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Author Topic: The very first jet plane in 1910!  (Read 9977 times)

Offline shawn a

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The very first jet plane in 1910!
« on: April 22, 2008, 07:02:40 AM »
Hello, Shawn a.  here,
When I was at the 100th anniversary of powered heavier than air flight at the 2003 Dayton airshow, I came across a tent with an exhibit from Romania. The exhibit had brochures with photos of the first jet powered aircraft- built in 1910!! By Henri Coanda, a Romanian. Evidently he had not thought of the ingenious and somewhat counterintuitive "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" approach of powering the compressor with a turbine in the exhaust flow, so his compressor was powered by what seems to have been a four cylinder piston engine. The air was compressed, fuel was added, and then ignited with jet-lke results. I'm not sure if the plane ever flew, but I did read that it taxied, and managed to do a "ground loop". Henri noticed the flames from his exhaust deflectors curving around them and coming back along the fuselage (which I assume was fabric), and decided to study the effect, which to this day is called the Coanda Effect- The tendancy of a fluid moving across a surface to follow the contours of that surface. Take a wine glass, put it upside down in the sink and center the water from the faucet on the base of the glass. At moderate water presure, the water will perform a 180 degree turn following the surface of the base of the glass, and flow smoothly down the stem covering the entire surface of the wine glass.
I was told that this effect is one of the three basic laws, or effects that make planes fly. Bernoulli's law,(the faster a fluid flows over a surface, the less pressure it exerts on that surface), Newtons law of action and reaction, and the Coanda Effect. I was also told that Einstein designed an aircraft wing, and out of 100 designs tested, his came in 97th-Third from the bottom! 96 wing designs submitted worked better than his!
If anyone has any info on Henri Coanda or his jet plane, Please post it-Thanks
Shawn

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Re: The very first jet plane in 1910!
« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2008, 04:37:25 AM »
I know about Coanda and of course the Coanda effect, but let's say my aviation brains do not go beyond, uhm 'bout 1939 to tell you much more than you already know. For this kind of historical facts Wikipedia is a good starting point for information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Coanda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coand%C4%83-1910

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Offline shawn a

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Re: The very first jet plane in 1910!
« Reply #2 on: April 28, 2008, 08:16:32 PM »
Niels,
Thanks for that suggestion.
I'm off to France today, not bringing my computer. I'll see what I can find out about Henri when I'm there. Back in 2 weeks.
Shawn

 



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