Search Results for: wright

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 N.C. Department of Transportation (NCDOT) has announced a plan to provide free public transportation services for the six-day First Flight Centennial Celebration in December. About 35,000 attendees are expected each day of the celebration. Since there is no parking available at Wright Brothers National Memorial, the NCDOT plan is designed to get attendees to […]

There was a long list of things that needed to be done to Melmoth 2 before leaving for Oshkosh. One was to get a coat of paint onto the airplane. This I barely managed to accomplish in time, using roller, brush and a marine paint formulated for sailboats being finished, I suppose, at the ends […]

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 […]

Neither the acting nor the writing would win an Academy Award. “Well gosh, Wilbur, how come you get to be interviewed? I’m the one who flew it!” pouts a blond middle-school student with magic-marker facial hair. “Hey. Orville. Who’s older?” retorts his “brother,” a lanky, brown-haired 13-year-old. “You are.” “So who do you think is […]

Graduations are always a combination of happiness celebrating a job well done and sadness that a big part of the lives of everyone involved has come to an end. Over the four years our daughter Karen spent at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, my Baron was involved in every phase. Karen had […]

It’s not apocryphal. A candidate for the instrument rating went up with an examiner for his flight test. The examiner, after carefully covering the screens on the airplane’s dual Garmin 430s, asked the pilot to perform an NDB approach. With some difficulty, the instrument candidate was finally able to explain to the examiner that without […]

The following briefs were selected from the preliminary reports filed with the NTSB in May 2003. Statements in quotes were taken directly from the NTSB documents. Click here to view “Accident Totals, May.”

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May 03, Roanoke, Texas
Piper Super Cub
At 1500 central time, a Piper PA-18A-150 lost engine power during initial climb from Northwest Regional Airport and was damaged in the forced landing. The flight instructor and pilot receiving instruction suffered minor injuries. The pilot was receiving a flight checkout for his tail wheel endorsement and had been doing touch and goes. The pilot said that, when the flight depa…