Fly like a bird.
THE
DICKENSON WING STORY.
By Graeme Henderson.
Eclipsed by the
size of the sport that he founded, John Dickenson’s story has remained a mystery in spite of the many efforts over the years to
highlight his eminent role. Myths abound, credit has gone to people who have no
true claim to it, and Australia’s greatest contribution to global aviation has
continually been overlooked. As the absolute founder of the sport John
Dickenson deserves better than this.
John Dickenson, at age 44.
In the spring of 1963 an Australian, Mr John
Dickenson, built the aircraft that evolved into the modern Hang Gliders built
today. Often mistakenly called ‘The Rogallo Wing’, it should correctly be
called ‘The Dickenson Wing’. It is important to note that Dr Francis M. Rogallo
played only a small part in the building of this aircraft, no more than say
Otto Lilienthal, or The Wright Brothers, or even Leonardo Da Vinci.
A modem 2006 Dickenson wing
As a young boy growing up on
the Northern Beaches of Sydney, John had been fascinated by flying things. He
often watched seagulls soar at Flat Rock, he built and flew model aircraft, and
he was particularly attracted to minimum structured flying machines. This early study
of aviation, although informal, was a vital ingredient in the quite amazing
development of ‘The Dickenson Wing’: This story is testimony to the old saying
that success happens when preparation meets opportunity.
John Dickenson flying his Auto Gyro
John became an Electronics
dip. Engineer. In 1955 he married Amy Holmes-Prinold and they moved to Grafton
in 1960. He began playing around with Auto Gyros, even designing parts of the
spar for his rotor blades. These were machined by Mr Pat Crowe. Pat will appear
again as the boat driver when we get to the first flight story.
A water ski kite. Although John couldn't get one to work, many others did.
In early 1963 one of the members of the
Grafton Water Ski Club who had been towing John along the beach in the Auto
Gyro, mentioned this back at the club. John was a water skier and a club
member. Water Ski Kites had been around for a while, and since John was
obviously not afraid of flying the club asked him to build and to fly, a Water
Ski Kite as part of the club’s contribution to the Jacaranda Festival. John
agreed to give it a go and set about building models. He had no plans, only
descriptions of ski kites to go on. John tried a few kite designs and all of
them seemed to be fine until he suspended a weight beneath them, at which point
they all developed a strong propensity for locking into a screaming dive that
only the ground could stop.
As John worked on this, he
started to hear the stories of the attempts by people to fly these kites at
previous festivals, ‘The Kite Stunt’, it seemed, was a real crowd puller. John
learned that some of the previous attempts had resulted in stunning crashes,
the impact of which was dampened somewhat by the water, but were none the less
severe. Not wanting to be yet another casualty, John set out to build a glider
based on the wing of the Flying Foxes - large fruit eating bats with a wing
span of about 1.3 metres - that are abundant in the Northern Rivers of N.S.W.
Bottom view of a flying fox.
John built models and they
flew really well with a good glide angle. The problems were the complexity and
the expense involved to build one, and also, he had no control system! It was
while working on these problems that a member of the water ski club showed John
a photo of the Flexible Gliding Parachute, designed for N.A.S.A. by Dr
F.M.Rogallo. Dr Rogallo was interested in flexible wings and self-inflating
pneumatic structures. Borrowing on sail designs, he had removed the mast and
spars, and using two triangular sails he built a ‘Rogallo Wing’.
A flexible gliding parachute, Rogallo Wing, with Gemini space craft suspended
beneath it.
John took the two triangular
sails and put the mast (crossbar) and spars, (leading edges and keel) back in.
He built a model based on the photo and to his surprise its glide angle was
just as good as the much more complex ‘Bat Wing’ models. At this point in time
John’s motivation was to keep his word to the club members and to fly something
at the Jacaranda Festival. Hopefully something safer than the kites he had
already built.
The simplicity of the Triangular sails consigned
the ‘Bat Wings’ to history. But John still had a problem as did the others
around the country and around the world, who unbeknown to John, were working
with similar wings. In particular were two blokes in Sydney, Dick Swinbourne
and Mike Burns, whose company Aerostructures had begun designing weight shift
control “Skiplanes” in 1962. They were a Delta Wing on floats, that used a
mechanical weight shift system controlled by a ‘joy stick’. Dick and Mike had
obtained information from N.A.S.A, and were qualified Aeronautical Engineers.
They will join the story again later.
A vertical wing is a sail. A horizontal sail is a wing.
Apart from Aerostructures, everyone else’s
problem was this: how do you control these aircraft? Hanging by ones armpits
between two parallel bars and swinging ones legs about was a common practice,
but it was inefficient from a control point of view. The rule was simple:
‘Don’t fly higher than you are prepared to fall’.
