THE WRIGHT BROTHERS FLY

This morning I did some reading about the Wright Brothers and their famous first flight in 1903. That's (above) Wilbur flying the glider version of the plane over the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk. 

The brothers suffered a lot of crashes and setbacks. When they finally succeeded very few people were there to see it.  If I've got it right, the first sustained glider flight lasted 59 seconds, which is a long time if you think about it.

Here's (above) a motorized version of the plane.  Here the vertical front rudder in the glider has been replaced by two tiny horizontal wings. I don't see the engine but I'll assume it's there because two propellers are visible. Each prop rotated in a different direction for stability.

At first I thought it odd that the propellers were in back of the wings. I mean, isn't it the job of a propeller to throw wind over the wings? I guess it isn't. According to an article I just read, the propeller is only there to pull the plane through the viscous medium of the air.

There's a lot about flying that's counter-intuitive. I always thought that the wing shape causes low pressure on the top and that in turn allows high pressure underneath to push the wing up. Evidently that's not exactly true. What really happens is that a vacuum layer forms over the top of the wing and the plane is pulled up from the top. Interesting, eh?

Lilianthal, another aviation pioneer, noticed that bird feathers on the outside tips of the wing had a different shape and direction than the other  feathers, and he spent a lot of time trying to figure out why.  So did the Wright Brothers but they eventually concluded that it wasn't important.

Boy, I'd like to have a working model of the Wright plane...one like this zombie child (above) has. You can get one for 50 bucks. It has a hand-cranked motor located in back of the wings, near where the real ones were.

I also discovered this morning that you can buy an electric motor for home-made  paper airplanes. It costs 20 bucks...a real bargain if it works.

 You can even put two motors on a paper airplane! Hmmm...maybe if the plane's made of card stock.

I also looked up paper plane designs and discovered that a lot's been done with that. Here's a soda straw airplane that someone claims can fly.

Here's (above) a fly-powered airplane, with flies super-glued to the wing. It didn't work out so good.