Model Aviation Special Section — Centennial of Flight 1903-2003
We are at the threshold of 100 years of powered flight. December 17, 2003, will mark the actual date of this anniversary. We are celebrating that milestone in this issue of Model Aviation with this special section dedicated to the spirit and ingenuity of the pioneers of aviation and those who love flying.
The realm of aviation means even more to us as modelers. In a world in which flying is taken so much for granted, we celebrate it daily. Wilbur and Orville started their dreams of flight with a simple flying model, and we now continue on with that dream. May we never forget the contributions of the Wrights and all of the other dedicated pioneers who made flying a reality.
The Catapult Launching System
When Orville and Wilbur Wright decided to bring their test flights closer to home and moved from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to Huffman Prairie, Ohio, in 1904, they faced a new problem: getting the Flyer II up to flight speed. By their calculations, the Flyer II had to be moving at a speed of at least 27–28 miles per hour relative to the wind to make a successful launch. The slower the wind speed, the faster the airplane needed to move for takeoff.
The Wrights’ solution to this problem involved building a device to get them up to flying speed: a catapult. They first tested the system on September 7, 1904, and found that it was the key to the Flyer’s launching success. Subsequent Wright Flyers used this same launching system. Below is a step-by-step description of how the catapult system operated.
- Prepping the Flyer: Using two wheels placed under each wing, the Wright brothers rolled out the Flyer and set its front roller on the rail. To place the carriage on the rail, they lifted the back end of the aircraft, slid the carriage underneath on the rail, and set the Flyer skids on the carriage. The Flyer was then anchored in place by a wire attached to a stake driven into the ground, preventing it from moving once the rope holding the weight was attached.
- Preparing for Flight: A line of men pulled on the rope to raise the weight to the top of the tower. The rope led through a geared pulley system from the weight, down underneath the track, around a pulley mounted at the end of the track, and was hooked to a bar at the center of the leading edge of the Flyer’s bottom wing. After starting the engine, the pilot climbed aboard.
- Takeoff: The pilot released a clip holding the anchored rope and the weight began to drop. The resulting force created by the weight dropping sent the Flyer along the rail and launched it into the air.
More About the Catapult System
- Bicycle-wheel hubs were used for the front and carriage rollers.
- The Wright brothers used a 600-pound weight during their first attempt with the catapult system and subsequently increased the poundage in stages to 1,600 pounds.
- The length of the track and the size of the weight varied at times, depending on wind conditions and other variables.
Sources
www.first-to-fly.org, www.wright-brothers.org, Wright State University, National Model Aviation Museum Curator Michael Smith, Wilbur and Orville: A Biography of the Wright Brothers by Fred Howard, The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright by Tom Crouch, Kill Devil Hill by Harry Combs
Note: The airplane in the diagram above is based on the 1909 Wright Flyer.
Constructing the Replica at August Martin High School
The project arranged for student teachers Henry Chu and Larry Chanin to be assigned to August Martin High School for their internships and to assist with building the Flyer in their free time.
It seemed that the last obstacle had been overcome, but it wasn't all that easy. There was a ton of paperwork to do and miles of red tape to get through before the Board of Education would approve the project. Special thanks and appreciation goes to retired New York High School Superintendent Jack Zach, who worked so hard to get the endeavor approved when time was of the essence.
On February 4, 1976, the Board of Education approved the final papers and, with the Port Authority and Lawrence Costello pledging to cover the costs, the Kitty Hawk project was officially off the ground.
Work progressed slowly initially. Teacher and expert former pattern-maker Martin Muller and the two student teachers from City College admitted that they had some doubts about the project's feasibility, with so much time consumed by the need to manually construct hundreds of small parts that were unavailable elsewhere. Their confidence was restored when the propellers and the rudder and elevator sections began to take shape.
I set the goal of using the closest materials, design, and techniques as humanly possible to those that the Wright brothers employed with the original aircraft. That presented a serious problem when the need for wing fabric arose.
Fortunately, Martin Muller had a helpful friend—a representative of the D.H.J. Fabric Manufacturing Company—who supplied the original fabric that the Wright brothers used. The material was hidden away in some obscure corner of a warehouse, and the company no longer manufactured it.
The construction team and I were amazed to find that very few wood joints in the Wrights' airplane were glued; they were held together with metal straps, wire, screws, nuts, and bolts. It seemed foolish at first, but later I learned that the brothers' design allowed for extreme flexibility. An individual portion by itself was a delicate, fragile structure; however, each section supported the other when joined, resulting in remarkable strength and resilience.
Only one modification had to be made to this replica. Since construction was done in the woodworking-shop area of the high school, it had to be designed for easy disassembly so that each piece would pass through the 7 × 7-foot doors of the International Arrivals Building at the airport. Then each piece had to fit together again and be mounted by cables hanging from the ceiling.
A crucial concern was the ability of the wings to support the aircraft. Obviously the Wright brothers never intended for their flying machine to hang suspended and immobile from steel cables! Doubt was quickly quieted when these pioneering geniuses' masterly craftsmanship became apparent.
When completed by the August Martin team, the wings were not attached to the Flyer's body. They not only supported themselves perfectly well, but they stretched out as straight as arrows. However, the Smithsonian's plans for the original airplane indicated that the wings had a noticeable curve and were apparently designed to simulate a bird's wing. Neither weight nor poor support accounted for this curve; it was part of the original design.
The team had to cut out all of the wires and start the rigging supports again. This time they were braced to include the 10 inches of negative dihedral. By this point, little doubt remained that this marvelous machine was much more sturdy and capable of self-support than it appeared to be.
Almost 14 weeks later the magnificent flying machine was nearing completion. It was a work of art, yet something seemed wrong: it looked new. The idea was to build it to resemble the original, which is now hanging in the Smithsonian Institution; the once-white fabric has faded to an almost brown color. The team experimented with many coloring agents to reproduce the aged fabric, and success was finally achieved when we used 42 cans of walnut-stain aerosol spray to cover the entire airplane.
Visitors to the International Arrivals Building invariably asked the same questions, one of which was, "Can that thing fly?" The answer was both yes and no. The display airplane contains an engine that is simulated from cardboard, wood, tin, and a variety of bicycle parts—many are the same pieces Orville and Wilbur Wright took from their bicycle shop. As it is constructed now, the replica would not fly.
However, if an adequate power supply were added, it most certainly would fly since it follows the same tested theories of flight that led to the original flying machine and have been improved but never entirely replaced by modern flying science.
Another common question was, "How did they get it up there?" The answer—trite perhaps, but accurate—was "Very carefully!" Passage through the doors was easier than expected, even though it required 20 men moving with the precision of surgeons. Assembly took two hours, including a few lost minutes caused by a broken wing wire. The Port Authority proceeded to raise the replica to its resting place with obvious skill and concern.
When it was all over, everyone relaxed, looked up in awe, and suddenly realized that something was missing: Orville! Hours away from the dedication ceremony, no one had thought to place a reclining flying figure in the Flyer, as there is in the Smithsonian.
Resolution of that problem reflected the construction team's ingenuity. Several quick telephone calls for a figure that reasonably resembled Orville Wright resulted in a bald female mannequin that a local department store was willing to donate to the cause. It was shaped to display the lines of feminine clothing and did not appear to resemble any kind of flier.
The team went to work modifying the mannequin as required. They appropriated a Port Authority worker's old uniform and added a pilot's hat, a pair of goggles, a snip or two of Henry Chu's hair for a mustache, and a dab of makeup here and there. As quickly as that, a mirror image of the intrepid Orville Wright was strapped onto the airplane, and the remarkable moment on that eventful December day in 1903 seemed to occur again.
The replica of the Wright brothers' flying machine was on exhibit at John F. Kennedy International Airport for 15 years. Then it was loaned to and displayed at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, New York, until construction began on a new Cradle of Aviation Museum sponsored by the Grumman Aircraft Corporation.
The Wright Flyer reproduction has since been moved and is on display at Cole Palen's Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York, where it is very much at home alongside many other famous antique aircraft that helped make aviation history.
Now that the story of its construction has been told, I hope that those who visit the magnificent model will be able to see some of the fine detail and expert craftsmanship evident in its construction. Its magnificence is owed to the team of teachers and students of August Martin High School.
At the same time—and no member of the team would hesitate to say it—the magnificence is the result of the enormous vision and patience demonstrated by two daring young men who were so sure that their flying machine would eventually stay aloft long enough to affirm their conviction that man could, and would, fly. It is a fitting tribute to the Wright brothers' achievement and to the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the aerospace industry.
MA
Howard Kelem 3405 Ocean Ave. Rockville Centre, NY 11572
Whirling Props
by Michael Smith
It has been nearly 100 years since the Wright brothers made their historic flight on the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. For the brothers, the flight was not something that happened overnight, nor for that matter was it something they were sure would ever happen at all. As Orville said to Wilbur following their 1901 tests, "Not within a thousand years would man ever fly."
Yet they persevered, and ultimately they took an idea that had its germination in a small flying top (the "Bat") and created a powered, heavier-than-air, man-carrying aircraft that was capable of sustained flight.
Today, as we near the anniversary of that first flight, a host of magazines and books are available detailing every facet of the Wright brothers' lives. Air shows and special events are being held around the world in honor not only of their achievements, but of the achievements of all those who took their own visions and expanded upon them. The aircraft has literally changed the world, and it all began with two men in an Ohio bicycle shop.
But what was it like to fly the Wright Flyer? How did it feel to squirm your way through the machine's wires and finally lie down on the wing? How confining was it once you did manage to climb on? What did it feel like to have to coordinate your hips and your hands to control the airplane?
For a fortunate few who are participating in the various attempts to fly full-scale reproductions, this knowledge will be firsthand. Although possibly terrifying, the experience transcends time; it did for Wayne Larsen, who piloted Utah State University's reproduction 1905 Flyer over historic Huffman Prairie, Ohio, on July 5.
"This was an emotional experience for me and it was a fantastic experience for me," he told Utah State Today, a publication of Utah State University. "We had help in the seats today. It was as though the Wright brothers were sitting next to me."
AMA's National Model Aviation Museum's new exhibit "Spinning Tops to Whirling Props," which will be on display at least through 2005, provides the rest of us with an opportunity to answer these questions for ourselves. A timeline, with selected photographs from Wright State University Special Collections in Dayton, Ohio, allows visitors to trace the brothers' achievements.
Their aviation story begins with the Bat: a small flying top their father gave them in 1878. The museum's original drawing of the toy Bat that Orville drew in 1929 and a reproduction of the Bat that Midwest Products Co. built allows visitors to see what sparked the Wrights' imaginations. The remaining images provide a visual record of their development of the airplane, from kites and hang gliders to the 1905 Flyer.
The exhibit's showpiece is the full-scale center section of the Wright Flyer III; visitors will actually be able to climb onto the wing. Although it will be easier than on the original, it will still be challenging because the new "pilot" will need to lie down on the wing, slide underneath the forward wires, and adjust his or her hips in the cradle. Once in position on the wing, that person will be looking directly at the tail of a small scale model of the 1905 Flyer.
The model will allow the "pilot" to visualize exactly how the original Flyer responded to command inputs. When the hip cradle is moved, the model's wings will warp and the aircraft will roll. As the lever for the elevator is moved, the canard on the model will move and the airplane will pitch accordingly. Likewise, if the rudder lever is moved, the rudder on the model will move and the airplane will yaw.
Finally, when the fuel-shutoff switch is moved, the model's propellers will spin and a recording of an original Wright engine will be played, courtesy of the Turbine Engine Division, Propulsion Directorate, United States Air Force Research Laboratory.
With a bit of imagination, the new "pilot" will be able to see Huffman Prairie pass below the wings as he or she tries to complete the world's first complete circle in the air. The only thing missing will be the air whistling through the flying wires.
To show how aeromodellers have tried to duplicate the Wright Flyer, two models are included in the exhibit:
- A reproduction of the Ideal Aeroplane Supply Company's Wright biplane. First released in 1911, this rubber-powered model was guaranteed to fly, but only if original Ideal parts were used.
- A modern version of the Flyer, produced by Dare Design & Engineering; this electric-powered radio-control version allows anyone to recreate that first historic flight.
Contrary to Orville's statement, it took only a few short years for the Wrights to achieve powered flight. This year, as we celebrate the centennial of their achievement, "Spinning Tops to Whirling Props" will bring life to the historic pictures and text documenting that brief moment in time.
MA
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
