sarge wrote:Did you take into account the weight of those wings themselves in that calc?
I did not add the wing weight to the flying weight for a reason that seems to have escaped Rhett Allain, although he hints at it when he says, "It (the formula) looks nice except it doesn't fit very well with the smaller mass birds."
While I was at Lockheed Aircraft I overheard the engineers talking about how the C-5 Galaxy did not fit the usual formulas for aircraft design. They were puzzled and delighted to find it had a much larger load capacity than predicted. Seems the bigger the flying machine, the better its load lifting efficiency.
If you build small model aircraft, 2 to 3 foot wing span, you can see this by comparing the model's wing loading of 1 to 2 pounds per square foot of wing area to, say a Cessna 152 at 10 pounds per square foot or a DC-3 at 27 pounds per square foot. Wing loading of a C-5A Galaxy is 120 pounds per square foot. Can you imagine a 2 foot span model airplane with a 6 inch chord (1 sq ft) weighing 120 pounds?
The wings in the image have an area of 120 sq ft. If made from 0.063 sheet aircraft aluminum, they would weigh 107 pounds each, or 214 pounds total.
Now let's calculate the wing loading for John Travolta's angel act in the photo. (250 lbs + 214 lbs)/120 sq ft = 3.9 lbs/sq ft.
Compare that to the wing loading of the largest flying bird, the Traveling Albatross (aka Great Albatross): 22 lbs / 9 sq ft = 2.4 lbs/sq ft.
I think the flying human weight loading compares very well with the largest flying bird if you consider the bigger is better rule.
