Sopwith Bee

The Sopwith Bee was a small biplane built in 1916 as a personal aircraft for Harry Hawker, Sopwith's chief test pilot.

History

The Bee was a single-bay biplane powered by a 50 hp (37 kW) Gnome Omega rotary engine, intended for use by Hawker as a runabout and for aerobatics. As with contemporary Sopwith fighter aircraft, great effort was made to concentrate the heaviest components as close to the aircraft's centre of gravity in order to optimise manoeverability: this necessitated a large semi-circular cutout in the trailing edge of the upper wing to accommodate the pilot. Lateral control was achieved by wing-warping.

The Bee was subsequently fitted with a single synchronised Vickers .303 machine gun, possibly with a view to meeting the Admiralty's requirement for a small scout aircraft capable of operating from torpedo-boat destroyers, but this came to nothing and no further development of the type was carried out.

Specifications

Data from Mason

General characteristics

Sopwith

Sopwith may refer to:

Sopwith (video game)

Sopwith is a side scrolling shoot 'em up created by David L. Clark of BMB Compuscience in 1984. It was originally written to run on the IBM PC under DOS but there was also a port made near the time of its creation for the Atari 520ST. More recent versions have been ported to even more systems. The game involves piloting a Sopwith biplane, attempting to bomb enemy buildings while avoiding fire from enemy planes and various other obstacles.

History

Sopwith was created to demonstrate the "Imaginet" proprietary networking system developed by BMB Compuscience. David L. Clark, employed as a programmer at BMB, developed Sopwith as a multiplayer game. The multiplayer function will not operate without the Imaginet hardware and drivers. However, single player functionality was also included, with the player flying alone or against computer-controlled planes. Because of this, the game was widely distributed, even though the Imaginet system itself was not hugely successful. Sopwith 2 added the ability to play multiplayer over an async serial interface, but a BMB dictionary driver (NAMEDEV.SYS) and a BMB serial communications driver (SERIAL.SYS or SERWORK.SYS) is then needed.

Sopwith Type 860

The Sopwith Admiralty Type 860 was a 1910s British biplane seaplane torpedo bomber designed and built for the Admiralty by the Sopwith Aviation Company.

Design and development

First flown in December 1914 the Type 860 was an unswept biplane. The upper wings had a strut braced extension and ailerons were fitted on all four wings. It had twin strut-mounted floats under the fuselage and a float mounted under the tail and each wingtip. Some models were powered by a nose-mounted 200 hp 14-cylinder engine; others used a 225 hp (168 kW) Sunbeam Mohawk engine. Both models utilised a two-bladed propeller. It had two tandem open cockpits and could carry one 810 lb (367 kg) torpedo under the fuselage. The Sopwith Admiralty Seaplane Type 860 was built in two versions. The standard version had wings of equal span; the second version had a lower wing of shorter span. In both versions, the wings were designed to fold. The type remained in service with RNAS until at least 1916.

Operators

Bee

Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their role in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the European honey bee, for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently considered as a clade Anthophila. There are nearly 20,000 known species of bees in seven to nine recognized families, though many are undescribed and the actual number is probably higher. They are found on every continent except Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants.

Some species including honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees live socially in colonies. Bees are adapted for feeding on nectar and pollen, the former primarily as an energy source and the latter primarily for protein and other nutrients. Most pollen is used as food for larvae. Bee pollination is important both ecologically and commercially; the decline in wild bees has increased the value of pollination by commercially managed hives of honey bees.

Bee (newspaper)

Bee is the name of the following newspapers:

Bee, Piedmont

Bee (in Piemontese Bé) is a commune of 623 inhabitants in the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in the Italian region Piedmont. It is situated above the western shore of Lago Maggiore and is about 120 kilometres (75 mi) northeast of Turin and about 5 kilometres (3 mi) northeast of Verbania.

The commune extends over an area of about 3.3 square kilometres (1.3 sq mi) and includes two small frazione: Pian Nava lies above the principal settlement, while Albagnano is on the opposite side of the valley. There is also the residential village of Montelago.

Bee borders the following municipalities: Arizzano, Ghiffa, Premeno, Vignone.

Demographic evolution

Sister projects

Media related to Bee (VB) at Wikimedia Commons

References