck angle, go to full afterburners, and get the he!! out of there.  The Mig could never catch a Phantom in a straight line, let alone on a dive.