Flying for Fun - 2003/12

150 MODEL AVIATION
D.B. Mathews
F l y i n g f o r F u n
909 N. Maize Rd., Townhouse 734, Wichita KS 67212
“THE WRIGHT brothers were right” is a
line from a song in some forgotten musical.
However, considering this is being written for
the December 2003 issue, the sentiment is
most appropriate. On December 17 at 10:35
a.m. Eastern Standard Time, we celebrate the
100th anniversary of the first powered mancarrying
flight.
You are probably aware of that event and
the story behind it, so I’ll see if I can relate
some history you may not know. Most of
what follows is from a magnificent biography
of the Wright brothers: Wilbur and Orville by
Fred Howard. This is the sixth biography of
the brothers written for adults, and, unlike the
previous works I’ve read, this is not an
“authorized” (sanitized) work.
“Authorized” biographies always seem to
be complimentary and free of any “warts or
bumps.” That’s probably because the person
being written about or the immediate
survivors retain the right to edit what has been
written.
Fred Howard’s writing is less “glitz and
glamour” and more hard facts, yet it presents
the subject in a precise, factual, and
entertaining manner. I highly recommend this
book to those with an interest in the
development of manned flight and the role
that model airplanes played in that process.
When I was young the term “preacher’s kid”
(PK) was derogatory, lying that somehow
such children had to behave more sedately
All photos this month are of Shawn Strunk’s (Wichita KS) Pat Tritle-designed Dare kit of
the 1903 Wright Flyer. George Sauer took the photos.
and virtuously than the rest of us. I grew up
next door to a United Brethren parsonage and
became sensitive to these unrealistic
expectations of my playmates.
Wilbur and Orville Wright were PKs.
Their father, Milton Wright, was first a
minister and later the Midwest bishop of the
United Brethren church (which was later
absorbed into the United Methodist Church).
As a result, the boys grew up with those same
expectations pressed upon them, except they
did have the advantage of living in the large
town of Dayton, Ohio.
I was unaware that the Wright family
church was the same denomination as the one
I (and Dwight Eisenhower) grew up in and
that Orville, Wilbur, and their sister Katharine
stopped attending church as adults.
Milton returned home from a churchrelated
visit in 1878 and brought a toy
helicopter for the boys. It was made from
cork, bamboo, and paper, and it was powered
with windup rubber bands, in the style of
Alphonse Penaud of France. As Bill Hannan
has been telling us for years, these Penaud
toys flew well, and the Wright boys were
charmed by theirs.
Subsequently they designed and built
several variations of the Penaud models, and
they learned that the larger the helicopter, the
worse it flew. Thus two kids became
fascinated with the concept of flight through
rubber-powered model airplanes. That has a
familiar ring. But model aircraft became
much more significant to the Wrights in the
following 25 years.
Definition, Please: As I researched for and
prepared this month’s material, I continually
searched for a clear definition of what a
model airplane is. Does the term imply a
miniature representation of a full-scale
prototype, an unmanned flying device, or
perhaps a cheap, toylike, fake airplane?
A visit to the Joe Nall event I wrote about
in the October column, a look at
contemporary missile development, or a look
at the model aircraft flown around us quickly
December 2003 153
debunks the previous three attempts at
definition. So what exactly is a model
airplane?
Late AMA President Johnnie Clemens
championed the use of the term “miniature
aircraft,” and it’s easy to understand why. The
sufficiently documented work of Otto
Lilienthal in Germany and Octave Chanute,
Samuel Langley, and Alexander Graham Bell
in the US involved the use of miniatureaircraft
gliders that were successfully flown
into the wind and downhill, tethered and via
free flight. Some even carried a man hangglider
style.
There are other pioneers I didn’t mention
in the previous paragraph, and they have
remained controversial figures in the history
of flight. Fred Howard wrote:
“What the Wright brothers did was not
accomplished in a vacuum and their story is
incomplete without accounts of the efforts of
other men who tried to solve the problem of
flight—not only the honorable men (Chanute,
Langley, Bell, etc.) but also the sometimes
self deluded experimenters, mountebanks, and
outright fakirs and liars whose fraudulent
claims have resulted in the survival into the
present decade of belief in such mythical
exploits as the ‘lost flight’ of Gustavo
Whitehead and the very elastic 100 foot glide
made by John Montgomery of California in
1883—or was it 1884?”
