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Tractor Configuration
In aviation, the term tractor configuration refers to an aircraft constructed in the standard configuration with its engine mounted with the propeller in front of it so that the aircraft is "pulled" through the air. Oppositely, the pusher configuration places the airscrew behind and propels the aircraft forward. Through common usage, the word "propeller" has come to mean any airscrew, whether it actually propels or pulls the plane. In the early years of powered aviation both tractor and pusher designs were common. However, by the midpoint of the First World War, interest in pushers declined and the tractor configuration dominated. Today, propeller-driven aircraft are assumed to be tractors unless it is stated otherwise. Origins The first airplane to have a "tractor" configuration was the Goupy No.2 (first flight on 11 March 1909) designed by Mario Calderara and financed by Ambroise Goupy at the French firm Blériot Aéronautique. When it was constructed, it was the fastes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cessna 172S Skyhawk SP, Private JP6817606
Cessna () is an American brand of general aviation aircraft owned by Textron Aviation since 2014, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas. Originally, it was a brand of the Cessna Aircraft Company, an American general aviation aircraft manufacturing corporation also headquartered in Wichita. The company produced small, piston-powered aircraft, as well as business jets. For much of the mid-to-late 20th century, Cessna was one of the highest-volume and most diverse producers of general aviation aircraft in the world. It was founded in 1927 by Clyde Cessna and Victor Roos and was purchased by General Dynamics in 1985, then by Textron, Inc. in 1992. In March 2014, when Textron purchased the Beechcraft and Hawker Aircraft corporations, Cessna ceased operations as a subsidiary company and joined the others as one of the three distinct brands produced by Textron Aviation. Throughout its history, and especially in the years following World War II, Cessna became best-known for producing hig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Machine Gun
A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) are typically designed more for firing short bursts rather than continuous firepower, and are not considered true machine guns. As a class of military kinetic projectile weapon, machine guns are designed to be mainly used as infantry support weapons and generally used when attached to a bipod or tripod, a fixed mount or a heavy weapons platform for stability against recoils. Many machine guns also use belt feeding and open bolt operation, features not normally found on other infantry firearms. Machine guns can be further categorized as light machine guns, medium machine guns, heavy machine guns, general purpose machine guns and squad automatic weapons. Similar automatic firearms of caliber or more are classified as autocannons, r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1915 In Aviation
Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January *January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction". *January 1 ** WWI: British Royal Navy battleship HMS ''Formidable'' is sunk off Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, by an Imperial German Navy U-boat, with the loss of 547 crew. ** Battle of Broken Hill: A train ambush near Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia, is carried out by two men (claiming to be in support of the Ottoman Empire) who are killed, together with 4 civilians. * January 5 – Joseph E. Carberry sets an altitude record of , carrying Capt. Benjamin Delahauf Foulois as a passenger, in a fixed-wing aircraft. * January 12 ** The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to give women the right to vote. ** '' A Fool There Was'' premières in the United States, starring Theda Bara as a ''femme fatale''; she quickly becomes one o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fokker E
Fokker was a Dutch aircraft manufacturer named after its founder, Anthony Fokker. The company operated under several different names. It was founded in 1912 in Berlin, Germany, and became famous for its fighter aircraft in World War I. In 1919 the company moved its operations to the Netherlands. During its most successful period in the 1920s and 1930s, it dominated the civil aviation market. Fokker went into bankruptcy in 1996, and its operations were sold to competitors. History Fokker in Germany At age 20, while studying in Germany, Anthony Fokker built his initial aircraft, the ''Spin'' (Spider)—the first Dutch-built plane to fly in his home country. Taking advantage of better opportunities in Germany, he moved to Berlin, where in 1912, he founded his first company, Fokker Aeroplanbau, later moving to the Görries suburb just southwest of Schwerin (at ), where the current company was founded, as Fokker Aviatik GmbH, on 12 February 1912. World War I Fokker capitalize ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Fokker
Anton Herman Gerard "Anthony" Fokker (6 April 1890 – 23 December 1939) was a Dutch aviation pioneer, aviation entrepreneur, aircraft designer, and aircraft manufacturer. He produced fighter aircraft in Germany during the First World War such as the Eindecker monoplanes, the Dr.1 triplane and the D.VII biplane. After the Treaty of Versailles forbade Germany to produce aircraft, Fokker moved his business to the Netherlands. There, his company was responsible for a variety of successful aircraft including the Fokker F.VII/3m trimotor, a successful passenger aircraft of the inter-war years. He died in New York in 1939. Later authors suggest he was personally charismatic but unscrupulous in business and a controversial character. Early life Anthony (Tony) Fokker was born in Blitar, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), to Herman Fokker, a Dutch coffee plantation owner. Some sources say that he was born in Kediri. At that time, Blitar was a part of the "Kediri Residency", a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synchronization Gear
