Model Airplanes

By Brian Witt, Contributor
February / March 2004

Henry “Harry” Ferguson was an inventor who was constantly tinkering and trying new things. In the course of his life, he helped to revolutionize the tractor, helped revive the fortunes of an American automobile company’s farm implements, and his name was known worldwide. Henry Ford was the son of emigrants from Cork who revolutionized automobile manufacturing. Together, these sons of Erin formed a strong alliance and helped to change the way the world was farmed.

Harry Ferguson was born at Growell, near Hillsborough, Co. Down, on November 4, 1884. From the start, there was dynamism about him. In 1902, at the age of eighteen, he joined his brother Joe in a car and bicycle repair business in Belfast, and in 1904 he began to race motorcycles. In 1909, at Hillsborough, he made the first powered flight in Ireland, traveling 130 meters in a monoplane he had built. He continued airplane development for the next decade. He later drove racing cars, and helped to establish the famous Ulster Tourist Trophy races in 1928. Ferguson formed his own motor business in 1911, and during World War One he began to sell American tractors to Irish farmers, who were more accustomed to horse-drawn plows. With the revolutionary concept that tractor and plow should be designed as a unit, Ferguson began to register his own patents.

Irish-American carmaker Henry Ford started his Ford Motor Company in 1903. As a farm boy, he had a great interest in agriculture,

Article source: http://irishamerica.com/2004/02/a-tale-of-two-henrys-their-tractors/

June 21–Boeing offered new details on its potential middle of the market plane at the Paris Air Show — and they could be promising for Wichita’s Spirit AeroSystems.

Mike Delaney, Boeing vice president of airplane development, said in a presentation at the show on Tuesday that the new plane’s fuselage design may break from the traditional circular structure to one that is shaped closer to an ellipse.

Such a design would allow for the plane to be a wide body with two aisles versus a single aisle found in the out-of-production 757, Boeing’s last middle-market airplane.

But the design wouldn’t allow for as much cargo space in the bottom of the plane compared with contemporary Boeing fuselages.

Boeing hasn’t yet committed to building such an airplane, but talk of it has been robust in the past six months and “was a persistent topic of conversation” on Day 2 of the show, Vertical Research Partners analyst Robert Stallard wrote in an e-mail Tuesday afternoon.

“There is already an expectation that Boeing will try and get this plane into service and to full rate faster than has traditionally been seen in the industry,” Stallard wrote.

The one detail from Delaney’s briefing that is relevant to Spirit is how Boeing plans to construct its fuselage. Boeing will use composites to fashion the new plane’s fuselage, Delaney said, and that’s an area where Spirit — already a supplier of structures on every Boeing airplane model — has a great deal of expertise.

Spirit manufactures the composite forward fuselage section of

Article source: http://www.aviationpros.com/news/12346594/spirits-composite-savvy-could-benefit-new-boeing-plane

PRINEVILLE — A trio of Seattle engineers landed at the Prineville Airport on Friday to show off an aircraft type not seen in a contemporary version since World War II.

They call it the Gweduck (like geoduck, the large saltwater clam). It can carry eight adults and handles “like a baby buggy,” said the pilot and engineer who conceived of it, Ben Ellison, 77.

“It started as an engineering challenge,” he said, standing in midday sunshine on the airport flight-line. “I had no intention to build one.”

Yet, 20 years after thinking it, there it stood, all 4,200 pounds of it. Prineville will be the manufacturing site for the Gweduck, the first kit plane made in the city, said Walter Fellows of Composite Creations, the aircraft maker. Plans are to market the plane to hunters and fishers in places like Alaska, where they’ve flown the plane four times already to “show the flag,” Ellison said.

The price is $350,000. Composite Creations is working in association with a service that helps kit buyers assemble their aircraft in Redmond, Fellows said. He said their company is leasing a building from Iron King LLC, a heavy-equipment parts company in Prineville, to make the aircraft kits. They plan to employ seven people at first, he said.

“Our goals, it’s hard to say,” Fellows said. “There’s no competition and

Article source: http://www.bendbulletin.com/business/5400838-151/flying-boat-lands-in-prineville