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From CAD User Mechanical Magazine  Vol 22 No 10 - OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2009

SolidWorks was used in the reverse engineering of the Grose-Feary Monoplane - the 1909 challenger for the first UK-built plane to fly the Channel

Amidst the potential demise of one of the arms of our defence forces haven't you heard, some people are asking whether we actually need a Royal Air Force! - we have had heartwarming stories in the press recently that remind us of the courage and resourcefulness of the early pioneers of aviation. Courage (or perhaps foolhardiness) being particularly abundant, as the early flying machines were little more than prams on wheels. And not all of them actually managed to leave the ground!

THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN ...

This year we celebrate 100 years of UK- built flying machines. We know that 1909 was a significant year because a prize was offered by the Daily Mail of £1,000 for the first British built plane to fly a circular mile, following Colonel Cody's maiden UK flight a year earlier in an aeroplane produced elsewhere!

A couple of enthusiasts, Alfred Grose and Neville Feary, from Oakington, near Cambridge, set about building a monoplane to secure the prize. As the UK was hardly a leader in producing aero engines at that stage, they had to go to The Advance Motor Manufacturing Co. of Northampton, a manufacturer of motorcycles, to purchase a couple of their 2 cylinder engines, and bolt them together to make a V4 aero engine.

The fuselage and wings were built at the Windham Detachable Motor Body Co. in Clapham Junction. The aeroplane was produced, but lacked the power to get it off

the ground! Despite lightening the aircraft the engine proved temperamental, and overheated at speeds over 30mph. However, before they could even sort out the problem, the prize was snatched away from them by another dashing aviator. The project was, quite literally, grounded - and the plane dismantled.

Until, that is, Nick Harrison, another Oakington resident, came across the original plans 10 years ago. Immediately seized with the idea of recreating the aircraft, he believing that with modern knowledge and techniques he could build a replica that could fly. But first of all he had to find a copy of the original engine.

Nick spent two years in a fruitless quest, until a Google search unearthed what was probably the last such engine in existence. Unfortunately by the time he got to it the owner had died, and his wife had sold it to an enthusiast in Australia! Luckily he managed to persuade the new owner to part with it, and set about using it as a model to build a couple of newer engines, which he could experiment with.

This is where SolidWorks comes in. The components of the engine were scanned in 3D and the point clouds used to define new parts. using the 3D modelling software. A solid instance of reverse engineering that enabled a unique and valuable source to be used to create a digital model, from which could be built identical models or, following analysis, slight variants, to test Nick's hypothesis that an improved version of the engine could be made.

He had other problems to overcome too not least finding a company that could cast the parts as finely as Nick needed them!

The wing sections were also created in SolidWorks, after Nick was able to input original designs from life-sized faded blueprints - a task done with difficulty and piecemeal. The ones he used were actually from Bleriot's machine. Scanned in and converted to JPEGs, Nick worked out the wrinkles to create the geometry in SolidWorks. The fuselage was worked out from the lengths of components already known, and the study of photographs accumulated over the last ten years, to calculate the remaining dimensions. The airframe in the accompanying image was built by hand and assembled by Nick and his colleagues.

A further bit of funding is now being sought to commission Newton Propellers to manufacture the propelller.

Overall, the whole process involved some form of reverse engineering or other. Besides enabling the monoplane to be built as close a possible to the original, the resulting digital data acts as an insurance against the loss of any component.

Supported by Marshall Aerospace, Nick expects to have the plane, minus engine, ready for showing at Duxford next year and in the not too distant future, getting some mad flyer to attempt lift-off. Six feet for a hundred yards or so would be a bonus. I urge you to visit the website to follow its progress! www.oakingtonmonoplane.co.uk
www.solidworks.com

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