L.Opdyke French Aeroplanes Before the Great War (Schiffer)
Deleted by request of (c)Schiffer Publishing
The more familiar Collomb ornithopter was completed at Lyon in August 1909. A 40 hp motor in a 4-wheel frame was to pump vertically 200 times per minute a shaft on which a pair of hinged lattices pivoted. A rudder was at the rear. It did not fly.
(Span: 12 m; weight: c 250 kg)
Журнал Flight
Flight, June 5, 1909.
THE COLLOMB FLAPPING FLIGHT MACHINE.
AN extraordinary apparatus, of which we give an illustration, has been constructed by M. Collomb, of Lyons, with the object of achieving flight on the flapping wing principle. The moving planes, of which there are two, rock upon fulcrums, and are so hinged together that they can be operated simultaneously by the engine. As will be gathered from our illustration, an extremely long stroke is required in order to produce the sea-saw motion of each wing about its fulcrum, and the method in which this has been accomplished is primitively simple.
The engine, which is mounted low down in the main framework, has a chain pulley on each end of its crankshaft, and these drive very long chains which are supported by corresponding pulleys overhead. Anchored to each chain is one end of a long wooden connecting rod, the other ends of which are attached to the hinge between the two planes above. When the chains are in motion they carry the connecting-rods bodily with them, and these impart a reciprocating motion to the flapping planes, which consequently rock about their fulcrum points. The greater portion of the surface of the planes is formed by pivoted louvres arranged after the manner of the laths in a Venetian blind. These laths automatically close on the downstrokes and open to let the air freely through them on the upstrokes, and the inventor of the machine confidently anticipates being able to keep himself aloft in the air by this means.
The stretch of the wings measures 12 metres, the total surface is 24 square metres. The engine is rated at 40-h.p.
