Ted Cook Has Dunne It Again!

[FlyTexas]

The Dunne D8, to be more precise. ;-) Very nice!

http://www.tedcook.btinternet.co.uk/

Brian


.

.

[Roger]

Thanks Brian,
Never heard of this one.

[DaveB]

E-gads.. a minus B2B :o

Remarkable looking collection of cloth, wood, string and metal!

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Tweek]

Hmm, I'm not sure... Don't think I could get my head round all of those instruments. :doho:

[nigelb]

I am rather amazed that it actually appears to be able to fly! Gotta love what looks like brakes though.

[simondix]

Was that the 'Dunnebus'

[Kevin]

Thanks Brian,
Never heard of this one.

I have a book "Early Aviation at Farnborough" by Percy Walker (Macdonald and Janes, publishers) which devotes about a hundred pages to JW Dunne and his aeroplanes. He and SF Cody were the two fascinating personalities who were responsible in their very different ways for much of the progress in British aviation before 1909/10 or so.

Dunne's greatest contribution was to demonstrate that a controllable and manoeverable aeroplane did not have to be unstable: this seems obvious now, but the Wrights initially thought otherwise - as they were first to fly and their aeroplane was unstable, some of the early pioneers thought instability was necessary for control.

Dunne's aircraft were the first to demonstrate that a swept wing with washout gave both lateral and longitudinal stability - in other words, he invented the "flying wing", although it should be pointed out that this had nothing to do with the much later development of the swept wing for high-speed flight.

Kevin

[DispatchDragon]

Hey Kevin

I have been flying it a bit at my "private" airfield - its really a lot of fun - and in doing so peeked my interest in Lt Dunne - quite a visionary
nice model by Ted as well.

Leif