It really surprises me that other people haven't posted anything in here just yet, so I guess I'll just have to start things off and hopefully something here will spark up a conversation that will lead to further discoveries.
I've always been interested in flight and often have watched birds or insects flitting about which got me thinking. Why don't people try to fly like everything else instead of using fixed wing flight? I've never found a really good reason for it other than making a glider is simpler than trying to make something that can get off the ground flapping it's wings. What I've been doing as of late is studying slow motion videos of insects in flight and I think this may be the way to go as far as developing a craft for manned flight. Namely insectile wings in relation to their body structure are vastly different than what birds utilize. What I'm mainly referring to of course is the way the wings move and how they're structured. The wings are very thin and flexible with a hard leading edge which is much more rigid. At this point, I'm convinced that it's insect like movements on the wings that will gain humans a working ornithopter for manned flight. The biggest hurdle is how to generate enough movement on the wings to generate the requesite lift which will take an engine of high horsepower which the means you have to take into consideration the additional weight that's going to be involved. Right now I don't have a lot of time to write out what's been flying around my head but as soon as i do I'll have to sit down and write out what I've been thinking and see what people think about it.
I've moved your message from the 'Forum Description' section into this section {'Thoughts Manned Ornithopter Design 2'] because the Forum Description section is just for admin use only [ I use it to give a description of the purpose of this forum]
