Originally Posted by Leto (Post 2824974)

I'm trying to see how much of it was gliding/forward momentum versus actual flying. He seemed to go quite a distance.

Really cool.

Originally Posted by Jinn (Post 2824987)

They included those details:



The reason they included this is that powered flight is the ability to maintain both airspeed and altitude. Gliders cannot maintain both; they can maintain altitude at the cost of airspeed, or airspeed at the cost of altitude. They fly for so long by using thermals to gain altitude, but the climb causes a lost of airspeed. All things fall, and there is no way for a plane to maintain an altitude without trading back and forth with airspeed.

Because he travelled for 19.3 seconds while maintaining altitude and airspeed, he 'flew' for 19.3 seconds, regardless of initial momentum or glide that got him to that airspeed or that altitude.

Originally Posted by Fremen (Post 2825015)

I followed the wiki link on ornithopters, then the link to the Wow Wee toy website. I now know what the nieces and nephews are getting for Christmas.

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru (Post 2825107)

Am I the only one who thinks of this first when reading ornithopters?

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u...rnithopter.jpg