Flight from 70 Million Years B.C.

1975 Yorkshire Television documentary. Drs. Cherrie Bramwell (a paleontologist & zoologist), & George Whitfield (an engineer) investigate the aerodynamics of Pteranodon - a type of pterosaur, or 'pterodactyl' - using a mechanical model Pteranodon at Rhossili, Wales, UK - (C) Trident Television Ltd 1975.

[@vanadiumV]

are those scientists still alive ? greetings & respect to them , from Morocco ! i love pteranodon !

[@xyzzy1974]

My mother Cherrie is still alive & living in Exeter, UK, though she's quite elderly & frail now, & in the early stages of mixed dementia. I live with her & look after her. Cherrie retired from her scientific career to concentrate on bringing me up after suffering a serious, life-changing accident in 1977. She fell 40ft out of a tree in Burnam Beeches (a woodland nature reserve in Buckinghamshire, UK, though the Wikipedia article on the film seems to suggest it could be Black Park, Bucks) during the filming of 'Dracula' (www.imdb.com/title/tt0079073/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1) whilst trying to rescue her pet fruit bat Balls, who had flown to the top of a tree and wouldn't come down. (She used to hire out Balls to movie production companies when they were in need of a vampire bat, even though he was a fruit bat! He can also be seen in the Hammer film 'Vampire Circus'.) Cherrie being Cherrie grabbed a ladder & climbed up the tree, made a grab for Balls but he flew forwards & pushed her and the ladder backwards (not much Health & Safety as such in the 1970s). Cherrie hit the frozen, rock hard ground & broke her back, one arm & both legs. The doctors said it was a miracle she didn't die or suffer paralysis, though she could never run again, suffered chronic pain in her legs & had to walk with a stick. Frank Langella & Laurence Olivier visited her in hospital & were both very sweet according to Cherrie. She severed all contact with the scientific community at that point & lost contact with George. I think it hurt her too much to be reminded of the way she was & what she had lost. Balls spent the rest of his days at London Zoo, where he apparently lived for many years and - true to his name - sired many more offspring. George was 8 years older than Cherrie which would make him 86 as of 2019*, so it's possible he's still alive. I've searched the web and apart from references to published scientific papers have not been able to discover anything about him. Cherrie knows about this video, I've read all the comments to her & she's thrilled to bits that almost 4,000 people have watched it :) * EDIT - George passed away in 2004, see reply from George Whitfield Jr. below

[@angelabarron582]

@@xyzzy1974 She's an amazing woman!

[@filosophydude]

Greetings from Belize! your mother is endlessly funny in the fruit bat clip that's surfacing online now :)

[@JaneCooper190072]

@@filosophydude yes

[@JaneCooper190072]

@@xyzzy1974 hi there, just wanted to say that I stumbled upon upon your mom with her beloved fruit bat and was wondering if she's still with us today. I'm glad to hear she is. Let her know she's become very much loved after seeing her with balls. My mom is 87, and still going strong, we moved to Los Angeles in 1979, but I've been living back in the UK for the last ten years. So basically I just wanted to say hi and let you and your mom know people are touched by her in that video. God bless you guys ❤️ Btw, what year was this shot?

[@TheGreatest1974]

What a quaint and typically english documentary. How much better and happier those days seem to be in comparison to today. The young lady in this is a delight!👍🇬🇧

[@xyzzy1974]

That's so true isn't it.. those were different times.

[@TheGreatest1974]

@@xyzzy1974 yes. I don’t care what anyone says. Those days were better than now in every way. Even the 80’s and 90’s were way better. 👍

[@lizengland5994]

Lovely film I was lucky enough to meet Cherrie and Balls at Reading University through the Conservation Society in the early 70’s.

[@Trilling0Fong]

Leo your mother is a fantastic woman and such a contribution to the world! I love her and wish more people would have seen her value and done a whole series - I could listen to her for hours!

[@xyzzy1974]

Watch this space ChristieMJ.. 'The Gene Machine' is coming soon...

[@broderp]

This was redone years later with modern techniques and materials and flew wonderfully.

[@xyzzy1974]

I'd have to agree.. The ideas were in the right place certainly, marrying engineering & paleoentology, but the tech was maybe just a decade or two behind.. 👍

[@tallskin]

Brilliant documentary.

