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Re-Building the Wright Flyer
Isaac-Lew writes: "Several teams are trying to build a working replica of the first Wright Brothers' airplane." As the article says, "The catch is: Each team wants its plane to fly more or less as the Wrights' did." The only problem with that is that as Orville Wright put it, their plane was "exceedingly erratic," so the recreators have made some slight concessions to safety.
They're trying to build a version to fly at Kitty Hawk for the centennial celebration of the original flight, December 17th 1903.
What's your damage, Heather?
I'd be much more interested to see them try to recreate Da Vinci's one :)
:)
::evil laugh::
After his first flight, he refused to talk about it again
-- james
I spent some time looking at various web sites about this yesterday - seems the original Flyer would Dutch roll from take-off to landing, and was very unfriendly in ground-effect. This made landing - interesting - until they finally cracked it up. Good thing it went so slowly that it didn't hurt so much when they hit.
By today's standards, the thing's unflyable - horrible control authority, CG all wrong, underpowered... Orville and Wilbur had to be talented in the first place to fly it. Of course, this is the basic device that we started from to derive "today's standards". I hope none of the replica teams crack up... there's enough aviation hysteria these days, without a "reenactment" generating more bad press.
Must be fun, inventing a whole science, and a set of industries.
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
Won't they be in for a surprse when they find out it doesn't fly? Flying is a myth, just like that government-sponsored tale about men walking on the moon.
It says so in my 1962 Soviet Encyclopedia.
The part about discouraging workshop photographs in order to not leak info to the competition is weird. What modern high tech processes are there to protect, if you're trying to do something the same way it was done 100 years ago? I'd have thought most of the interest in a project like this was in being as open and historically accurate as possible.
Don't fly!!!!! You'll get too close to the sun and your wings will melt. (This from another early flight pioneer.)
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
There are two approaches that can be taken when restoring/rebuilding things
a) Make it exactly as it was
b) Make it better
Usually I'd say that you should always make it exactly as it was, but in this case lives would be at stake if you followed that approach - So there's an argument for at least *some* improvement.
The question is - how far should they go in their improvements...
Remember kids! Guns don't kill people - Americans kill people.
They might have tried to reconstitute Clement Ader's Eole but actually it seems the Wright brothers were the first who could prove they had flown.
:-)
Remind me of a movie
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Living near Dayton, OH, we're always hearing about stuff like this. I just helped rebuild this site about the Wright Brothers Flyer and go to Wright State University. Also, I hear Stickman uses one on occasion.
Some folks, mainly from New Zealand, make a strong case that Richard Pearse made the first powered flight. Pearse belives it was in March, 1904, but others claim March, 1903 or even 1902. Even if he wasn't first, his design is surprising modern: " a monoplane configuration, wing flaps and rear elevator, tricycle undercarriage with steerable nosewheel, and a propeller with variable-pitch blades driven by a unique double-acting horizontally opposed petrol engine."
Isn't it Clément Ader? He flew a powered plane in 1890.
Of course you blokes all know that kiwis were the first to fly, right? :)
Fair go, its true.
But while we're at it, don't forget Jacob Ellehammer, the Danish flying pioneer. He also flew in 1906 but as his plane was tethered to a central pole his flight is usually not considered the first flight in Europe even though he flew before Santos Dumont did.
My opinion? See above.
The place that I work is working with one of the teams to ensure that manufacture and treatment of the fabric used is as close as possible to the original. "Another area of research...is the determination of the finish used on the fabric. Air proofing the fabric may have been a trade secret of the Wright Brothers. There was mention of a finish in the Wright brother's log book, but never mentioned again."
I'm not using any names because I'm not sure that I'm allowed. I'm just one of the IT guys...
I think they are being a bit too cautious. It seems that all the teams, being worried about safety have forgotten a couple things about the airplane that do not apply to any plane they have ever known.
The fact is, that the Wright flyer only flew 12 seconds on that first flight, and I'm sure it didn't do it very quickly, or very high up. I highly doubt that a crash in the flyer would really do that much damage to the pilot. After all, the Wrights themselves seemed to come out of the final crash that first day with no ill effects. I doubt they even had protective pads on!
So if their goal is to crecreate the plane and recreate that first flight--I think folks are fretting just a bit too much about "safety" issues. These guys need to grow some cohones....
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
I've noticed some posts along the line of "Safety first, authenticity later".
I couldn't disagree more. If you're not going to try to duplicate the entire effort, including the not insubstantial risks involved with the dawn of any new era, what is the point? You might as well build an "Almost Scale" RC model and fly it around. It would serve exactly the same purpose with no risk. I'm not saying that all possible safety precautions shouldn't be taken (external to the airplane itself), but build it to origional spec, then decide to fly it or not.
