|
Background of Wright FLyer The Wright Brothers made the Wright Flyer in 1903 and it was considered
"A Milestone of Flight." One of the many reasons that it is called this is because it was the first ever heavier-than-air craft that could rise off the ground with its own power and carry a pilot. Another reason is that it was the first ever longest sustained flight and could yaw from side to side. Many other people flew before the Wright Brothers did, but they flew in straight lines, and had bounced off of the ground a couple times during the flight, but the Wright Brothers had never bounced off the ground after liftoff and were able to turn and do circles and figure-eight’s. The way that the Wright Brothers flew the craft was that the pilot, who could have been Wilbur or Orville, layed down in the center with a hip hugger to keep the gravity even, warp the wings and keeps the pilot in contact with the plane. Next, the pilot grabs hold of two ropes, (or in the earlier versions of the Wright Flyer, the hip hugger which also controlled all of this), that controls the pitch, which is where the nose is either aiming down or up, and the yaw, which is when the plane turns on its latitude axis to turn left or right, and the wing warping. The hip hugger, because the Wright Flyer was still being perfected, only controlled the wing warping and had to have other levers and ropes to control the different axes of the plane. During theWright Brothers' test flights, they made courses in which to fly in Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Some of the courses were circles, some figure eights andsome just turns made at random. The way that the Wright Flyer took off was simple. There was a tower that had a weight on top of it and a rope that tied to the weight, which was also tied to the front of the plane. When triggered, the weight at the top of the tower will fall, which will cause the rope to pull on the pull the aircraft towards the tower, creating a catapult effect. The catapult effect is where the plane takes off because of the force released by the weight. |