One afternoon
John took his daughter to a nearby park and while swinging his daughter on the
swing, his mind continued to churn on the problem of controlling the wing. It
had to be simple, time was slipping by, and a nasty dive into the Clarence
River on a kite was looming.
“Swing me sideways Daddy”, said Helen, “Swing
me sideways”.
“Uh, what?” says her not so attentive father.
“Swing me sideways!”
John swung Helen sideways and ‘Eureka!’ it
was so simple! Hang on a swinging seat beneath the wing, and have something to
swing against. The rest was simple mathematics and experimentation.
Starting with small models,
John made some basic calculations to work out the wings optimum size and then,
through physical testing and more calculations he set about building a half
size model. This was towed behind a boat and it allowed John to test his
control system. With the control system apparently working John set about
getting the materials to build the full sized Glider. His budget was tiny. In
the end the materials cost a mere twelve pounds - twenty four dollars. The
chosen and tested membrane was a length of blue plastic tube that when cut to
lengths was normally used to cover bunches of Bananas to protect them from
birds and sun damage. John cut the tubes open and laying them out with some
overlap, he fixed both sides with ½ inch blue plastic electrical tape. The keel
and leading edges were one and a half inch square, clear, Oregon, i.e.,
straight grained, with no knots, or flaws. The wood was carefully selected with
two lengths of equal weight chosen for the leading edges, and the next best one
for the keel.
John Dickenson about to test the half scale model. 1963.
The cross bar was a length
of T.V. antenna aluminium, with a length of turned wood jammed into it to give
it the required strength. If you look closely at the first glider, the cross
bar is well forward of the pilot. This was due to its length restrictions - in
later models the cross bar went back to the top of the A-Frame.
Rod Fuller lands the Mark I. 1963.
The plastic wrapped around the leading edges
and was attached with a length of ‘D Section’ wood and nails. Clothesline wire cable was used for the
bracing wires, and seat belt webbing was used to make the seat.
Rod Fuller looks down from the Mark I.
All was ready and on Sept 8th 1963
the crew assembled at the Grafton Water Ski Club to give it a go. John went first but between centre of gravity
issues and inexperience, he was unable to get off the water. Exhausted he handed the task to Norm
Stanford, who also was unable to get into the air. The next brave soul, Bob Clements, went up
briefly, came down quickly and never tried again. Next came a man not to be trifled with - Rod
Fuller, club water ski champ and dare devil, he would go on to be a founding
member of the Grafton Gliding Club and become a respected member of the Gliding
Fraternity. On this day Rod got to hold
every hang gliding record in the book, and he became the first person to
experience the feeling of flying a Dickenson Wing.
Pat Crowe was driving the boat; He and Rod
had agreed on their signals- if Rod nodded his head Pat was to go faster; if
Rod shook his head Pat was to slow the boat. The wind was from the South, about
45 degrees to the river bank, so they had decided to head out into the river
and then to turn into the wind before they would have a go at flying. Once they
were headed into the wind Rod nodded his head, Pat opened the throttle, Rod
lifted the nose slightly and shot straight to the top of the rope, 140 feet off
the water and nearly right above the boat!
Rod Fuller skiing with the Mark I.
These blokes had no idea
about wind gradients. Pat looked up to see Rod shaking his head furiously. Pat
however could not slow the boat too much, as at 18 mph the boat would drop off
‘the plane’ and virtually stop dead in the water. Pat had great concerns for
his mate as no-one knew what would
happen if he just stopped. Pat was worried that Rod would overfly the boat and
be slammed into the water ahead of him.
Rod was still getting over
his initial terror. The centre of gravity was a little far back, and while
going up was easy he had no way to get down. After a few seconds, Rod calmed
down enough to start taking in the view and then he looked up at the Banana
Plastic and electrical tape sail. There was only the slightest ripple and no
obvious strain on the plastic. He quickly gained confidence in the controls,
there was plenty of feedback and he had plenty of roll control.
This 2006 model, competition Hang glider is a direct descendant of the Mark I
Dickenson Wing.
All was going well and they
would have kept going down the river until they figured out how to get Rod down
safely, but when Pat looked ahead he realised that the Grafton bridge meant
that was not an option. They were only seeing if the wing would fly and having
discovered that it would, some of the inadequacies of their briefing became
apparent. There had been no thought given to this stage of the affair and Pat
was alone and worried. Rod was much higher than the bridge so Pat began a long,
gentle turn using every inch of the river. At the top of the rope Rod was right
over the bridge, and as Pat just skimmed the far bank, Rod was flying over the
buildings on the bank.