A synchronization gear (also known as a gun synchronizer or interrupter gear) was a device enabling a single-engine tractor configuration aircraft to fire its forward-firing armament through the arc of its spinning propeller without bullets striking the blades. This allowed the aircraft, rather than the gun, to be aimed at the target. There were many practical problems, mostly arising from the inherently imprecise nature of an automatic gun's firing, the great (and varying) velocity of the blades of a spinning propeller, and the very high speed at which any gear synchronizing the two had to operate. In practice, all known gears worked on the principle of actively triggering each shot, in the manner of a semi-automatic weapon. Design and experimentation with gun synchronization had been underway in France and Germany in 1913–1914, following the ideas of August Euler, who seems to have been the first to suggest mounting a fixed armament firing in the direction of flight (in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Naval Air Service
The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was the air arm of the Royal Navy, under the direction of the Admiralty's Air Department, and existed formally from 1 July 1914 to 1 April 1918, when it was merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to form the Royal Air Force (RAF), the world's first independent air force. It was replaced by the Fleet Air Arm, initially consisting of those RAF units that normally operated from ships, but emerging as a separate unit similar to the original RNAS by the time of World War 2. Background In 1908, the British Government recognised the military potential of aircraft. The Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, approved the formation of an "Advisory Committee for Aeronautics" and an "Aerial Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence". Both committees were composed of politicians, army officers and Royal Navy officers. On 21 July 1908 Captain Reginald Bacon, who was a member of the Aerial Navigation sub-committee, submitted to the First Se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sopwith Tabloid
The Sopwith Tabloid and Sopwith Schneider (floatplane) were British biplanes, originally designed as sports aircraft and later adapted for military use. They were among the first successful types to be built by the Sopwith Aviation Company. The "Tabloid", so named because of its small size, caused a sensation when it made its first public appearance. A floatplane variant was prepared in under a month and entered for the 1914 Schneider Trophy race where it was piloted by Howard Pixton. This aircraft won the competition against minimal opposition.Bruce, 1996, p.1 Production orders for both types were placed by the military, and although a few Gnome Lambda-powered Tabloids saw limited service in the early war years, some Schneiders were still in Naval service four years later, at the end of the First World War. Design and development The original Tabloid, which was first flown by Harry Hawker on 27 November 1913, was a two-seat single-bay biplane with a side-by-side seating, whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roland Garros (aviator)
Eugène Adrien Roland Georges Garros (; 6 October 1888 – 5 October 1918) was a French aviation pioneer and fighter pilot. Garros began a career in aviation in 1909 and performed many early feats before joining the French army and becoming one of the earliest fighter pilots during World War I. In 1928, the Roland Garros tennis stadium was named in his memory; the French Open tennis tournament takes the name of Roland Garros as well as the stadium in which it is held. Biography Eugène Adrien Roland Georges Garros was born in Saint-Denis, Réunion, and studied at the Lycée Janson de Sailly and HEC Paris. At the age of 12, he caught pneumonia, and was sent to Cannes to recover. He took up cycling to restore his health, and went on to win an inter-school championship in the sport. He was also keen on football, rugby and tennis.Lefèvre-Garros, 2001, pp.32–33 When he was 21 he started a car dealership in Paris. He was a close friend of Ettore Bugatti and in 1913 became t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aviator
An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they are involved in operating the aircraft's navigation and engine systems. Other aircrew members, such as drone operators, flight attendants, mechanics and ground crew, are not classified as aviators. In recognition of the pilots' qualifications and responsibilities, most militaries and many airlines worldwide award aviator badges to their pilots. History The first recorded use of the term ''aviator'' (''aviateur'' in French) was in 1887, as a variation of ''aviation'', from the Latin ''avis'' (meaning ''bird''), coined in 1863 by in ''Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne'' ("Aviation or Air Navigation"). The term ''aviatrix'' (''aviatrice'' in French), now archaic, was formerly used for a female aviator. These terms were used more in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monoplane
A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing configuration and is the simplest to build. However, during the early years of flight, these advantages were offset by its greater weight and lower manoeuvrability, making it relatively rare until the 1930s. Since then, the monoplane has been the most common form for a fixed-wing aircraft. Characteristics Support and weight The inherent efficiency of the monoplane is best achieved in the cantilever wing, which carries all structural forces internally. However, to fly at practical speeds the wing must be made thin, which requires a heavy structure to make it strong and stiff enough. External bracing can be used to improve structural efficiency, reducing weight and cost. For a wing of a given size, the weight reduction allows it to fly slower ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morane-Saulnier L
The Morane-Saulnier L, or Morane-Saulnier Type L, or officially MoS-3, was a French parasol wing one or two-seat scout aeroplane of the First World War. The Type L became one of the first successful fighter aircraft when it was fitted with a single machine gun that fired through the arc of the propeller, which was protected by armoured deflector wedges. Its immediate effectiveness in this role launched an arms race in fighter development, and the Type L was swiftly rendered obsolete. The original Type L used wing warping for lateral control, but a later version designated Type LA was fitted with ailerons.Taylor 1989, p. 684. Built by Morane-Saulnier, large numbers of the Type L were ordered by the French ''Aviation Militaire'' at the outbreak of the war. In total about 600 Type Ls were built and, in addition to the French air force, they served with the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service and the Imperial Russian Air Service. The type was also produced under licence ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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