Pilcher’s Hawk

A procedural model built in Blender from the type’s published dimensions, painted as The original Hawk, the hang glider Percy Pilcher built in 1896 and flew at Eynsford in Kent and at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire, where he was fatally injured in it on 30 September 1899, now owned by National Museums Scotland and conserved in 2016: two wings of cotton cloth on nine radiating bamboo ribs each, braced by wires to two upright masts joined by wooden beams, a narrow lens-shaped opening between the wings where the pilot hung by his forearms, a triangular tailplane and fin carried high on a bamboo boom, and two small wheels on sprung bamboo legs, shown standing level on its wheels and mast feet: cream cloth with a tan bound edge, tan patches and leather straps at the rib tips, dark varnished bamboo and wood, and dark wooden wheels, as it hangs in the Science and Technology galleries of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh (no drawing of the Hawk exists: the shape is measured from photographs and Pilcher’s own figures, and the height and tail position are estimated). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · all 215 models · download .glb (494 KB) · Plate 02 in The Hangar