Search Results for: wright

The photos were tucked in the back of the gallery, almost hidden behind the colorful nautical scenes and seaside landscapes that typifies most of the commercial paintings sold in town. The photos also featured local landmarks of the harbor, the town and the North Shore coastline-but they stood out from the other artwork in two […]

“I always use flaps for climb. I get more lift that way.” Some would call this statement perfectly logical, because flaps do increase lift and increased lift certainly ought to make an airplane climb faster. Others would say that the reasoning is fallacious, and that flaps, by increasing drag, reduce rate of climb rather than […]

What do the Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, the Bell X-1 and the Apollo 11 Lunar Module have in common? Somehow, each of these flying machines managed to attain an honored place in aerospace history despite having small landing gear tires or none at all. This is a paradox of sorts, considering the […]

We came from all corners of the country at our own expense to Galveston, Texas, for a 15-minute ride in an ancient airplane. Nobody came away disappointed. The money spent and the vacation days taken meant nothing, you see, because the airplane was a B-17, the Flying Fortress. This one is in the careful custody […]

You often hear pilots discussing whether a plane is a good IFR platform. Heres what theyre discussing and how to decide if your airplane measures up.

In the reception area at Burt Rutan’s Mojave, California, skunk works, Scaled Composites, there sits on a corner table a small black tripod with a cup-shaped receptacle on top. Built by composites engineer Stan Stawski, who works at Scaled, it supported two tons before failing. It weighs less than four ounces. Getting the most strength […]

The rain is, if anything, coming down even harder than it was a few minutes ago. The bench I’m sitting on is covered in puddles, and the stream of water cascading off my umbrella has completely soaked my legs and sneakers. The field where the big event is supposed to take place is quickly becoming […]

It’s too bad that the image of the Century of Flight Celebration that was most widely flashed to the non-flying world was of the 1903 Wright Flyer reproduction lying in a mud puddle. The weeklong festivities at Kill Devil Hills were a huge success for every one of the thousands of aviation enthusiasts who attended […]

Melmoth 2 inherited its engine mount brackets and isolators-the rubber pads the engine is actually bolted to-from Melmoth 1, which had in turn acquired them, in 1971, from a Cessna Skymaster that was already far from new. It’s surprising that any rubber compound can retain a whiff of elasticity after 35 years or more in […]

The big day is almost here. On Wednesday, December 17, 2003, at 10:35 a.m., at the Wright Memorial at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, a pilot will climb aboard the most accurate Wright Flyer reproduction ever constructed and proceed to go flying, just as Orville Wright did for the first time precisely 100 years to […]