In the cases of Otto Lilienthal, Octave
Chanute, Samuel Langley, and the Wrights,
photographs exist of the claims of successful
flights in those late years of the 19th century.
The roll-film camera (box Brownie, if you
will) had yet to be developed by Eastman, but
glass-plate cameras were fairly common and
not that expensive.
However, no photos have ever been found
to prove the flights of Gustavo Whitehead,
etc. Surely those experimenters knew
someone with a camera or could easily have
hired someone to take documentation photos.
The Wrights clearly understood this need for
photo documentation, and they carried a plate
camera to the Outer Banks of North Carolina
each year as a part of their supplies.
Almost all record attempts or important
scientific moments require the presence of a
person or people of recognized honor to be
witness(es). Surely a judge or educator could
have been found to certify their witnessing
these events. Although it may seem hardhearted
to prick the balloon of Gustavo
Whitehead’s (and others’) supporters, there is
simply no valid proof of the claims made.
Not only did the Wrights see a need for
authenticating photos, but they also arranged
a signal system to alert the coastal rescue
squads and nearby fishermen when they were
ready to fly, and welcomed them to watch. If
you’ve seen the photos of their early flights,
did you notice how many
spectators/witnesses are in the pictures?
I find interest in the photo of Samuel
Langley’s steam-powered, unmanned flying
machine ascending from the top of a barge in
the Potomac River. He had designed and
built more than 30 light model airplanes
powered with twisted rubber to determine the
best wing arrangement for larger models. He
settled on a tandem-winged—one behind the
other—design with propellers and a small
steam power unit between.
Samuel was secretive—hence his use of a
workshop/launching platform in a river 35
miles from Washington DC, with no press
allowed—but he did invite his friend
Alexander Graham Bell to take pictures from
a small boat while Samuel observed from
shore.
When Samuel successfully free-flighted a
large steam-powered model from the barge to
a reported altitude of nearly 100 feet,
Alexander Graham Bell snapped away. Only
one plate turned out, but there is a photo.
The Wrights learned of Otto Lilienthal’s
gliding flights from articles in the September
1894 Mc Clune’s magazine. They were
illustrated with 10 halftone photos and nine
illustrations. Otto Lilienthal crashed and died
of a broken back in 1896.
Samuel Langley, who had the full
backing and financial support of the
Smithsonian Institution, of which he was
executive secretary, announced publicly that
he would discontinue his experiments after a
series of failures with his designs. He
resumed research toward a man-carrying unit
under the financial auspices of the War
Department at the outbreak of the Spanish-
American War.
Octave Chanute was another
experimenter who took a scientific approach
to developing a man-carrying airplane. Of
French birth, he was a successful and
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respected civil engineer. He designed the
Chicago, Illinois, stockyards in 1867 and the
first bridge over the Missouri River at Kansas
City in 1870.
As a young man, Octave collected
whatever information he was able to find on
human flight. At 32 he found that this hobby
was interfering with his work, so he tied a
ribbon around the information and did not
return to it until 1890, when he published a
series of articles in The Railroad Engineering
Journal from October 1891 through December
1893.
Those articles earned Octave the status of
senior statesman for aerial navigation, as flying
was called at that time. This helped lighten the
stigma of lunacy that had been attached to the
subject. Octave designed and constructed
several models that had been successfully
glided and flown tethered in the wind.
Octave was also extremely helpful and
encouraging to the Wright brothers via a huge
volume of correspondence on the subject, visits
to their facilities in Dayton, Ohio, and trips to
the Outer Banks on several occasions. He
“loaned” the Wrights an accurate anemometer
to measure wind speeds and an inclinometer
for plotting angles of attack.
In later years, perhaps as a result of age,
Octave left the impression with the public that
he had been the teacher and mentor of the
Wright brothers, which is totally in error. His
design concepts were impractical and have no
relationship to the brothers’ work.
