Wickramasinge at it again

Pat Flannery wrote:

David Spain wrote:

Can anyone comment what the counterweight dropped from the tower was for?
I assume perhaps the prop thrust was insufficient to overcome the
friction in the discardable ground trolley and so that's how they got it
started?

That's exactly what it was for; the weight served to catapult it down
the track. That was one argument used to argue that this really wasn't
the first airplane flight, as it used an assisted means of take-off.

The only problem with that argument is that the Wrights didn't use the
catapult until they started flying from Huffman Prairie, outside of Dayton.
At Kitty Hawk, they used a simple rail, with a small trolley,
The photographs taken at the time clearly show this.


--
Pete Stickney
Failure is not an option
It comes bundled with the system.