Gossamer Albatross II — same span, two-thirds the area

Two years after the Condor, the same team crossed the English Channel under human power — Bryan Allen again, 12 June 1979, 2 h 49 min, second Kremer prize.

Same 96 ft of span. Area cut from 712.5 ft² to 488 ft², which takes aspect ratio from 12.9 to 18.9. The Condor only had to fly slowly enough to turn inside a figure-eight; the Albatross had to hold about 6 m/s for the better part of three hours over open water, and that is a different wing.

Which Albatross this is

The airframe with a complete published geometry table is Albatross II, the aircraft NASA Dryden flight-tested in 1980 and the one now at the Museum of Flight. The Channel-crossing Albatross I differed in exactly two dimensions — 93.8 ft (28.6 m) span and 474 ft² (44.0 m²) — and CR-3627 states the differences are small enough that the flight-test results apply directly to it.

That distinction matters because the widely-copied secondary figure pairs a 97 ft 8 in (29.77 m) span with the 488 ft² area. CR-3627, working from the official plans, gives 96.0 ft for the airframe that has 488 ft². This model follows the report.

Table A-1b

Taper ratio is quoted two ways because the real planform is not one taper — the outer panel runs 0.71 and the effective figure across the whole wing is 0.85. This model draws the single effective taper, which is the published number a one-taper planform can honour. As on the Condor, no twist is published, so none is applied.

Trim

The report's standard flight-test condition is 20 ft/s (6.1 m/s) at 222 lb (988 N), where the whole aircraft makes L/D 28; its high-speed condition is 28 ft/s (8.5 m/s) at L/D 24. Same Lissaman 7769 as the Condor at nearly the same lift coefficient — a third less area under nearly the same weight simply has to be flown about a quarter faster.

This is a fit to published dimensions, not a replica. foil.tools draws a single-taper planform shaped by four splines; the real wing has structure this model does not carry. Span, area and section match the published figures — the metrics above are what this geometry actually produces, so where they differ from a published number, the difference is the fit.

Sources: NASA CR-3627, Jex & Mitchell, Stability and Control of the Gossamer Human-Powered Aircraft by Analysis and Flight Test, 1982 — Tables A-1b, A-2b and A-3, and the Albatross I/II comparison in section 2 · Conigliaro, AIAA 83-0647 · MacCready Gossamer Albatross (Wikipedia)

The polars above are foil.tools' own analysis of this model, not published performance data for the aircraft. They are AeroBuildup — strip theory with NeuralFoil sections — for the wing alone, so they exclude the fuselage, the undercarriage and everything else that makes a real aeroplane slower than its wing. Read them for how this shape behaves, and for comparison against the other wings here — not as a figure for the aircraft. Open it in the designer and run your own.