Octave’s offers of financial help, and
guidance to charitable underwriters, were
Visit the Centennial
of Flight web site
to find the latest information about events associated with
the 100th Anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first powered
flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and the history of
aviation and aerospace. Learn about events in their
hometown of Dayton, Ohio, and in the Outer Banks of North
Carolina. Learn about events being scheduled at airports and
other locations throughout the country.
The web site also contains a great collection of photographs and
historical documents detailing the Wright Brothers’ activities
and the history of aviation and aerospace.
Teachers and Students: Use this web site to
help study the invention of flight and its
impact on society.
Event Organizers: Use this web site to
announce your Centennial of Flightrelated
event(s).
www.centennialofflight.gov
This web site is an official function of the United States Centennial
of Flight Commission, established by Public Law 105-389 (11/13/98),
as amended by Public Law 106-68 (10/6/99).
December 2003 155
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rejected out of hand by the Wrights. This
refusal may have been motivated by the
brothers’ conservative background and
concern about getting distracted from their
regular work in their bicycle shop.
The Brothers Wright: As young boys the
Wrights were interested in printing, and they
built several workable press units from scrap.
They published a neighborhood newspaper,
then later a citywide weekly. This evolved into
a successful printing business.
The brothers sold the printing shop and
joined the national bicycle craze that swept the
country in the last part of the 18th century.
The invention of the “safety” (with a small
front wheel and chain drive) cycle led to
thousands of riders circulating the streets of
every city daily. The Wrights not only sold
and repaired bikes, but they also manufactured
them.
Business at the shop was seasonal in Ohio,
so when fall arrived, the Wrights were devoted
to their research full time. This explains why
they located themselves and their equipment
on the coast of North Carolina in the fall and
winter; it’s hardly tourist season.
During the brothers’ absences from the
bicycle shop in Dayton, Cord Ruse worked
part time to take care of the bicycle repairs at
the shop. He is credited with developing the
first horseless carriage to be seen on the streets
of Dayton in 1896.
The Outer Banks of North Carolina was
ideal for testing because of continuous and
strong winds blowing from the sea onto the
shore over treeless, tall sand dunes.
Conversely, the area was less than hospitable
in the colder months since no permanent
housing was available and the Wrights were
forced to camp out in tents.
It was also interesting to read about the
almost totally isolated nature of the Outer
Banks at the turn of the 20th century. The only
residents were fishermen and coastal rescue
squads. The population was so sparse that no
ferry went from the eastern shore of North
Carolina to the Cape. That required Orville
and Wilbur to hire someone with a small
sailboat to cross and haul their aircraft and
assorted camping gear.
It would be three-quarters of a century
before the pristine sand dunes of Cape
Hatteras would be covered with summer
homes and resort hotels. My wife and I visited
Kitty Hawk (more accurately, Kill Devil Hill)
with our children in 1969, then again in 1998;
the changes were startling and depressing.
What had been a wondrously wild and
open group of sand dunes was crowded with
summer homes, hamburger joints, and tourist
traps. It’s no place to be when the next major
hurricane hits that area.
The model in the photos is a Pat Tritledesigned
Dare Design & Engineering kit of
the 1903 Wright Flyer. Built and flown by
Shawn Strunk here in Wichita, the model
spans 401⁄2 inches and weighs 14 ounces as
flown.
Power is provided by two GWS EXA
indoor power systems using eight 800 mAh
Nickel Metal Hydride cells. The Flyer is
covered with Japanese tissue and three coats
of clear Sig Lite Coat dope.
Flight times in calm air run to
approximately 15 minutes. The model is
remarkably stable, particularly after Shawn
added a bit of washout (tip-up) in both upper
wing panels. The Flyer lands smoothly on
mowed grass, with minimal damage. This is a
remarkably consistent-flying model that most
of us speculated would barely fly, if at all. It’s
a pleasant surprise.
George Sauer took the photos using a
Minolta 5.0-megapixel 7X optizoom digital
camera.
I will continue with this topic next month. MA