Archaeopteryx airfoil. This would have reduced stall speed by up to 6% and turning radius by up to 12%. The feathers of "Archaeopteryx" were asymmetrical. This has been interpreted as evidence that it was a flyer, because flightless birds tend to have symmetrical feathers. Some scientists, including Thomson and Speakman, have questioned this. They studied more than 70 families of living birds, and found that some flightless types do have a range of asymmetry in their feathers, and that the feathers of "Archaeopteryx" fall into this range. The degree of asymmetry seen in "Archaeopteryx" is more typical for slow flyers than
Granger Archaeopteryx Granger Archaeopteryx The Granger Archaeopteryx is a British single-engined, tailless parasol monoplane designed and built in the late 1920s by two brothers, R.F.T. and R.J.T. Granger. The sole example built is currently under restoration for flight. The layout of the Archaeopteryx was inspired by the tailless swept-winged Westland-Hill Pterodactyl, itself derived from the aircraft of J. W. Dunne. These aircraft had been designed to resist stalling and to allow easy and safe recovery if they did. The Archaeopteryx follows the Dunne D.7 in being a parasol wing monoplane, however it differs in being the first aircraft of tailless swept configuration