- Development
- Specifications (Flightsail)
- See also
- Notes
- References
| name=Flightsail | image= | caption= }}{{Infobox Aircraft Type | type=Homebuilt aircraft | national origin=United States of America | manufacturer= | designer=Thomas H Purcell, Jr. | first flight=27 October 1961 | introduced= | retired= | status= | primary user= | more users= | produced= | number built= | program cost= | unit cost=$200 in 1961 | developed from= | variants with their own articles=
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The Purcell Flightsail or Flight Dynamics Flightsail is an experimental towed glider by Thomas H. Purcell, Jr. He sold plans in several publications for the tow-launched hung-mass controllable kite-glider. He flew first off water in late 1961 and then arranged things for off-land and landing on land. His efforts would find similarity echo later in early 1963 by the SkiPlane of Mike Burns. DevelopmentThe Flightsail is a single seat open cockpit parasol-winged glider with tricycle landing gear. The fuselage is constructed of a triangular pyramid-shaped or tetrahedral truss; the pilot was positioned in front of the triangle-control frame.[1] The framed flexible wing resembles a hang-glider arrangement as used on the kited gliders of Paresev program and by Ryan Aeronautical Company. The glider used weight-shift pendulum control using a stick with cables that shifts the cg of the frame relative to the wing pivoting above it. The wing is constructed with a 50-degree sweep based on NASA technical note D-443 and covered with polyethylene sheet with rip-stop fiberglass tape in a one-foot mesh pattern. The aircraft was tested by NASA test pilots Milton Orville Thompson and Victor Horton [2] to compare against the Rogallo wing being tested for space vehicle recovery.[3] Purcell published that in an early 1962 flight session, Francis M. Rogallo also had a flight in the Flightsail; years later Purcell would have a very different aircraft using the flexible-wing in a modification which was flown by Francis M. Rogallo. Purcell's later Flight Dynamics Flightsail VII used the flexible-wing in a modified format. Specifications (Flightsail) {{Aircraft specs
|ref=Sport Aviation April 1962
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See also{{aircontent
|see also=North Carolina Museum of History
|related=- Flight Dynamics Flightsail VII
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}}Notes{{Empty section|date=November 2013}}References1. ^The "Flightsail"
2. ^Space History Photo: The Birth of Hang Gliding
3. ^{{cite journal|magazine=Sport Aviation|date=April 1962|title=The Flightsail}}
{{refbegin}}{{refend}} 1 : Homebuilt aircraft |