Wright Flyer

Specifications (Wright Flyer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Flyer

The Wright Flyer (often retrospectively referred to as Flyer I or 1903 Flyer)
was the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft. It was designed and
built by the Wright brothers. They flew it four times on December 17, 1903, near
Kill Devil Hills, about four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, US.
Today, the airplane is exhibited in the National Air and Space Museum in
Washington D.C.

The U.S. Smithsonian Institution describes the aircraft as "the first powered,
heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot
aboard".[2] The flight of Flyer I marks the beginning of the "pioneer era" of
aviation.

The Flyer was based on the Wrights' experience testing gliders at Kitty Hawk
between 1900 and 1902. Their last glider, the 1902 Glider, led directly to the
design of the Flyer.

The Wrights built the aircraft in 1903 using giant spruce wood as their
construction material.[2] The wings were designed with a 1-in-20 camber. Since
they could not find a suitable automobile engine for the task, they commissioned
their employee Charlie Taylor to build a new design from scratch, effectively a
crude gasoline engine.[3] A sprocket chain drive, borrowing from bicycle
technology, powered the twin propellers, which were also made by hand.

The Flyer series of aircraft were the first to achieve controlled
heavier-than-air flight, but some of the mechanical techniques the Wrights used
to accomplish this were not influential for the development of aviation as a
whole, although their theoretical achievements were. The Flyer design depended
on wing-warping and a foreplane or "canard" for pitch control, features which
would not scale and produced a hard-to-control aircraft. However, the Wrights'
pioneering use of "roll control" by twisting the wings to change wingtip angle
in relation to the airstream — even with a British patent of 1868 for such
technology[11] that had apparently been completely forgotten by the time the
20th century had dawned — led directly to the more practical use of ailerons by
their imitators, such as Curtiss and Farman. The Wrights' original concept of
simultaneous coordinated roll and yaw control (rear rudder deflection), which
they discovered in 1902, perfected in 1903–1905, and patented in 1906,
represents the solution to controlled flight and is used today on virtually
every fixed-wing aircraft. The Wright patent included the use of hinged rather
than warped surfaces for the forward elevator and rear rudder. Other features
that made the Flyer a success were highly efficient wings and propellers, which
resulted from the Wrights' exacting wind tunnel tests and made the most of the
marginal power delivered by their early "homebuilt" engines; slow flying speeds
(and hence survivable accidents); and an incremental test/development approach.
The future of aircraft design, however, lay with rigid wings, ailerons and rear
control surfaces.


General characteristics
Crew: One
Length: 21 ft (6 m) 1 in (6.43 m)
Wingspan: 40 ft (12 m) 4 in (12.31 m)
Height: 9 ft (3 m) 0 in (2.74 m)
Wing area: 510 ft² (47 m²)
Empty weight: 605 lb (274 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: 745 lb (338 kg)
Powerplant: 1 × straight-4 water-cooled piston engine, 12 hp (9 kW), 170 lbs
(77.3 kg), (2 Wright "Elliptical" props, 8 ft (2 m). 6in., port prop carved to
counter-rotate left, starboard prop carved to rotate to the right)

Performance
Maximum speed: 30 mph (48 km/h)
Service ceiling: 30 ft (9 m)
Wing loading: 1.4 lb/ft² (7 kg/m²)
Power/mass: 0.02 hp/lb (30 W/kg)




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