I guess my point here is that I make the concious decision to get on my old BMW motorcycle every morning. I know it's dangerous, but it's also exciting and a throwback to a time, not so long ago, that we took risks in the name of advancement and the simple thrill of being alive. Recreating the Wright Flyer to modern standards is just a symptom of our overly cautious, airbag equipped, warning label on the coffie times.
Of course this will be modded down, my target audiance sits in a cube all day and considers a walk in the park an outing.
Wtf? Why not get a Cessna or something then? That is a 'improved' version. I mean, if they are going to build a replica celebrating the flight of 1903, they should make it excatly (sp) the same. (IMHO, of course)
I had the mental image of a rope winding it's way around a pole. to an ending fit for a cartoon.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The main trouble is - they flew it backwards. If they turned it around a flew it the other way, then they wouldn't have all the instability problems you get with carard configuration aircraft... IMHO.
:)
I wonder whether turning it round counts as a "consession to safety"....
Nick...
wasn't it the first POWERED flight?
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Eole was destroyed, but its immediate successor is displayed in full view in the CNAM museum in Paris. A heck of an impressive sight, I can tell you. :)
:)
The blurb seems to say Eole was built between 1882 and 1889 and first flew in 1890, so if true that puts it slightly ahead of the Wright brothers' Kitty Hawk Flyer, but it's not like it matters much, for what we care.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
There must be something that's a little bit special about this. When I read that one of these efforts is taking place just a few miles down the road from me (in Glen Ellyn, IL), I got excited. So did my kids.
It seems like such an audacious thing to do: and it's audacious times four.
Makes what all those boys were doing around the turn of the 20th century seem that much more amazing. Hats off to all.
Thought I'd do my bit for British Tourism and point out there is a pretty fantastic replica and some other groovy stuff at the science museum - all free to get in and they've also got some groovy robot stuff and a real Cray 1 (looks like a sixties sofa, you'll see what I mean if you go there!).
The first powered flight was conducted by John Stringfellow in 1848, more than 50 years before the Wright Bros. And well before other claimants light Pearse and Adler.
s .h tml
http://www.somerset.zynet.co.uk/attract/char_mu
So there.
You're comparing apples and oranges -- The Wright brothers made the first powered flight WITHOUT a "lighter-than-air" technology. Previously all succesful flights had been made using ballons, dirigibles, etc.
load "windows7"
What's interesting is that the hotbed of aviation in the 1906-1912 period was NOT the USA. It was France, who made up for lost time very quickly by building a lot of very innovative designs, designs that served as the basis for today's airplanes in terms of aerodynamic and structural design.
In that period, French pioneers like Alberto Santos-Dumont, Louis Blériot and the Duperdussin company were building monoplanes that used modern aerodynamic design. Indeed, the Duperdussin racer of 1912 had extremely sleek aerodynamics for its day thanks to the use of monocoque structural design.
In short, while the Wright brothers built the first successful heavier-than-air airplane, it was the French pioneers that laid the groundwork for designing the modern airplane.
In the mid-Hudson valley there's a place called "The Rhinebeck Aerodrome", where they have a combination ground museum and flight show of old aeroplanes. I took the family there, a few years ago, and saw quite a show.
I'm not enough of a student of history to remember most of the things they flew, but some of them were OLD. One of the newer things was a Sopwith Camel - as in Snoopy, the WWI flying Ace. Some of the planes took off at one end of the runway, flew the length at about 20 ft altitude, and landed at the other end. One really old plain had not conventional control surfaces - it worked by warping the wing surfaces.
The Sopwith Camel was interesting in that (apparently like other planes of its time) it had no throttle. But it did have a new innovation. The engine had nine cylinders, but four could be shut off. To get the same effect as throttling, the pilot ran on nine, five, or no cylinders. It was interesting to hear, when flying.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Like ostriches and emus. AM I wrong?
Infuriate left and right
If you go to the Wright Brothers Museum in Kitty Hawk, NC, there is a life size replica of the exact machine that the brothers flew. I was there just last month so a bunch of the details are still fresh in my head.
There replica was fully functional (minus the ability to fly). Basically, it had all the wiring hooked up to control the pitch, roll and yaw of the plane. To adjust the pitch, you pulled a lever in from of the pilot. To adjust the roll and yaw, you push the pilot's hips in a direction. To reduce the amount of controls, they had the roll and yaw hooked up to a single control.
While there I learned some pretty neat stuff that I had never realized. In order to get off the ground they needed a really light engine, but at the time engines weighed about 500lbs. So they hired a machinest to build them an aluminum engine (the first ever built). It weighed about 150 lbs and was a perfect counter-balance to whomever was flying the plane (engine on one side, pilot on the other).
