It had been our intention when building the machine to do the larger
part of the experimenting in the following manner:--When the wind blew
seventeen miles an hour, or more, we would attach a rope to the machine
and let it rise as a kite with the operator upon it. When it should
reach a proper height the operator would cast off the rope and glide
down to the ground just as from the top of a hill. In this way we would
be saved the trouble of carrying the machine uphill after each glide,
and could make at least ten glides in the time required for one in the
other way. But when we came to try it, we found that a wind of seventeen
miles, as measured by Richards' anemometer, instead of sustaining the
machine with its operator, a total weight of 240 lbs., at an angle of
incidence of three degrees, in reality would not sustain the machine
alone--100 lbs.--at this angle. Its lifting capacity seemed scarcely one
third of the calculated amount. In order to make sure that this was not
due to the porosity of the cloth, we constructed two small experimental
surfaces of equal size, one of which was air-proofed and the other left
in its natural state; but we could detect no difference in their lifting
powers. For a time we were led to suspect that the lift of curved
surfaces very little exceeded that of planes of the same size, but
further investigation and experiment led to the opinion that (1) the
anemometer used by us over-recorded the true velocity of the wind by
nearly 15 per cent; (2) that the well-known Smeaton co-efficient of.005
V squared for the wind pressure at 90 degrees is probably too great by
at least 20 per cent; (3) that Lilienthal's estimate that the pressure
on a curved surface having an angle of incidence of 3 degrees equals.545
of the pressure at go degrees is too large, being nearly 50 per
cent greater than very recent experiments of our own with a pressure
testing-machine indicate; (4) that the superposition of the surfaces
somewhat reduced the lift per square foot, as compared with a single
surface of equal area.
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