Wednesday, April 30, 2008

the Santos-Dumont 14-bis

The Santos-Dumont 14-bis [14th attempt, 2nd variant] 'flew' in September 1906...a flight of 23 feet; dismissed as a 'powered hop'. However; it still poses a tenuous claim to 'first'. Technically, the title of 'first heavier-than-air powered flight requires the aircraft to take-off from the ground without assistance, and the Wrights were using a drop-weight to drive a small trolley that the Flyer rested on. [ by the same reasoning, Langley's catapult attempt from a houseboat wouldn't have counted either, though his claim would be greatly strengthened if the 'aerodrome' had flown instead of taking a header into the Potomac River.]

It's hard to say if the Wrights dogged resistance to wheels lasted past September 1906 since they were doing little or no flying at the time. They were keeping everything under wraps until they locked up their patents. [also, they were pestered by a very curious, though disbelieving, press.] The Wright Brothers consistently come across as businessmen, first and foremost. In contrast to Europe, they show little sense of the joy-of-flying.

In any event, 23 ft. is a slender reed to support such a large 'First'. The early pioneers were drunk with the notion of flying, at least in Europe, and by 'flying', they did not mean 23 ft. They meant to soar like eagles. [ In fairness to Santos-Dumont, he did considerably longer flights in the suceeding months.] One historian posed a reasonable benchmark for 'first': namely, that the airplane should lift off under its own power, fly a quarter mile, do a controlled turn, fly back, turn again and land, i.e., fly a closed loop under control. So the Wrights claim is probably safe for a while yet.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

A Grand Day Out....

This little pastiche of the Santos-Dumont's No.6 Airship in action was modeled and rendered in Animation Master v.15 and edited together in Sony's 'Vegas Movie Studio'. Blogspot balked at the file size, so I reduced Color Depth from 'millions' to 256. This gave the unlooked-for, but not wholly unpleasing, posterized/comic book look.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The first of many

The Caproni CA.60: a nine-winged, eight-engined behemoth designed to shuttle 100 passengers between Italy and America. Built, flown once, and crashed in 1921. Reportedly, it got about 60 ft. off the water, then pitched nose down and crashed. A shift of internal ballast is suspected. A mysterious fire detroyed the wreck before restoration could start.

Monday, April 14, 2008

The Mata Grosso train station

First post

This site will be a running account of my 3D modeling and animation. I use Animation Master (version 15) to create my works. Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.