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ORE THAN three years ago, I wrote that a Warrenton man by the name of Ken Hyde was attempting to re-create Orville and Wilbur Wright. It was only a slight exaggeration.
The centennial of the Wrights' achievement at Kitty Hawk, N.C.--the world's first controlled, powered flight--passed by on Dec. 17, and Hyde, 64, is still trying.
He has now built and flown most of the Dayton brothers' pioneer machines, but getting to know the two inscrutable geniuses remains an elusive quest.
Ten days ago, Hyde attempted to mark the centennial with a commemorative flight using an exact copy of the Wright Flyer, precisely 100 years afterward.
Poor weather at that hour scrubbed the effort, disappointing millions of TV viewers in an event beamed around the world.
Unlike Orville and Wilbur, who simply waited for favorable weather to fly, Hyde's pilot, Kevin Kochersberger, had little wind for his cantankerous machine when, in an effort to put on a show for the throng that showed up and the millions watching elsewhere, he made a second try.
As much of the world now knows, the fragile craft simply sputtered off the end of its launching rail with an ignominious splash into a puddle of rainwater.
"We gave it the all-American try but just did not have the winds," said Hyde. In addition, he said, one of the Wright engine's four cylinders conked out during the take-off run.
What may have looked to the world like failure was anything but, for the attempts of Dec. 17 were actually part of an ongoing project led by the former airline pilot to discover the secrets that lay behind the Wrights' success and, in the process, to learn more about the men behind the machine.
By Dec. 17, Hyde's team had already made two brief but successful flights in the Flyer, on Nov. 20 and Dec. 3, and a third unsuccessful attempt on Nov. 25.
As a personal aside, I have known Hyde for some 20 years and have watched over the past dozen or more years as his Wright project took shape. Given the focus, the dedication and the research (10 years alone) that has gone into it, I took it for granted that he would build and fly the Wrights' most famous airplane.
I wouldn't have missed the five-day Kitty Hawk centennial, which featured wonderful weather--right up to the climactic morning when the Flyer was slated to take to the air. And then the rains came. A crowd put at 35,000 to 45,000 waited for the big event, which was delayed for the downpour. Shortly after noon, with marginal improvement, the team attempted the flight. As Hyde told me, the lack of winds was bad enough, but when a cylinder went dead on the engine, there was no chance of a takeoff.
I had a long talk with him the other day about the Flyer, its future and other efforts to fly it. There were many surprises.
Orville and Wilbur built only a single Flyer. After four flights on Dec. 17, 1903, it never flew again and hangs today, with a number of small changes since, in a place of honor in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
Hyde, determined to re-create that machine--as it flew at Kitty Hawk--planned to construct three Flyers. This is an enormously costly undertaking, however, and each aircraft had to be sponsored. With funds for two of them, Hyde built one for the late Harry Combs, who deeded his to the National Park Service as a gift to the American people. It is displayed at the Wright Memorial at Kitty Hawk.
The second plane, sponsored by Ford Motor Co., was used in the testing and exhibition program at Kitty Hawk. In late January, it will be delivered to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.
But Ken Hyde's Wright Flyer research program does not end there.
"We're probably going to build that third Flyer," he said. "We're thinking of putting it together and completing some of the testing we weren't able to do because of the weather at Kitty Hawk. We've got a good feel for what we need to do and we'd like to get some more flights--at least as long as [the Wrights'] longest."
Hyde said the six weeks of work at Kitty Hawk, which included flights in a 1902 Wright Glider and the powered Flyer of 1903--both built at Hyde's Warrenton shop--"gave us information that's never been known before about the operation of this machine. We just ran out of time and into awful weather."
There have been at least six efforts to copy and fly the Wright Flyer in recent years. At least one or two or those have flown. However, none but Hyde's has stayed faithfully with the original design and materials, resisting all changes that would make it fly better or more safely. In fact, a number of them have had only a superficial visual resemblance to the original.
No one knows better than Ken Hyde that, however tempting, once you have made even the smallest change to the original, a research project whose objective is to understand what the Wrights did and how they did it, has ceased.
While authenticity has been the keystone of the machine itself, Hyde has used the full array of modern technology as an investigative tool. In flights prior to the Dec. 17 attempt, for example, the Flyer was fitted with a 13-channel "black box" data recorder built and provided by ViGYAN Inc. of Hampton.
That technology alone, said Hyde, was a major breakthrough in learning why the Flyer was so unstable and difficult to control. Analyzing data from it, said Hyde, it was found that the plane's front canard's control surfaces flex to a position far beyond what had been known, particularly in higher winds. "When the winds are 30 or so miles an hour," said Hyde, "it becomes unmanageable." In other words, an already tricky flying machine cannot be kept flying.
I asked Hyde what practical difference that discovery made. He assured me that no changes were made in the plane, but armed with it, pilots Kochersberger and Terry Queijo gained a far better idea how to control it.
Control is the key word. On the 23rd anniversary of their historic flight, Orville Wright said he had planned to fly 6 feet above the ground, but rapid up-and-down movements took the flimsy plane to three times that height.
"He said flying it was like a cross between riding a bucking bronco and riding a roller coaster," said Hyde, who has read virtually every scrap of paper the brothers ever wrote.
Hyde said his Wright effort has brought together a large and talented group of people and corporations, without which he could never have duplicated the Flyer. In addition to his own staff of seven full-time people, he has about the same number of part-time employees, plus many volunteers and companies large and small that have made major contributions.
"We definitely proved the Flyer will fly in its authentic state," said Hyde. "More importantly, I think we created a giant awareness of Orville and Wilbur Wright, more so than I ever anticipated."
PAUL SULLIVAN, a former reporter with The Free Lance-Star, is a freelance writer living in Spotsylvania County. Contact him by mail at The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401; by fax at 373-8455; or by e-mail to PBSullivan2@cs.com.
