How a WWI Biplane Works 

The rudder might be mixed up backwards. Experts please chime in.

The prop is definitely rotating the wrong way at the end sequence, but I got it right at the beginning so that ain't half bad. For all my talents I've yet to conquer rotating parts, which I get wrong in just about every video at some point. The nightmares!

The label is a little confusing for hp and top speed. It's 180 Horsepower vs. Top speed: 190 Kph (118 Mph)

Also worth noting: The folks I mentioned as reviewing my work only saw the script and still screenshots of each part. I get so excited near the finish line, I didn't post the video for review. lol. I'm trying, fellas. I really am. But I just wanna UPLOAD MOAR VIDS

Excellent video. It’s likely that the magneto switch doesn’t switch between spark plugs-but rather between completely separate ignition systems. This is done for redundancy, as no spark=big trouble in the air. Both are used in normal flight due to a slight performance gain and it’s switchable so pilot can check each independent system before takeoff.

🤣🤣🤣 That's funny on so many levels.

Why doesn’t this have more likes? lol I remember hearing that joke so long ago and it’s still good.

Fokkers were used by Germany in World war 1. Only the Dutch and Fin's used Fokker aircraft during world war 2 (since Fokker, as a Dutchman, established himself in The Netherlands after world war 1).

It,s making me learn about many old airplanes

what about fw-200 and fw-190@@JMGlider

Same here. How they were able to figure out how to make it all work together, with the limited technology of the time, baffles me.

As a curious kid that loved these planes one of my first questions was how do they not shoot their own propeller off? It was explained to me that the gun is linked to the engine, I accepted the answer but never really understood it. Seeing exactly how it works here is extremely gratifying.

​​@@Driver0378 Necessity... Is the mother of invention

Here’s a couple of fun facts: While those guns are technically machine guns, they’re actually set up to fire in semi-automatic mode, that is, one shot per pull of the trigger. The engine is pulling the trigger fast enough that you get the same practical effect as if it were fully automatic. Also, all of the guns used for synchronized fire had to be ‘closed bolt’ designs. The most common were derived from the Maxim Gun. The reason for this was to ensure consistent timing between when the trigger was pulled and when the chambered round fired. That’s why you only see ‘open bolt’ guns like the Lewis Gun used in over-wing mounts, like on the SE-5 and some of the Neiuports.

Same. It's really ingeneous in its simplicity.

I think the engines early on had a tendency of throwing oil into the face of the pilot. The scarf was to wipe of his goggles

Perhaps, but they wore silk scarfs and I couldn't think of a worse material to wipe away oil from your googles with.

@@ScoutSniper3124 The Sopwith Camel had an engine with what was called a "constant loss" lubrication system. Oil was fed into the parts that needed lubrication, then passed on through the bearings and was lost from the motor. From there it was slung and blown all around including on the pilot. They had to wipe the googles to maintain sight. And it, as well, was an insulation and skin protection item. There is a video that is titled a Sopwith Camel and a Spitfire flying in formation, and the Sopwith pilet talks about the engine and the method of flying the Sopwith. It is a very informative video, as well as seeing the two planes flying together, one a full throttle and the other barely avoiding a stall.

As worn subsequently by Snoopy. Curse you, Red Baron!

There are some companies that make replicas (obviously with modern materials for safety). What you said is why I am buying one as soon as I can afford it!

They were works of art because they were made by furniture makers at the time and all hand built. This DVII is a very late war design, and was a Cadillac in terms of build and performance. Earlier planes were more like wicker chairs with tents for wings and used wing warping early on with the British not really getting the gist of it until they captured a few German planes, which is odd because the Wright Brothers did quite well with their planes in Europe whereas the US military thought it was just a passing fad that would never catch on.(something that would bite us again because of the lack of progress during the inter-war period leaving the US woefully under equipped at the onset of WWII).

@@ImpendingJoker They must have pinched the landing wheels off a child's tricycle!

You only *thought* you needed a starter and battery in your airplane.

@@dimitrijensk2845 There was a guy in Sweden who built a replica of this exact airplane after finding an engine from one somehow.

I saw a largish Fokker D-VII control-line model with Enya .29 glow engine at a garage sale when I was about twelve and fell in love with it. It look a lot of begging and pleading to get my parents to buy it for me. I think it was one of the most beautiful aircraft of WWI. I'm 64 today and sure wish I still had it. Maybe it's time to get back into model building and flying?

So did I ! built other "Gallows" models. Mostly German planes. Fed my dream of flying of which I did in layer life.

Morgan Motor Cars probably come close. But I suspect they are deliberately creating anachronistic cars because they want the cars to behave like they did a hundred years ago.

VERY distance!! SO much far!! Literally ass far ass the quan(tit)y of fuel will allow!! 😲🤯

That was cutting edge aviation and now it's ultralight complexity, and could be built in someone's garage. It it holds up, in 100 years, people will be building space planes in their garages and lifting off to the moon, while corporate interests mine the moons around Jupiter. Standing on the shoulders of giants, we'll eventually reach the stars.

