Builders,
While I often talk about nuts and bolts of aircraft building, it is important that builders also have a ‘bigger picture’ to utilize the detail information within. Here is a look at why understanding the history of aviation directly benefits the homebuilding community.
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“General, Jack Ripper here….WW’s mind has gone soft; he writing complementary stories about the Ruskies, the French and the Brits…..”
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It is a shame that there is so much in the history of aviation that has been forgotten or neglected by modern society. The early poineers in fixed and rotary wing aviation developed some outstanding innovations that we now take for granted. This tendancy to accept as revolutionary what is actually a rehash of technology that was already tested and developed, i.e. the Carter Copter is a good case in point. There is nothing new about about the compound helicopter and those claims of revolutionary performance that past incarnations never demonstrated is a clear sign that a Unicorn is present. But then the government seems to love Unicorns and spends a lot of money on them, NASA and several of its general aviation initiatives being a case in point. I would prefer to think that those of us who have taken up the homebuilt calling might be a bit more discriminating in what we are willing to take from prepared press releases but it is clear that we suffer from the same problems as the rest of society in that reguard.