Building Wright Replicas

Wright Experience team members work on the "canard" of their 1902 glider in Ken Hyde's workshop. The canard, from the French word for "duck" because it resembles the shape of a duck's neck, is the elevator mechanism located at the front of the aircraft. The curved wooden hip cradle, used for steering the glider, appears in the foreground.

The 1902 Wright Glider, first flown on October 8, 1902, at Kitty Hawk and reconstructed here, was the first Wright flying machine to look more like an aircraft than a kite, as all their boxy earlier flying machines had. It was also the first flying machine to perform the three functions all aircraft perform today, from single-engine planes to spacecraft: roll, pitch, and yaw.

Beverly Hyde, wife of Ken Hyde, attaches the fabric wing skin to the outer wing panel of the 1911 Model B reconstruction plane. The fabric seen here, like the Wrights' Model B fabric, is rubberized and waterproof, which prevents the wings from absorbing moisture and shrinking. In order to allow the plane's wings to warp, or twist, while turning without ripping their fabric covering apart, the wing skin is sewn together along diagonal lines.

The Model B's fabric wings not only provided the surface area for airflow to generate lift, they were also the centerpieces of the Wrights' wing-warping system. Wing-warping took advantage of the twisting motion of the flexible wings to make turns. In this photograph, the Wright Model B reconstruction plane has its wings completely warped for making a turn to the left. That is, the wings on the plane's right side (from the pilot's perspective) have warped two feet downward towards the grass from their resting position, while the wings on the plane's left side have warped upward.

Dave Meyer takes minute measurements of the reconstruction 1911 Wright Model B's distinctive "bent end" propeller, which is made of spruce. The bent-end propeller was the Wrights' standard propeller from 1905 until 1915. It has an efficiency rate of 80 percent, meaning that it can convert 80 percent of an aircraft's engine power into useful thrust. Even with all the aviation innovations since the Wrights, today's propellers have efficiency rates of about 85 percent, only a slight improvement on the Wrights' remarkably advanced design.

Greg Cone labors over the Wright Experience's reproduction of the 1903 Wright engine, the prototype for the roughly 200 engines the Wrights built in total. The four-cylinder engine had no throttle and could only run at full speed. In the foreground, an original four-cylinder 1912 Model B engine stands by. This was the only engine the Wrights licensed for production by other companies.

Here, the Wright Experience's 1903 Wright Flyer reproduction stands inside the NASA Langley Full Scale Wind Tunnel in Hampton, Virginia, where it underwent testing in order to better understand its capabilities. Because most of the Wrights' original aircraft were either destroyed or are in fragile condition today, one of the best opportunities aviation experts have to study Wright aircraft design is by testing precise replicas like this one.

Greg Cone makes final adjustments to the 1911 Wright Model B just before Ken Hyde takes the aircraft on its first taxi tests on the grass airfield surrounding the hangar.

Ken Hyde takes the controls of the 1911 Model B, its propellers whirring, as taxi tests begin. A taxi test lets a pilot practice his techniques for taking directional control of an aircraft on the ground.

The taxi test culminates unexpectedly in a rough treetop landing when Ken Hyde accidentally takes off while trying to avoid a ditch while taxiing. After flying in circles for ten minutes and trying in vain to put the aircraft down safely, Hyde was forced to end the flight 30 feet above ground. Though the Model B was severely damaged (and Hyde sustained a broken wrist), the Wright Experience team, noting that the Wrights themselves endured their fair share of crashes, remains determined to repair the Model B and fly another day.