Flight has, and still does, capture the minds of so many. With great interest in a particular subject, the human mind is capable of incredible things.

its

It's amazing to me, how far it's come in a relatively short period of time. From Kitty Hawk to space! About 120 yrs or so.... it's simply amazing!

Indeed. Prior to using that synch system, pilots often shot their own propellors.

No apologies needed tho I appreciate the sentiment! Glad to have you on the channel :)

Maybe you could put up a screen and ask to use the video on it?

Yes, that thought occurred to me. It would really enhance the experience for visitors! I will check with our executive director about that.

@@garretvaughn7936 awesome 😁

Seems like a fitting use for my work. I hope if works out to display it. If ads can play or if you have premium, I"ll still make money from it in return, which works out perfectly. At any rate, I'd be proud to be quality enough for museum display.

@@animagraffs thank you so much. I will check with the museum director to see how they want to proceed.

Maybe it's a little overshare to say that my dad couldn't be bothered to do that with me, nor did my parents understand how much I was interested in computers and 3D art. I had to download 3D software by sneaking around at night, so as not to clog up the phone lines (dial up internet!). Still, I was often restricted from the computer since they didn't understand I was pirating photoshop, not games. I dropped out of college in 2003 because it felt like paying tuition (which I earned by getting filthy working at gun safe factories all summer long) just for professors to hand me a ton of uninteresting busy work and thank them for it. I think not. All this to say, if my work accompanies you and your son together, and inspires wonder, then I've done well. I've in some way reversed what my dad tried to hand to me, and instead of wreaking havoc on the world through my talents as so many terrifying smart folks have done whose dads ruined them ... I get to do this. To make art that takes difficult but beautiful things and brings everyone, of all knowledge levels, close into the hearts and minds of the amazing artists who made these machines. I'm proud of this work. It feels nice to be appreciated like this. It's what I always wanted. You and your son are lucky to have each other and I mean that in the best way! I'm glad you and your son are here on the channel enjoying it with all of us :D

Probably didn't have one since if you were shot down, you'd likely already be shot dead due to a lack of armor in the seat 😬

@@gravygraves5112 This is true. I'd still like one in case the engine catches fire. Burning to death in mid-air ... yesh.

Metal (bullet) Deflectors

During WWI (and before) internal combustion engines were crude and metallurgy was still in its infancy. Anything with an internal combustion engine shook wildly due to crude, unbalanced flywheels and the only way to remedy this was to mount a seriously heavy counterbalance. This way the shaking was reduced. For a car severe shaking and vibrations was less of an issue and for luxury cars were shaking wasn't desired weight wasn't an issue. *But during the early days of aviation with wooden frame canvas covered aircraft both shaking and weight were severe drawbacks* An engine shaking could damage the frame of the aircraft. Weight obviously resulted in too much inertia for an aircraft which needs to be nimble and highly manueverable. Radials existed as early as 1907 as engines designed specifically for aircraft. The French Salmson radials were manufactured 1908 to 1920 in 7 cylinder and 9 cylinder configurations. But due to the bad cooling of engines of the era these radials actually were water-cooled. Heavy counterweights, water-cooling and radiators added a lot of *weight* . For this reason these Salmson radials were unsuited for light fighter aircraft. Little surprising the Salmsons were mostly used in bomber and recon aircraft. These would fly mostly in a straight line and were already heavy. So how do you solve the crucial issues of inferior cooling, harsh vibrating/shaking and heavy weight? By being very clever of course. Thus the rotary engine was designed. And no, the *Wankel engine came decades later* Problems with cooling and heavy radiators? Let the cylinders rotate in a circle and cool themselves this way. Problems with shaking and unbalanced engines? By allowing the entire block to rotate the gyroscopic effect solves this problem. No heavy counterweight equals a light engine perfect for fighter aircraft. Primitive metallurgy and bad cooling were the culprit for the design of the rotary engine. At the end of the war technology had developed enough for radials and v-shaped engines to negate all the benefits the rotary engines had had until this point. Truly reliable radials with air-cooling didn't emerge until the mid 1920's though. "The biggest drawbacks were that these designs tend to spray oil all over the place" Rotary engines used *castor oil* in a *total loss* lubrication system. Castor oil was in short supply in Germany which is why they rarely used them as the war progressed and they were also known to siphon downed allied aircraft for both castor oil and fuel. Despite engine cowls and pilots wearing goggles and scarfs covering their mouths pilots of rotary engines aircrafted ingested enough castor oil to give them frequent diarrhea. "create a tremendous amount of torque on the plane, heavily affecting the controls." The gyroscopic effect of the rotating engine did indeed affect the airplane itself forcing the pilot to correct the plane even when flying dead straight. This made famous fighter aircraft such as the Sopwith Camel tricky for novice pilots. Landing was particularly tricky since rotary engined aircraft didn't have a throttle just a crude kill-switch. Some sources claim that the Sopwith Camel killed as many novie pilots (or more) in landing crashes than those who were shot down by Central Powers aircraft. The real drawback however was that by the end of the war the rotary engine had reached the limits of the design, *particularly in regard to the amount of fuel and air that could be drawn into the cylinders through the hollow crankshaft* , while advances in both metallurgy and cylinder cooling finally allowed stationary radial engines to supersede rotary engines. "The advantage to this design is this allows for extremely weight-efficient engines" Indeed, during the early days of primitive metallurgy and cooling. Once those issues had been solved however the rotary had no advantages left and disappeared after WWI. The Bentley BR2 used in the Sopwith Snipe (230hp) was the peak of rotary design. Bad metallurgy, bad cooling, heavy weight and excessive vibration. All you need to remember how and why the rotary was born.

