Vuia in the foto?

Maybe you know the site http://www.earlyaviators.com/emyster1.htm and try to help indentified the airplanes or the pilots in the pictures. It is posible in the last foto the second man on the cokpit to be Vuia? I'm not sure but looks like him.

Are you referring to this photo:
?

If yes, IMO neither men look like Vuia.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on August 10, 2006 01:37 pm

Why not?

Judged by the airplane, the photo must have been taken in the '10s, or early '20s. Besides the differences in the looks, the age difference is also too great (IMO).

Gen. Dénes

Not only the type of the plane, and the fact that the features of the faces are not that close. Vuia worked on his projects alone, and he did not have that kind of "peer" as the guy in the right of the photo shown in that website. Also, that biplane is a "two seats". As far as I know, the only flying machines Vuia tried to pilot where his own creations.

This post has been edited by Florin on August 10, 2006 05:01 pm

Florin! if you look careful the man in the back place is not the pilot, so even Vuia flow his own planes this not means necesary that hi could not be a passenger.Vuia flow first time in 1906 and died in 1950.You think that in this 44 years he did not cruise other airplanes. The first picture, the one vith Vuia is made in 1906, and the second one around 1920 probably. In this period of 14 years the features of the faces suffers a lot of changes.
Anyway this was just a supossitions.

I doubt it that the moustached man in the photo is Vuia. There is a better photo of Vuia on page 71 of "Romanian Aeronautical Constructions" by Dan Antoniu and George Cicos and there is little similarity.

It would take a lot of "stretching" of common sense to call what Vuia did as flying.
On March 18th 2006, he performed an unassisted take off, in fact the Romanian syntagm used for his achievement is "prima ridicare de la sol cu mijloace proprii" which literally translates as "first take off with on-board means". This has never been officially hailed as a "first flight".
This was just a 10 metre hop at an "altitude" of 1 metre (well within the capabilities of an Olympic jumper).
This happened two years and three months after Wright Brothers' flight (which took place on 17 December 1903).
No further flights were performed with this plane.
A revised version of this aircraft called Vuia 1bis was built and tested but it never flew.
He subsequently performed a few straight-line flights (the longest was 70 metres at an altitude of 5 metres) in another plane called Vuia No.2 in 1907. This is probaly the only instance when he actually flew as such.
All of this took place at a time when the Wright brothers were already flying fully manoeuvrable aircraft for extended distances at quite decent altitudes.
HTH
Radu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_flying_machine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traian_Vuia

This post has been edited by Radub on August 10, 2006 07:18 pm

Judgeing by photo, he could verry much be!
The only diference is his mouth that is slightly open, all the clues indicate that is allmost the same person, only the forhead profile is different, but that could be becouse of the angle.

Photo of Vuia
http://windowtoromania.org/images/celeb/tvuia.jpg

http://www.deltawing.go.ro/history/vuia.htm

The nose looks similar but the eyebrows do not really match.

HTH
Radu

This post has been edited by Radub on August 10, 2006 08:21 pm

In the comparing photos posted by Horia, the eyebrows looks the same.

Really? That photo is so touched-up, trimmed and skewed...Not the best...
Have another look at the eyebrows. Photo on the left - they are arched. Photo on the right - they are straight.
Just pointing it out. It makes no difference to me one way or another
Radu

No official bothered to witness the flight. Some newspaper reporters did.

The first "flight" of the Wright brothers was the same.

Here I think you are very wrong, according to what do I know.

PS: Internet and Wikipedia are very useful sources of information, but they are not always correct. Just few days ago, I opened a Canadian Internet file where I.A.R.-80 was presented as German plane.

This post has been edited by Florin on August 11, 2006 01:26 pm

Florin, you are a bit misguided.

The Wright brothers flew a number of times on 17 December 1903. With each flight, they extended the range and altitude. The airborne plane was photographed and that photo was published hundreds of thousands of times since - that photo is almost as famous as the photo ot the first man on the moon! http://www.libraries.wright.edu/icons/special/flyer.gif This was published in most newspapers at the time and cabled across the ocean to Europe. It is very likely that this flight was known to Vuia when he attempted his.
After that flight, the Wright Brothers flew a number at times at various shows and fairs many times over where they were witnessed by thousands of people.

Vuia performed only one "flight" on 18 March 1906. At the end of that flight, the plane was damaged (the right wing and the propeller were damaged when the craft hit a tree). That craft never flew again. He rebuilt it as Vuia 1bis, but that never flew, it was only ground tested. He never managed to repeat his "flight" before Santos Dumond did his. He built another plane called Vuia 2, which was able to lift-off but was not too manoeuvrable and he spent most of his time with this craft trying to make it more manoeuvrable. All of this info is available on pages 71 to 75 of "Romanian Aeronautical Constructions" by Dan Antoniu and George Cicos.

You are also wrong about Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not some "Canadian Internet File" put together by some kid on a cheap computer in a leaky basement, but rather an extremely reliable universal encyclopedia. It is a living project and if you have any reason to challenge anything posted there, you can contact them with your evidence and facts, and they will amend any errors. I am almost certain that the Wikipedia entry on Vuia was provided by an aviation historian, possibly Romanian. The Wikipedia entry on Vuia also matches the details provided by Antoniu and Cicos in their book and I have no reason to argue with that either.


HTH
Radu

This post has been edited by Radub on August 11, 2006 06:36 pm

The Wright brother build a glider and this one is not diferent in essence from Otto Lilenthal's gliders.The only diference is the mode of take-off.One from a hill and other helped by a push-off sistem.

What?
Are you serious?
Have another look at this photo: http://www.libraries.wright.edu/icons/special/flyer.gif
See the two propellers? That was no glider.
Do your research man!
Radu