107 yrs ago today...

The Wright Brothers invented the towplane. Celebrate!

On Dec 17, 10:17*am, Tony wrote:
The Wright Brothers invented the towplane. *Celebrate!

Balderdash! It was the day they spoiled their best glider...

However Orville may have invented the "sport" of gliding:

"In 1911 Orville Wright returned to the Kill Devil Hills with a new
glider."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Glider

I wonder what the story behing that was.

jsoar

On Sat, 18 Dec 2010 09:23:17 -0800, jsoar wrote:

However Orville may have invented the "sport" of gliding:

"In 1911 Orville Wright returned to the Kill Devil Hills with a new
glider."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Glider

I wonder what the story behind that was.

Further down the page it says the 1911 gliding flights were intended to
test an automatic control system, but this wasn't done because there were
too many reporters about.

I checked "Killdevil Hill" by Harry Combs for more details, but
unfortunately it ends with the 1909 flights. IMO it is the best book
written about the Wrights because its the only one by a pilot.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

On Dec 18, 10:23*am, jsoar wrote:
However Orville may have invented the "sport" of gliding:

"In 1911 Orville Wright returned to the Kill Devil Hills with a new
glider."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Glider

I wonder what the story behing that was.

jsoar

http://vintagesailplane.org/documents/soaring100.pdf

However Orville may have invented the "sport" of gliding:

Nah, gliding had already been around since the late 1800's... it was
soaring that was born that day

-Paul