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Powered Hang Glider
A foot-launched powered hang glider (FLPHG), also called powered harness, nanolight, or hangmotor, is a powered hang glider harness with a motor and propeller often in pusher configuration, although some can be found in tractor configuration. An ordinary hang glider is used for its wing and control frame, and the pilot can foot-launch from a hill or from flat ground, needing a length of about a football field to get airborne, or much less if there is an oncoming breeze and no obstacles. History Adding propulsion While powered microlights (ultralights) developed from hang gliding in the late 1970s, they were also a return to the type of low-speed aircraft that were common in the earlier years of aviation, but which were superseded as both civil and military aircraft pursued more speed. For a second time in aviation history, during the 1970s, motorization of simple gliders, especially those portable and foot-launched, became the goal of many inventors and gradually, smal ...
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Rogallo Wing
The Rogallo wing is a flexible type of wing. In 1948, Francis Rogallo, a NASA engineer, and his wife Gertrude Rogallo, invented a self-inflating flexible wing they called the Parawing, also known after them as the "Rogallo Wing" and flexible wing. NASA considered Rogallo's flexible wing as an alternative recovery system for the Mercury and Gemini space capsules, and for possible use in other spacecraft landings, but the idea was dropped from Gemini in 1964 in favor of conventional parachutes. History Rogallo had been interested in the flexible wing since 1945. He and his wife built and flew kites as a hobby. They could not find official backing for the wing, including at Rogallo's employer National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), so they carried out experiments in their own time. By the end of 1948 they had two working designs using a flexible wing — a kite they called "Flexi-Kite" and a gliding parachute they later referred to as a "paraglider". Rogallo an ...
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Ultralight Trikes
An ultralight trike or paratrike is a type of powered hang glider where flight control is by weight-shift. These aircraft have a fabric flex-wing from which is suspended a tricycle fuselage pod driven by a pusher propeller. The pod accommodates either a solo pilot, or a pilot and a single passenger. Trikes grant affordable, accessible, and exciting flying, and have been popular since the 1980s. Trikes are classified as microlights in Europe, and as light-sport aircraft in the United States. The aircraft are also known by other names, including 2-axis microlights, flex-wing trikes, microlight trikes, deltatrikes or motorized deltaplanes. In the United States, they are formally recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as weight-shift-control aircraft. History The history of the trike is traced back to the invention of Francis Rogallo's flexible wing and subsequent development by the Paresev engineering team's innovations and then others. On 1948, en ...
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Fiberglass
Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) is a common type of fibre-reinforced plastic, fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cloth. The plastic Matrix (composite), matrix may be a thermoset polymer matrix—most often based on thermosetting polymers such as epoxy, polyester resin, or vinyl ester resin—or a thermoplastic. Cheaper and more flexible than Carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers, carbon fiber, it is stronger than many metals by weight, non-magnetic, non-conductive, transparent to electromagnetic radiation, can be molded into complex shapes, and is chemically inert under many circumstances. Applications include aircraft, boats, automobiles, bath tubs and enclosures, swimming pools, hot tubs, septic tanks, water tanks, roofing, pipes, cladding, orthopedic casts, surfboards, and external door skins ...
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Balsa
''Ochroma pyramidale'', commonly known as balsa, is a large, fast-growing tree native to the Americas. It is the sole member of the genus ''Ochroma'', and is classified in the subfamily Bombacoideae of the mallow family Malvaceae. The tree is famous for its wide usage in woodworking, due to its softness and its high strength compared to its low density. The name ''balsa'' is the Spanish word for "raft" and the Portuguese word for ferry. A deciduous angiosperm, ''Ochroma pyramidale'' can grow up to 30 m tall, and is classified as a hardwood despite the wood itself being very soft; it is the softest commercial hardwood and is widely used because of its light weight. Balsa trees grow extremely fast, often up to 27 metres in 10–15 years, and do not usually live beyond 30 to 40 years. In terms of volume (as opposed to height) they may be the fastest growing tree known; Streets mentions one individual which grew tall and diameter at breast height during a period of fifteen mo ...
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West Bend Company
The West Bend Company was a West Bend, Wisconsin, company from 1911 to 2001. ...in 1910, Herman Wentorf left Aluminum Goods to join his brother-in-law Kummerow at Standard Aluminum. Aluminum Goods management demanded that Herman’s brothers, Carl and Robert, convince him to return or they would be fired. Instead, they quit and with Bernhard Ziegler started the cookware manufacturer, West Bend Aluminum Co., in 1911. When a pocketbook manufacturing company burned down in 1911, many residents of West Bend, Wisconsin, were thrown out of work. Young Bernhardt C. Ziegler, a local entrepreneurial dynamo who had organized his own full-fledged fire-insurance company while still in high school, set out to find a substitute industry for the townspeople. The West Bend Aluminum Company was founded with a group of businessmen (Stephen F. Mayer, Martin Walter, and Andrew and Edwin Pick of West Bend, Wisconsin; and Carl and Robert Wentorf, previously of Two Rivers, Wisconsin), on 27 Septemb ...