[@flymachine]

Super nerds of the 60’s! Remarkable although even the smallest RC aircraft nowadays is infinitely more complex than their best efforts with carbon ‘bones’ 6 axis gyro stabilisation, GPS ‘return to home’ technologies. Those wings were producing almost zero lift, possibly negative lift, they over complicated what should have been essentially simple. 3 tubes and a roll of Dacron and you can fly cross country, so interesting to see the lack of understanding of fundamental aeronautics, did they not have a single advisor?

[@richardgreen7225]

The position of the head probably had significant aerodynamic effects. It can obviously control center-of-gravity to affect pitch, turning the head could control yaw and roll. Be hard to do with simple servos and mechanics of that time period.

[@xyzzy1974]

I'm afraid I'd have to agree with that.

[@ckrogers1289]

exactly what i thought as i watched it fail again and again, the head functions as the rudder and elevons to control pitch, too bad they couldn't acknowledge that, since it's a bird with no tail, the head and neck becomes the tail.

[@kenwebster5053]

This is great, I wanted to build a RC pteranodon back in the late 70s or so, but only got so far as a small balsa chuck glider. The problem being that I was unsure if my planform (sweep) was correct. I see from this it probably was right. I have been into sailing and both hang gliding and RC comp in which I got a 2nd place at the LSF nationals with my own design back then. From what I see, there was a basic problem with loss of wing skin tension. at low angles of attack. The wing appears to stall, then dive resulting in loss of tension and flapping membrane. In this condition, there is no aerodynamic lift reaction to couple against weight for stability control. Therefore it can not recover from the dive. It is my understanding that the arrangement of tendons in the skeleton and along the trailing edge would allow the wing skin to remain in tension and the tips to move forward in the event of zero AOA (zero lift). This would allow a smooth airflow attached airflow over the centre reflex stabalising surface and a forward movement in centre of lift which would pitch the model up and recover from the dive. This is kind of similar to how a modern high performance sailing skiff responds to gusts, twisting off to shed excess lift in gusts and powering up in lulls automatically. That sailing technology didn't exist in the 70s, at least not to the extent is does now. Seems to me , this could be solved now. I have successfully designed and built an RC flying wing years ago and Ludwig Prandtl developed the bell shaped lift curve for flying wings completely solving the adverse yaw (stability) problems of Northrop's attempts. My chuck glider version has a stability issue and spiral dive due to tip stall. I hadn't twisted off the tip to compensate for lower Cl crit at the tip's relatively low Re. However, as I said above a tensioned skin would twist off at the tip under lift load but pull flat and move forward when unloaded increasing both tip AOA and area moment ahead of the AC producing force moment. In short I think it's worth revisiting this if it hasn't already been done.

[@xyzzy1974]

It's a fascinating question... Can a mechanical machine mimic an actual living organism, with a brain, sensory organs, pain sensors etc.. I guess we still have a long way to go, an even longer way in the 1970s, but you've gotta start somewhere!

[@nicoleblank1820]

Your mom is great and I love her but I definitely could not control my laughing from the launch montage 😂

[@xyzzy1974]

Thanks! Yes it is funny. Interestingly, Japan decided to block this video due to copyright issues over 'Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines'! Go figure :)

[@mblaber2000]

Flight seems to be predicated upon an appropriate neural processor to manage yaw stability with no vertical tail

[@xyzzy1974]

Doubtful.. no servos & certainly no CPU!

[@777Slots]

Plot Twist ; Engineers Seven Year Old Son Builds One in 5 Minutes and it Flies .....

[@xyzzy1974]

Ouch!! 🤣

[@mariuszpona862]

All they look like a Monty Python Flying Circus group. The type of film and the ending music are similar too.

[@jeffmullinix7916]

The airspeed was not there from hand launch . They need a cliff or do a bungy cord launch .

[@xyzzy1974]

Rhossili?

[@AARONANKRUM]

Using all that plastic to add stability sort of negates the whole experiment.

[@michaelbailey8729]

It dived into water for its prey looking at it.

[@woodypigeon]

Wonderful that

[@woodypigeon]

Goes to show that the brainy people were thinking hard about conservation, even back then.

[@gaz1tinsley]

0:53 and just like apollo, this launch is fake too ! it turns out that it was actually a perfect design, which also goes to show what an amazing designer God is !

[@Fatpumpumlovah2]

When ypu model a bat win vs the real thing lol.

[@threeeyedfish4363]

"We beat it to death. We never got it to do any proper soaring. Our conclusion is that we were just full of hot air from the beginning, and we never were very good at engineering at all. But we made a good model. It just didn't work."

[@loboxx337]

Fantasy akin to Disney.

[@gagesee2460]

lol

[@lovemcurvy3126]

Hilarious😁