P.Lewis British Aircraft 1809-1914 (Putnam)
Phillips 1907 Multiplane
1907 saw the appearance of Horatio F. Phillips's most unusual Multiplane, which embodied four frames containing a total of some two hundred very narrow chord wings of venetian-blind formation. The machine was without a tail unit and was mounted on tandem main wheels, smaller auxiliary wheels being fitted at the wing-tips on the second frame from the front. A two-bladed 7 ft. diameter tractor propeller of very generous area was turned by a 22 h.p. engine.
The Multiplane was tested at Streatham during mid-1907 and is claimed to have taken off in a 30 m.p.h. wind, to have been stable longitudinally, and to have flown a distance calculated to be about 500 ft.; thus giving Horatio Phillips a strong claim to the honour of being the first person to make a flight under power in Great Britain. Span, 20 ft. Length, 15 ft. Height, 10 ft. Weight empty, 500 lb. Weight loaded, 650 lb.
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M.Goodall, A.Tagg British Aircraft before the Great War (Schiffer)
Deleted by request of (c)Schiffer Publishing
PHILLIPS multi-plane No.5 1907
This was a most unusual multi-plane, built with 200 slats, 1_ inches wide and 1/8" thick and with two inch spaces between them, carried in four separate frames. It was a tractor with, presumably, the previous engine driving a wide bladed propeller. There were no tail surfaces and the pilot sat in the center between two of the frames. The body of the machine consisted of a triangular girder with lattice bracing of steel ribbon. The machine rested on two twenty-eight inch bicycle wheels in tandem with two smaller wheels at the wingtips.
It seems possible that Phillips lifted off the ground with this machine at Streatham in the middle of 1907. The airborne distance of about 500ft in a 30mph wind was calculated later. Although Phillips never claimed this as a flight, it could well have been the first sustained flight in the country. Further tests anchored to a pole by a 200ft wire were also made. Multi-planes, and No.5 in particular, were more in the nature of test equipment and not suitable for development into successful flying machines.
Power: 22hp petrol engine, eight-cylinder air-cooled make unknown, driving a 7ft diameter propeller
Data
Span 20ft
Length 15ft
Area 140 sq ft
Height 10ft
Weight 500 lb.
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A.Andrews. The Flying Machine: Its Evolution through the Ages (Putnam)
In 1907 the indefatigable Phillips, now aged 62, put four banks of 48 aerofoils in tandem behind a 7ft propeller driven by a 20hp engine; and there is good ground for believing his report that it lifted off the ground of Streatham Common for 500ft - which would make it the first powered aeroplane ever to be flown in Great Britain, beating Samuel Franklin Cody’s performance at Farnborough in 1908 by over a year.
Phillips continued to design, though no longer to build, his individualist aeroplanes. But his theoretical work on the aerodynamic properties of aerofoils was confirmed and enlarged in the first decade of the twentieth century by F. W. Lanchester of England, G. H. Bryan of Wales, and Ludwig Prandtl of Germany. As a quartet of individual thinkers, these men laid the foundations of aerodynamic theory, which influenced all ensuing aircraft design and construction.
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