Guys, Forgive me for having a strong negative opinion about something here, but I hate the idea of installing a parachute to lower you and the airplane to the ground, in the event that you have a serious problem that compromises it’s controllability.
In addition to the likely embarrassment of showing up at Aunt Minnie’s lawn party dressed to kill, so to speak, in a DVII, there are several other problems. What if the problem is a fire? How are you going to modify the airframe design not only to take the load on the airframe imposed by the parachute, but the loads of ground impact? For example think about what happens if you come down with the fuselage spanning two park benches such that a significant buckling load tends to fold the fuselage at the cockpit? Remember, you are going to be along for the ride and you are going to have little, if any, control of where you go or how you land once you’ve deployed this thing. Also, if your cockpit is at all original, it looks as though it would be a terrible place to be in this sort of landing, sort of the “Spanish Maiden” of aviation.
The WW1 planes I’ve looked at closely seem to have very cramped cockpits, which do not look likely to have room for both you and a parachute should you choose to wear one, rather than build it in. Also, it appears that these planes will be flown mostly around airports and at altitudes too low for parachuting.
Maybe the best idea is to fly from a big field where you can land straight ahead no matter what happens, until you do get to altitude, such as a lake in Joe’s case.
Sid, I know you think the built-in parachute is really a good idea. Help me with this. Maybe I’m missing something.