The best part of there design was the safety devices they added. All they had was a wood bar in front of the pilot that he could grab onto in case of a crash.
At least what they said. No one have a single proff of it besides their word. I'm not saying they didn't it, but scientifically speaking, it was not audited and could not be reproductible so it's not science, it's speculation. Santos Dumont flight was seen by hundreds of people, have photographs, film and so on, was reproduced lots of times and was the real base for the comercial aviation as we all know. I agree that other technologies came first (balloons, dirigibles, etc), but Santos Dumont was the real thing to be consistently called a powered flying machine. But they all add their insights to the work of one man, Leonardo da Vinci, the real genius behind lots of our inventions: Parachute, Helicopter, Delta Wing, etc.
In 1960, some U of Washington students built a replica of the 1902 Wright glider. There's a picture hanging on the wall in the Aeronautics/Aerospace building of the group of guys that did it. They're all standing next to their glider on a grassy hill. It's pretty cool.
To those of you asking why anyone would spend their time building a replica of an old airplane or glider, I say this: Designing aircraft is not all engineering and science. There's an art to it and a few people truly find joy in it.
That's Mr. Eradicator to you.
trance-port
A little OT I know, but I saw the episode of Scrapheap Challenge (British TV program where teams compete to build a specified project out of materials found on a scrapheap within 10 hours!) where they have to build a flying machine.
One of the teams built something using a couple of old wings off a crashed plane, an aluminium ladder and some bits of expanded polystyrene (and sh*tloads of gaffa tape). The astounding thing is that they actually managed to get a few seconds flight from it using a tow launch system!
My point (if I have one) is that it seems a little boring if everything gets over analysed before the first test flight. Of course it makes sense to make the machines moderately safe - correct the obvious glitches, build with higher tolerances etc etc. But don't forget that part of the Wright Brothers' pioneering spirit was a "suck it and see" mentality. They must have been both excited and scared on the first test flight. The pilot for the Scrapheap Challenge project *definitely* had the same spirit and it made his flights extremely exciting!
A little planning goes a long way...
"The catch is: Each team wants its plane to fly more or less as the Wrights' did." The only problem with that is that as Orville Wright put it, their plane was "exceedingly erratic," so the recreators have made some slight concessions to safety.
What Orville Wright calls erratic, is what we nowadays call "inherently unstable". You want to fly something that is inherently stable.
There are a couple of ways to make a plane stable. Put a tail on it at the back (or move it back further if you already have one), or you can bend the wings backwards.
Those are changes that people "see" from a distance, and people will say: "But that's not the plane that the Wrights flew in 1908! It's different."
Oh, and you could change the profile of the wings, but then you have to have a plane that is almost stable to begin with, because this effect is so small. If carefully designed, you can build a "wing-only" plane (which was thought impossible because most wings are inherently unstable), like the helios (which as a matter of fact has its center of gravity well below the wing, one more trick to make a plane stable!).
There are advantages to building an unstable aircraft. For the Wrights that was: "Oops never thought of that". Currently the excuse is that you can use computers to make the thing stable, and then you don't have to have the inefficient things like a "tail" on the plane...
Roger.
Well, if you want to get into those sort of technicalities, the first flight in the United States of a balloon-powered aircraft was done by French balloonist Jean Pierre Blanchard on January 9, 1793. The location was Woodbury, NJ, which is now considered Deptford, NJ.
Its a bit hard not to know this fact since the town painted it on its water tower :)
Read about it here.
As a Connecticut native, I can't let this one lie.
r ch .html
Gustave Whitehead (Weiskopf) likely preceeded the Wrights, his planes have been rebuilt, and successfully flown as proof of concept.
http://www.deepsky.com/~firstflight/Pages/resea
Whitehead worked in Fairfield / Bridgeport Connecticut, but he had no pictures or movies like the Wrights had.
There is plenty of evidence - in the form of printed reports and eyewitness accounts - that Whitehead achieved powered flight before the Wrights. There is however, a good reason why this claim isn't pursued on any official level - in the agreement that was drawn up to finally bring the battered Wright Flyer to the Smithsonian in 1948 you'll find this clause:
"Neither the Smithsonian Institution or its successors, nor any museum or other agency, bureau or facilities administered for the United States of America by the Smithsonian Institution or its successors shall publish or permit to be displayed a statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the Wright Airplane of 1903, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight."
In other words, say we weren't first, and we take our bat and ball and go home.
If you were SI, you wouldn't touch Whitehead with a ten foot spar - why gamble on a re-creation when you have an original?
OK - a battered original - darn thing BLEW OVER like a kite and wrecked while they were all busy whooping it up after the first three flights, went thru a mud flood, and generally sat around gathering dust for thirty plus years...
