How Good a Replica?

Steven P. McNicoll wrote:

"Ashton Archer III" wrote in message

Is it also true that the reason it won't fly is that modern flyers
can't mimic the Wright brothers art of handling wing warp as good or
that the conditions for modern flight HAVE to be better than in 1903?

The replica is perhaps as close as one can get to the real thing. The
original one hanging in the Smithsonian was itself patched up by the
surviving Wright brother (forget which one) many years after the event
from memory and with the thinking the aircraft would only be a display
piece, as opposed to a template for a flying reproduction.

But the bottom line: the Wright flyer is a *very* difficult airplane
to fly!

The Wrights had hours of flying time in similarly behaved gliders
before the actual Flyer flight. These guys had become very good at
handling an aircraft before a powered flight.

Some modern pilots (AF, Navy and Test) have tried their hands at
flying various Flyer reproductions over this and last year and
haven't done too well.

Basically, if you fly a Flyer for very long, you *are* going to
crash, so it's no surprise that someone without equivalent flight
time on the machine would have trouble even getting off the ground,
even with favorable flying conditions for the airplane, that
weren't present for the Dec 17 ceremonial attempt.


SMH