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Bloomfield, Connecticut
Bloomfield is a suburb of Hartford in the Capitol Planning Region, Connecticut, United States. The town's population was 21,535 at the 2020 census, Bloomfield's highest decennial census count ever. Bloomfield is best known as the headquarters of healthcare services company Cigna. History Originally land of the Poquonock Native Americans, the area was first settled in 1660 as part of Windsor, organized as the Parish of Wintonbury in 1736. Wintonbury comes from three names from neighboring towns Windsor, Farmington, and Simsbury. It was finally incorporated as the town of Bloomfield by the Connecticut General Assembly on May 28, 1835. Initially, the town's local economy was agriculturally based, mostly in shade tobacco, remaining as such until it developed as a postwar suburb of Hartford starting in the 1950s. Today, Bloomfield's local character varies. While the town's southern and eastern fringes are more densely populated and developed, the northern and western sections maint ...
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Barry Hill Palmer
Barry Hill Palmer (born November 10, 1937) is an American aeronautical engineer (UC Berkeley, 1961), inventor, builder and pilot of the first hang glider based on the Rogallo wing or ''flexible wing''. Palmer also designed, built and flew the first weight-shift ultralight trike aircraft. Inventor of the first Flexible Wing hang glider In August 1961 Barry Palmer first saw a photo of the Rogallo wing mounted on the Fleep experimental aircraft published in the Aviation Week magazine and became interested in this flexible wing because of its light weight and simplicity. In October 1961 he completed construction and flew the first flexible wing hang glider; this took place near Latrobe, east of Sacramento, California. He used polyethylene sheet, aluminum tubing and no wires for construction as he did fear kinking during assembly and transport. Most flights were performed with just a set of inclined parallel bars that split his weight between his underarms and hands to experiment wi ...
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Mitchell U-2 Superwing
The Mitchell U-2 Superwing is an American tailless ultralight aircraft that was designed by Don Mitchell for amateur construction.Cliche, Andre: ''Ultralight Aircraft Shopper's Guide'' 8th Edition, page E-259. Cybair Limited Publishing, 2001. Design and development Although the aircraft was designed before the US FAR 103 Ultralight Vehicles rules came into force, the U-2 Superwing complies with them anyway (including the category's maximum empty weight of ). The aircraft has a standard empty weight of . It features a cantilever mid-wing, a single-seat enclosed cockpit, tricycle landing gear and a single engine in pusher configuration. The U-2 is a development of the high-wing B-10. The aircraft fuselage is made from welded steel tube, while the wing is of wood and foam, with doped aircraft fabric covering. Its span wing employs a modified Wortmann FX05-191 airfoil. The flight controls are unconventional; pitch and roll are controlled by elevons and yaw is controlled by ...
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World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks in World War II, Tanks and Air warfare of World War II, aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the List of wars by death toll, deadliest conflict in history, causing World War II casualties, the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Allied-occupied Germany, Germany, Allied-occupied Austria, Austria, Occupation of Japan, Japan, a ...
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Mitchell Wing B-10
The Mitchell Wing B-10 is an American high-wing, open cockpit, single-seat, tailless, ultralight aircraft and motor glider designed by Don Mitchell and based on his Mitchell Wing hang-glider. It has been produced by a variety of companies in the form of kits and plans for amateur construction.Bayerl, Robby; Martin Berkemeier; et al: ''World Directory of Leisure Aviation 2011-12'', page 138. WDLA UK, Lancaster UK, 2011. ISSN 1368-485XJohn W. Taylor (ed.); ''Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1908-81''. pp.530-1. It first flew in 1980. In 2012 the aircraft was still available in the form of plans and some materials, offered by US Pacific of Fresno, California. Design and development The Mitchell Wing started off as a foot-launched hang glider with good soaring performance. Mitchell later modified the design into a powered ultralight aircraft with wheeled tricycle landing gear, known as the B-10. The B-10F is a foot-launched variant with only two wheels. The B-10 was designed to ...
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Don Mitchell (aircraft Designer)
Don (Donald) Mitchell (1915-1993) was an American aircraft designer. He was a Scottish immigrant, arriving in the United States in 1922. He built his first airplane seven years later and founded an airplane manufacturing company in 1937. Aircraft build * Mitchell Nimbus * Mitchell U-2 Superwing * AmeriPlanes Mitchell Wing A-10 * Mitchell Wing B-10 References {{DEFAULTSORT:Mitchell, Don American aircraft designers American aerospace designers 1915 births 1993 deaths British emigrants to the United States ...
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