Appropos today, a few more things everyone 'knows' and aren't really true - the cherry tree, silver dollar and wooden teeth yarns...
http://www.mountvernon.org/books/myths.asp
Enjoy
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
You make a good argument. The fact that XXX was invented by someone raised in culture YYY provides evidence that culture YYY has got something right. Something gets lost in the shorthand version though. If people remember
it is the values of freedom and independence they are proud of, that's fine. The shorthand version allows people to lose the distinction between American interests and the values these supposedly represent.
I still think there's something a bit weird in the way people are "Proud to be XXX" whether XXX is white, black, American, French, British or martian.
It's a bit like saying some celebrity was awfully brave for dying of cancer. As far as I can tell he didn't have any choice.
Pride is dangerous (it's number 1 of 7 on the deadly sins chart). Being proud of stuff which is purely an accident of birth is also pointless.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Ummmm....the Soviets had planes in 1962 (and *well* before that), why would it say flying is a myth?
My journal has hot
The only catch is that these "slight concessions" include an array of the latest generation of gryroscopes, a bleeding edge NASA lase-guidance system, wich detects a half inch deviation of the course, and, of course, military grade GPS, airbags, brakes with ABS, fly-by-wire technology, redundant hydraulic system, and so on...
I blame BattleBots and the USPTO and First Post!
Every design, new or old, has to be a stealth thing that emerges fully formed from the shop;
Everything has to be protected, numbered, and stamped "mine", new or not;
Anyone check to see if the teams are made up of denied FP'ers?
;-)
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
As an aside, bear in mind that Scrapheap Challenge (the original UK name and format for Junkyard Wars) has already seen teams build and fly:
Yes, that's right. If you haven't seen it, some poor mad fool got in a canard nosed "glider" that had been bodged up in day, and reached about 20mph and 15 feet before releasing the tow line. The "glider" went in a direction that could charitably be described as "not quite a plummet". He walked away. Then did it again, only faster. And again, reaching about 30mph. This is pretty much comparable with the speeds and energies in the Wright brother's creation.
The remote plane was an interesting one. It actually flew, in a very nearly controlled fashion. OK, it was built with modern scrap, but it was scrap, and it was built in a day.
I'm kind of wondering why the people building the replica airplanes feel the need to have human pilots in them. Remote control or even an expert system might do nicely if safety is a concern.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
From http://www.maria-brazil.org/sdumont.htm:
...
Santos-Dumont continued to work on dirigibles, but finally achieved his dream of flying in a heavier-than-air craft in October of 1906, when his 14 Bis flew a distance of 60 meters at a height of 2 to 3 meters. As far as the world knew, it was the first airplane flight ever and Santos-Dumont became a hero to the world press. The stories about the Wright brothers flights at Kitty Hawk and later near Dayton, Ohio, were not believed even in the US at the time.
Eventually, after much controversy, the Americans and the world - even though it remains a sore spot for Brazilians, to whom Santos-Dumont is known as the Father of Aviation - accepted that they had indeed flown a heavier-than-air craft before Santos-Dumont. Where he beat them, though, was in his idea of adding the first ailerons to the extremities of the wings. Think of it: aileron is the French diminutive for aile, or wing. And, of course, he never used any contraption or catapult or wooden tracks to push the aircraft or to aid in taking off. So, maybe the Brazilians are right...
668: Neighbour of the Beast
OK, I'll bite...Six feet, four inches? Or are these Troy inches? ;)
GTRacer
- must...sleep...now...
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
To be fair, the cherry tree, silver dollar, and wooden teeth are indeed merely yarns.
The Wright Flyer is not.
The agreement attached to the Wright Flyer has nothing to do with Whitehead, although it may have some effect any claims to be made in his behalf. For Decades the Smithsonian gave the honor of being first to fly to its own director, Langely. Langley's "plane" had no control surfaces, was launched off of a high platform, and "flew" from the top of the tower into the Potomac, killing its pilot.
It was acrimony over this that made Wilbur refuse to give the Wright Flyer to the museum until they recognized the Wrights flew before Langely.
Indeed, Langley's plane didn't so much as fly as *plummet.*
KFG
I helped set up the replica at the Wilbur Wright birthplace museum near Millville, Indiana USA.
We bought it from a guy in Illinois, name Buford Gross, who had built it to fly, though he chickened out and sold it to a museum, rather than risk damaging it. He built it with a synthetic fiber (dacron, i think) covering instead of cotton, because the FAA wouldn't let him fly it otherwise.
I just checked with a member of the museum board (my dad), and he informs me that Buford had added the 1905 flyer control enhancement (steerable rudder) as well. I'd just assumed that was accurate. No wonder a 1903 flyer is almost uncontrollable!