Wright Replica Fails to Fly

Keith Willshaw wrote:

"robert arndt" wrote in message

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...ub=CTVNewsAt11

... as expected... despite $1.2 mil invested and painstaking attention
to detail. At least the two GW No.21 replicas both flew easily. IMO,

No they didnt

The first crashed injuring the pilot and the team then spent several years
re-engineering the 'replica' and they rationalised the differences between
the machine they built and the one in contemporary photos by arguing
that the photos must represent an early variant of the machine before
Whitehead made the changes necessary to make it fly !

This sounds a bit like the story of "proving" that Langley's airplane
was the real thing before the Wright's.

As some may know, Langley's airplane was launched from a platform in
the Potomac river, only to do an aeronautical example of a belly flop.
Langley claimed the problem wasn't with the airplane, but with the
launching gear. A few months later, Wilbur and Orville took off.

However, Langley didn't give up. The plane "would have flown" before
the Wrights if only the launching gear hadn't broken the airplane.

To prove this, the Langley airplane was "flown again" around 10 years
later in an effort to keep credit away from the Wrights. Curtis, who
had been in continuous litigation with the Wrights (and generally losing),
was only too happy to "reconstruct" the Langley aircraft, to prove the
"Wrights had no rights", to their airplane patents.

The "fixes" included more efficient propellers, more powerful engine,
some structural improvements to the wings, and at some point, a pair of
pontoons to take off from the water without need of the launching boat.

When the "re-test" occurred, Curtis claimed the aircraft did take off
and fly for a distance far greater than what the Wrights had achieved.
Unfortunately, newspapermen reporting the event from shore reported
they couldn't tell if the aircraft left the water or not. If it did,
it wasn't very high nor a very long flight.

Curtis eventually got the Langley aircraft airborne up towards 3,000
feet on many flights, but it just wasn't the same aircraft as 1903.

Of course, Langley was head of the Smithsonian, which accounted for
the Wrights getting no credit in that institution until about WWII,
when the Wright flyer was returned from England to take up residence
in the museum.


SMH