Whing Ding II Ultralight - First Flight, Easter 1978

Watch in HD (1280x720) for best results.

This example of the Whing Ding II ultralight aircraft by Aerospace Engineer R.W.Hovey was built around Christmas 1977 by Max Kroone, Graham Percy and Steven Samagalski. A brilliantly conceived microlight design which totally predates the now hugely popular ultralight aircraft category.

Construction by the three of us took around 6 months of spare time and cost about AUS$1800 all up. We received financial support and a good deal of encouragement from Mr Henry Millicer (our Principal Lecturer in the RMIT Aeronautical Engineering Department) for which I am very grateful. After completion in March 1978 we each "took to the sky" at Tyabb Aerodrome on March 24th 1978.

You might imagine hand cranking the geared McCulloch engine which had an open bell mouthed exhaust and was very noisy. It was thrilling sitting out front at 40 mph and 50 ft up, simply brilliant. From the practical point of view, the performance was too marginal to actually go anywhere and the chain drive was dreadfully unreliable.

Top speed of the Whing Ding was about 45 mph. The most effective way of climbing out of ground effect was to do so in a series of steps. Once airborne you would scoot along just above the ground until top speed was reached, then you would convert the speed into height (usually about 15-20ft, no more). After leveling off, the speed was allowed to increase again to top speed and the process repeated.
Actually , we never got a full circuit out of it. Steven got the closest. We were flying at the private airstrip of Lin Bruty at Gordon (Victoria) near Emu Rock during a minimum aircraft club meet. We had always aimed at being able to do complete circuits and it was Steven's turn, so we encouraged him to give it a real try if things were going well. We thought you would want at least 80 to 100 ft altitude to give yourself clearance above the trees so off he went into the wild blue, climbing quite well at first but then he was not using our funny energy to height climb method and soon trailed up the backside of the power curve. Although he got very high (I guess about 80 ft) he got slower and slower until, with an exaggerated angle of attack he started coming down in a full power mush! Now, there is a dam right at the end of the strip and from where we were standing it appeared he was going straight into the bloody thing! We just stood, mouths open and watched! In any case he landed heavily on the near side of the dam which did some minor damage to the wing. Whew!
We gave up trying to do circuits at about this time.
So, not a practical means of transport, but never intended to be so. I give much thanks to R.W.Hovey for making his design available to all. We had a lot of fun building and operating our Whing Ding II and learnt much in the process.

Aircraft Specification:-

General characteristics
Crew: one
Length: 14ft (4.3m)
Wingspan: 17ft (5.2m)
Height: 5ft 6in (1.68m)
Wing area: 98sqft (9.1m2)
Empty weight: 122lb (55kg)
Gross weight: 300lb (136kg)
Fuel capacity: 0.5 U.S. gallons (1.9L; 0.42imp gal)
Powerplant: 1 × McCulloch MAC-101 chain saw engine, 12.5hp (9.3kW)
Propellers: 2-bladed hand carved wooden propeller
Performance
Maximum speed: 50mph (80km/h; 43kn)
Cruise speed: 40mph (35kn; 64km/h)
Stall speed: 26mph (23kn; 42km/h)
Range: 20mi (17nmi; 32km)
Service ceiling: 4,000ft (1,219m)
G limits: +3/-3
Rate of climb: 100ft/min (0.51m/s)

Video content is Copyright Graham.J.Percy 2014

Although image quality is limited by the source material (Super 8mm Film) this video has been recorded in full HD (1920x1080) and gives best results when played back at that resolution.

The accompanying sound track was downloaded from the YouTube audio library and is in the public domain:- "Gypsy Dance" by Topher Mohr and Alex Elena, "Real World" by Silent Partner.