Re: Pterosaur flight

["James R. Cunningham" <jrccea@bellsouth.net>]

Paul said:
>>sorry about that. It was 4am and not thinking. But the idea still
holds water in that a flexible wing will bring him much closer to
success than just another hard , heavy plastic wing.<<

I agree with most of that.  Although a flexible wing isn't any better
than a rigid wing near the design point, the flexible wing usually
performs significantly better when 'off design'.  But lighter isn't
always better.  The heaviest wing loading that is consistent with
available atmospheric lift and the distance between lift sources
maximizes the geographic area  that can be covered per unit time.  Which
is why racing sailplanes carry water ballast to increase their weight.
As you no doubt, know, increasing the wing loading increases speed
without reducing range.

Paul, as an aside, are you aware that the background color and texture
in your posts makes them almost unreadable when attempting to reply, and
that responding to your e-mail address by use of the 'reply' button
causes some computers to crash?  Also, removing extraneous snippets from
the earlier messages isn't allowed across your cell boundaries.  On this
third attempt to respond, I'm retyping your message into a new message
from scratch and am  sending it directly to the dino list in an attempt
to avoid a 4th crash.

All the best,

Jim