John Dickenson flying the Mark III, Grafton 1965.
Now that they were
travelling with the wind, the wing began to lose airspeed and altitude. Rod
returned to the water and skied back towards the clubhouse before being upended
into the river by the tail wind. The ultimate flying machine had been built,
and flown!
The Aerostructures Skiplane.
John Dickenson glides in for a landing, note the tow rope dragging in the river.
Amy
sewed the yellow nylon sail for the second Mark III, (the first Mark III had
banana plastic). This glider had an all aluminium frame, battens and a
scalloped cut to reduce sail flutter at the trailing edge.
Amy Dickenson carries a folded Mark IV in one hand, 1965.
Mark IV followed,
Duraluminium frame, Terylene sail, stainless steel bolts and cables, and easily
foldable for transporting.
Rod and John flew often for the next two years until John moved back
to Sydney, where he eventually met Mike Burns. Mike’s company, Aerostructures
began making Gliders using John’s design in a deal with John. Aerostructures
took John Dickenson’s backyard project, and applied professional aircraft
standards to it. This put the future of the aircraft type, hang gliding and
micro-lighting, on a sound footing. There was a 100% safety record with all of
these wings up until this time.
The Aero Structures Skiplane.
The next major
breakthrough for the sport was when Bill Moyes and Bill Bennett, were taught to
fly the glider by John and Mike. They bought gliders from Aerostructures, and took John’s wing to the world. John continued
to collaborate with Bill Moyes for the next few years, helping Bill in his
quest to improve the performance of the wing. The rest, as they say, is
history. In a modern hang glider you will find many refinements but you can
still see the basic features John Dickenson built in Grafton.
John Dickenson lands after breaking the endurance record. 1969.
In September 1963, a whole new type of
aircraft was invented - its simplicity is beautiful. John Dickenson invented
it, and built it with only the simplest of tools. Rod Fuller - strong, quiet,
champion water skier, and pilot at heart - flew it and proved its worth. Pat
Crowe kept his head and dealt with the problem of; ‘What do we do if it
works?’.
Times have changed, Health
and Safety issues have removed the swings from the park where Helen inspired
her father. It required the right place, the right man, and the right time. It
took all of these people mentioned, plus the generosity of the other members of
the water ski club. They didn’t have to let these bird men fly and take up
precious water skiing time. It took the mighty Clarence River, wide enough to
allow them to avoid wrapping Rod around the bridge. There was no release for
the first attempts, and the two 70 foot long ski ropes had no weak link.
One of the Drawings sent by John Dickenson to Dr F.M.Rogallo, after Dr Rogallo
wrote to John Dickenson asking for details about Johns' glider. 24th November
1964
If you were to take John’s design back in
time, it could have been built 5000 years or more ago, light linen or silk,
would make perfect sail material, light weight timbers were available or
Bamboo, strong ropes would have done the rest. Leonardo Da Vinci could have
built a ‘Dickenson Wing’ as could Otto Lilienthal. This simplest of all
aircraft remained hidden from all but one man. His basic maths and lack of
formal training allowed him to think outside the box. His experience with
flexible bat wings and his childhood fascination with building minimum
structured model aircraft, plus a photo of Rogallo’s gliding parachute and his
daughter’s request to be swung sideways, was all it took. Not much… Just
preparation meeting opportunity.
Grafton and John Dickenson’s
gift to the world is one of the purest forms of flying machine known to man, a
wing by itself, not the poor relation of the other types of aircraft. ‘The
Dickenson Wing’ has evolved into the ultimate flying machine, today’s slick,
fast and safe hang gliders. The way to appreciate that is to learn to fly one,
and live man’s age old dream to soar like a bird.
Rod Fuller and John Dickenson with the finished replica, 7 sept, 2006
On the 28th of
October 2006, the Clarence Valley Council will unveil a Memorial to mark this
event. Hang Gliders will be included as part of the South Grafton Aero Club’s
Annual Muster and a part of the
Jacaranda Festival Parade. A replica of the original glider has been built and
it ground handled perfectly, under our agreement this glider will not be flown.
The Northern Rivers Hang Gliding and Paragliding Club will be having an
aero-tow fly-in at the South Grafton Aero Club. Bill Moyes is bringing one of
the Aerostructures Mark IV gliders, plus a boat and a winch, to be flown from
the site of the first flight. Pilots and Aircraft of all types are welcome to
attend. For more information email
Graeme at flyingfree@aapt.net.au .
Note: Regretfully Amy Dickenson passed away in January 2002, after a long battle with breast cancer.