Ooops!

Rudders inverted to

Or maybe they should be free. I ventured into forums where serious folks make detailed replicas for the passion alone. They helped me get things right, even just through searching forum discussions, page after page of intricate details they've been discussing over many years. I guess that's what AI does when it scrapes the internet. The difference is that instead of gatekeeping what I learned and making one guy really rich, I'm sharing it with all of us so we can enjoy it together. To honor the fact that I got this knowledge somewhere from someone else too. I hope I've honored it like the passionate folks hidden in these forums do. The channel is growing, and the ads are going to be enough to make a nice living it looks like. So no worries about ol Jake. lol. Just keep on watching and commenting, that's plenty of support.

Shhhhhhh!

If I was somebody from the 1800's I'd recognize all the materials but the science behind machine would be incredidbly bizarre and foreign to me.

Glad you caught the rudder cables.

I always thought they should be crossed. I'm used to it now, but when learning it felt more intuitive to push right to go left... like the handlebars of a bike. I believe a lot of aircraft were that way, like the Japanese Zero. Brakes in opposite orientation would not be so intuitive.

That's the same way I've sorta filed these old planes away. But when I worked on that old ship video I started to see, there was a lot going on for hundreds of years. I dunno why our shared perception makes it seem like tech just blipped into place. Granted ... the last 100 or so years have been exponentially wild even so.

Einstein had already published papers on relativity by this point. Harvard University was over 250 years old. Telephones, light bulbs, and airships had been introduced decades earlier. Electric cars were winning races. The Panama Canal had just finished being built. Most of the battleships that would serve in WW2 were in the design phase, and some (such as the USS Texas) served in both world wars.

The industrial revolution began 150 years earlier with advancements in steam engine technology. Aviation was a late bloomer, considering all the advancements in other fields, as mentioned above.

Wait, do you really think the entire worls was agrarian in the 1900s?

You'll also notice that it was these advances with the airplane that drove performance technology in the automobile sector. Some of the things on this aircraft you wouldn't see on some models until the 1970's or even 1980's depending. Pretty amazing.

Nobody in Sweden use z in daily speech beside Zebra.

With each project my workflow gets even more optimized. This time I was able to render the 30k plus frames in about 3 evenings! At times my computer was cranking out 25-30 frames a minute. Ridiculous. I just keep getting better at the whole process. For example, Blender 3D wouldn't naturally understand when I've made an object fully transparent. But I wrote code so that when I fade something out completely, Blender doesn't even load it at render time. My models can be massive, but still render super fast.

Beautiful work. How do you create these animations? Do you start with the script then the animation or the opposite way?

First I do outreach to try and get experts on board so I won't have to waste time when things are ready for review. I do super thorough research, then build the model. From there I know what I want to say in the script, so I write that and record it. I take the audio into Blender 3D and further push it around as I animate so visuals and audio are actually adjusted at the same time. I export that audio back into my sound software for final export, and to add music etc. I also render all the frames at this time in Blender. I take frames and audio into Adobe software to make the vid, and presto ala kazam there you have it. An Animagraff! @@Flightlevel320

Im sure I speak for your whole community when I say a video on your process and outstanding skill would be amazing. Inception style anamagraff of an anamagraff! 😅

Maybe give him a few more videos down the line to take the process from 95% perfection to 99%. But then, an animagraffs of animgraffs must happen!!

i know, i just wasn't feeling it for this script, so I didn't say it. there's a limit to how much unique vocab i can use in one video, and I like to keep it trim so folks minds' can rest with all the new info I"m presenting.

Or even an Me109

You typed a whole sentence just to say this. Incredible.

@@animagraffs that's a bit harsh of you considering how many other technical errors you've made.

@@tonkpb it’s not an error 💩 for brains

Great! Some else spotted that.

You're not wrong, fella. But I just can't put all my work on the line only to be culled by a bot. Then fight months before I can even talk to a human about it. I like a stress-free life. I like to skip through the green fields when possible, and avoid the tar pits.

And 63 years after the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon.