My OperaWhy did I choose the Wright 1902 glider to build?
Saturday, October 9, 2010 5:43:26 PM
That answer is not so simple; to make that choice I had to do more research on the Wright’s besides reading one book. So with keyboard in front of me I started to search the internet, I quickly found about 500,000 pages on the Wright Brothers listed on the ‘net’, this might take awhile. I was lucky and found most of the information I needed in about 3 months. But in those 3 months I did learn about the quest for manned flight down through history, mostly in the last couple of hundred of years.
In the last part of the 19th century, that’s the 1800’s I found that the people interested in flight were called ‘flight enthusiasts’ I think it better to be call an enthusiastic about a something than a nut, after all man had flown for several years prior to ‘heavier than air’ flight it was called ballooning. Ballooning started in France back in the, I think in the 18th century, that the 1700’s with a nut named Jean-Baptiste Réveillon making the first manned flight, remember he was not an enthusiast.
I must make a side bar here and mention a balloonist of the United States of Thaddeus Lowe circa 1860’s, he became by order of President Lincoln the chief Aeronaut of the union army, spying on the confederate troops during the civil war using a balloon. Lowe later became a scientist and inventor and help developed what is now the Mt. Lowe observatory in Pasadena, Ca. Thaddeus Lowe's granddaughter Pancho Lowe Barnes was also an early aviation pioneer and personal friends with Gen. Charles Yeager.
As the Wrights grew up to manhood many events in their lives influenced their quest for manned flight, I think one was their natural curiosity of things in life, like how do birds fly? By the time the brothers finished school and had started several business ventures and eventually settled into making and repairing a new form of transportation and recreation, the bicycle, their interest in flight was peaking. They searched for any published information on human flight, from the whimsical to technical. They found a German, Otto Lilienthal who had done early experiments in flight and even made a manned glider which he had flown many times on short glides. Lilienthal had even formulated equations on lift and drag of flight. Using this information the Wright’s set to build their own glider, but the brothers had their own ideas of flight, one was to get away from the practiced norm of a stabilized flying machine to a non-stabilized but balanced machine. Remember the term airplane or aeroplane was not used in the Wrights day; it was called a flying machine. The brothers thought that flying was a matter of balance much like riding a bicycle, something they knew about. In fact many years before the Wright’s became interested in flight a flight enthusiast; not a nut, thought the problem on manned flight would be solved by a bicyclist because he would know about balance. No truer words spoken.
The choice of building a flying machine came down to two points; the cost and time evolved. As always money is the main deciding factor. I wanted to build the flying machine for under $500; the Wrights did it for about 300 dollars including the trip to Kitty Hawk. I also wanted to do it under a year for co-pilot (wife) did not the work shop/ garage tired up for a long period of time. The Wright 1902 glider was the choice. I could build it with two pieces of wood and odds and ends found in the shop and for under $500 bucks. I found free plans for the glider on the net. to be continued......
In the last part of the 19th century, that’s the 1800’s I found that the people interested in flight were called ‘flight enthusiasts’ I think it better to be call an enthusiastic about a something than a nut, after all man had flown for several years prior to ‘heavier than air’ flight it was called ballooning. Ballooning started in France back in the, I think in the 18th century, that the 1700’s with a nut named Jean-Baptiste Réveillon making the first manned flight, remember he was not an enthusiast.
I must make a side bar here and mention a balloonist of the United States of Thaddeus Lowe circa 1860’s, he became by order of President Lincoln the chief Aeronaut of the union army, spying on the confederate troops during the civil war using a balloon. Lowe later became a scientist and inventor and help developed what is now the Mt. Lowe observatory in Pasadena, Ca. Thaddeus Lowe's granddaughter Pancho Lowe Barnes was also an early aviation pioneer and personal friends with Gen. Charles Yeager.
As the Wrights grew up to manhood many events in their lives influenced their quest for manned flight, I think one was their natural curiosity of things in life, like how do birds fly? By the time the brothers finished school and had started several business ventures and eventually settled into making and repairing a new form of transportation and recreation, the bicycle, their interest in flight was peaking. They searched for any published information on human flight, from the whimsical to technical. They found a German, Otto Lilienthal who had done early experiments in flight and even made a manned glider which he had flown many times on short glides. Lilienthal had even formulated equations on lift and drag of flight. Using this information the Wright’s set to build their own glider, but the brothers had their own ideas of flight, one was to get away from the practiced norm of a stabilized flying machine to a non-stabilized but balanced machine. Remember the term airplane or aeroplane was not used in the Wrights day; it was called a flying machine. The brothers thought that flying was a matter of balance much like riding a bicycle, something they knew about. In fact many years before the Wright’s became interested in flight a flight enthusiast; not a nut, thought the problem on manned flight would be solved by a bicyclist because he would know about balance. No truer words spoken.
The choice of building a flying machine came down to two points; the cost and time evolved. As always money is the main deciding factor. I wanted to build the flying machine for under $500; the Wrights did it for about 300 dollars including the trip to Kitty Hawk. I also wanted to do it under a year for co-pilot (wife) did not the work shop/ garage tired up for a long period of time. The Wright 1902 glider was the choice. I could build it with two pieces of wood and odds and ends found in the shop and for under $500 bucks. I found free plans for the glider on the net. to be continued......
