Hill of Dreams: A Challenge 100 Years Standing
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30, 2002–A century after the Wright brothers set the world record of flying 120 feet in a heavier-than-air, powered aircraft, a retired commercial airplane pilot who has spent thousands of dollars of his own money is going to fly on a precisely reconstructed 1903 Wright Flyer at the same place and the same time of day– but only for 118 feet.
That is how he shows his respect for the pioneers of aviation history. That is how he shows the secrets and greatness of one of the most significant achievements in human history. And that is how the 63-year-old man shows the pleasure of old-fashioned handcrafting to children who will form the future’s history.
His workplace is too big to be called an atelier, but too small to be called a hangar. It might look like a farm warehouse, but there are no fields or gardens around.
Instead, stretching beside the factory in the autumnally tinted woods is a mowed, still green-colored short strip of grass alongside a pond.
Warrenton is a town of hills, 50 miles west of Washington, and quiet. So is Ken Hyde, a placid person, though his passion still remains as strong as it was when he was flying Boeing 727s for American Airlines.
“We have put a man on the moon, but we really have not built a Wright airplane and flown it successfully,” Hyde said. “We want to make sure we do it just the way they did it. We will know exactly how they were able to do it.”
Even for this expert pilot, who concluded his 33-year professional career in 1998, it is an unsolved mystery how the brothers’ first-ever-built aircraft with a 12-horsepower engine and two wooden propellers floated over Kill Devil Hills, N.C., on a winter day in 1903.
On December 17, 2003, Hyde is figuratively going to become the youngest brother of the Wrights by sharing the same experience.
Since 1992, when he founded the Wright Experience, an enterprise devoted to exploring the Wright brothers’ contribution to aeronautics, Hyde, his wife, Beverly, and his teammates have duplicated a few Wright kites and gliders, but not a powered flyer yet.
No one has ever been able to build a complete duplicate of the 1903 Flyer, Hyde said, because the brothers left almost no blueprints. Furthermore, the particular kind of muslin fabric that the brothers used to cover the surface of the wings is no longer manufactured.
It turned out to be more difficult, more time consuming and costlier than Hyde had expected for the small private team to carry out the reconstruction of the 1903 Flyer, Hyde recalled.
But as soon as the Ford Motor Company offered to sponsor the project in January 2000, the Wright Experience team jump-started its efforts, gathering photographs, sketches, notes, letters, books, research papers–every piece of information that could help in completing the huge jigsaw puzzle.
“The research to make sure we are doing it 100 percent authentic is the hardest part,” Hyde said. In terms of the materials, he said, “having the fabric made is probably the most difficult. We have finally found a manufacturer that would make a thread for us, and another one that would weave it.”
The team is getting ready to finish its work, and it hopes to have the plane completed in three months. The muslin cloth will be shipped to Hyde’s factory soon to be sewn by Beverly. And the engine, which is being made in Wisconsin, is coming soon to be fit into the already assembled hand-carved ribs and hand-shaped propellers.
Hyde said it was amazing that the brothers, who did not go to college, designed and shaped the propellers, which must have required knowledge of complicated trigonometry,.
The aircraft’s ribs are made of white ash, and the propellers and other key parts are made of spruce, the same materials the brothers used to make the 1903 Flyer.
The only difference is that Hyde uses advanced computer techniques and machinery, while there were no such useful instruments in the early 1900s.
“What the Wright brothers do for us is to teach us that you can do anything if you want to, no matter what your education level is,” Hyde said.
“I think the young people of today, future engineers, technicians and scientists, are lacking this type of motivation.”
When he was a child, Hyde recalled, he enjoyed tinkering like his father, who built a house himself and made a crystal radio out of a cigar box. Whenever the family took a drive on weekends, the father always ended up taking everyone near airports to see airplanes taking off and landing, which gradually inspired Hyde.
“If I can inspire the next Orville or Wilbur Wright of the future, I feel like I have given back to aviation what aviation gave to me,” he said.
Though Hyde’s replica of the 1903 Flyer is as authentic as it can be the distance the plane will fly on the anniversary won’t be.
“We are not out there to break their record,” Hyde said. “They flew 120 feet. We only want to fly 118 feet. All we want to do is to demonstrate what they did.”
Hyde would love to have questions from children. His e-mail address is kenwhyde@aol.com. For more details about his venture, visit http://www.wrightexperience.com.
