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Curtiss-Goupil Duck

J

jhefner

Charter Member
All;

I have made a FS model of this one, based on Goupil's original drawings and the two photographs I could find of it. I figured Glenn Curtiss robbed the Jenny parts bin as much as he could for this one-off, and I did the same, borrowing lots of parts from the Jenny gmax model in the FS9 SDK.





I am getting ready to release it; but wanted to ask one more time if any of you folks have any other drawings/photographs of it.

Obviously, things like the shape of the "flappers" (alerons) and tail and the interior are mostly guesswork. I would hate to release it, then have someone produce a picture I have never seen, and tell me "that's not what it looked like." :gossip: :redface:

With all the wonderfull material I have seen on the mystery plane thread; I am convinced that if you guys don't have another picture, I am on safe ground (or water.) :mixedsmi:

-Thanks in advance, and QUACK;
James
 
Couldn't find anything more than te two photo's you already posted James.

Interesting aircraft!
 
Thanks for the vote of confidence but I couldn't find anything more either. At least you won't have any rivet counters!
 
EMatheson said:
Off topic, but if you are going to do odd experimentals, here is one I have always wanted - I imagine it would had actually been pretty good if the pilot knew what he was doing...
http://www.aviastar.org/air/usa/bonney_gull.php

What a weird plane! They did some odd stuff back in the day...
Click to expand...

That's a neat idea.

I am interested in steam power as well as aviation; so when I came on board an airline as a contractor; I decided to make paper models of steam powered aircraft attempts from the 1800s.



The square winged Mozhaski monoplane is my creation, the Eole was a free download; while the Aerial Steam Carriage, duTemple Monoplane, and White's aircraft are all Fiddler's Green models. I then replicated them for FS2002/FS2004; they are available on the Old Hanger downloads site; but I am working on a small update to them; and building a launch ramp to recreate the Mozhaiski's and duTemple's one and only hops. (Someone else has already made the Aerial Steam Carriage, I "borrowed" the sound files from it.)



As you can see above; I then tried to make a paper model of Goupil's monoplane. But some things in the drawing didn't quite make sense; so the logical thing to do was to build a 3-D model from them for Flight Simulator. I was also wondering if it could take off on those skids (not when the flight dymanics files are right.)



Once I carried the madness this far; I decided to go ahead and morph it into the Curtiss-Goupil Duck. I was going to set it aside; and work on something "more serious"; but later realized it was a pretty good model with reasonable flight dynamics; and decided to go ahead and release it.

-James
 
I like those paper models. Very nice.

Let us know when you get the duck quacking. :) Or have you released it already?
 
Estimated date for throwing it out of the nest is Monday. :woot: I sent the latest release to my beta testers, and want to see what they say. I found one more error, and fixed it.
 
Well, the Duck must have heard all of my duck jokes, and is getting mad at me, because it is doing strange things. Parts have disappeared; the floatplane version was working fine in FS2004. But, the engine wouldn't start in FS2002; I made a change that fixed that, but now it won't take off without vigerously swishing it's tail.

So, I thought I would open up the testing a little more, and let you all have a preview of it. You can download it at:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/mks2t1

Please let me know of any errors/problems you encounter; or of any possible fixes. Thanks in advance.

-James
 
Thanks for the link. Busy at the moment with our round the world race but will check it out when I get a chance.
 
Took the Duck up for a spin. Very interesting model along with nice engine animation. The flight model is benign and a joy to fly. Undoubtedly flies much better than the real thing did! Thinking the wide fuselage would deflect a lot of the air hitting the rudder and make it a bit unstable in real life?

A great "what if" bird-
 
Moses03 said:
Took the Duck up for a spin. Very interesting model along with nice engine animation. The flight model is benign and a joy to fly. Undoubtedly flies much better than the real thing did! Thinking the wide fuselage would deflect a lot of the air hitting the rudder and make it a bit unstable in real life?

A great "what if" bird-
Click to expand...

Moses03;

Thank you very much for your kind words; I am glad you enjoyed flying it.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:eek:ffice:eek:ffice" /><o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Hell-rider to king of the air, a book about Glenn Curtiss by Kirk W. House has an account on the Curtiss-Goupil Duck on page 177 (but no new pictures.) You can read that page online; hopefully the link below works:<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
http://books.google.com/books?id=BMCmbp7JaioC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=Curtiss+Goupil+Duck&source=bl&ots=Q33K-ers8g&sig=uBrZ_Ij0lbh2M748WRT7mmlEuXw&hl=en&ei=dhSsSYvFKozMmQfy2KzhDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPA177,M1<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
In case it doesn’t; here is a portion from it:<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
By now, this odd creation was being known as Goupil’s Duck or <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:eek:ffice:smarttags" /><st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dalton</st1:place></st1:City>’s Duck. She was an odd duck indeed, large and gull-winged. Hammonsport had become used to strange sights in the past 15 years of living with Glenn Curtiss, but the spectacle of this thing being trundled through the streets from the plant to the lakeside flying field certainly took the prize. Pilots managed to haul the plane off the water several times in repeated tests, but only barely. The Duck was quite heavy, particularly with <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Langley</st1:place></st1:City> floats. The Curtiss folk seem to have had an explicable knee-jerk reaction to try almost everything as a seaplane, which only complicated their tasks.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Giving up on floats, <st1:City w:st="on">Dalton</st1:City> shipped the Duck to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Newport News</st1:place></st1:City> and refitted her with conventional land gear as a tail-dragger. This made all the difference in the world, and Vic Carlstrom flew the aircraft quite nicely, even describing complete turns, at the beginning of 1917. After this, the Duck was hangered and forgotten as the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> entered the war and the government engineered an aircraft patent pool, obviating the court case at least for the duration.<o:p></o:p>
Click to expand...
<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I added 300 lbs to the empty weight of the floatplane version; and could not get it to take off in my copy of FS2002, and could only lift off in my copy of FS2004 by vigorously swishing it’s tail to break the water surface tension to get it going. It sounds like the landplane version flies pretty close to prototype; it is still no rocket.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
You screen shots look great. Is that a Lancastrian on the ground in the first shot? It is always nice to see your creations in other people's sims.
<o:p></o:p>
-James
 
Moses03 said:
Undoubtedly flies much better than the real thing did! Thinking the wide fuselage would deflect a lot of the air hitting the rudder and make it a bit unstable in real life?
Click to expand...

Doesn't look too bad laterally (elevators are on the small side though) but that rudder is very small given the short moment arm. I'd have thought it would be pretty sluggish and un-responsive in a turn.

In terms of handling early aircraft Andy Sephton (chief pilot) did a talk when the Shuttleworth hosted a BAPC meeting in november and he was saying that they have found the early stuff was actually designed to be turned on rudder rather than ailerons (or warping) like modern stuff.
 
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