Copyright 1999But how does it fly?
Learning to fly From the Ground Up, I’m Tony Seton.
Flying is a truly spiritual adventure. A hundred years ago, two brothers from Dayton, Ohio plunked themselves down on the sands of the Outer Banks of North Carolina and figured out how to fly a heavier-than-air mechanically propelled airplane. On December 17th 1903, . the Wright brothers made four successful flights. The longest, by Wilbur, was 852 feet and it took 59 seconds.
Just to put history into perspective, that was the same year that someone drove from New York to San Francisco for the first time. The car trip took just over ten weeks.
There is much about flying that is the same as it was when the Wright Brothers rose into the air above the dunes that wintry day on the North Carolina Outer Banks. Whether you are flying in the passenger compartment of a 757 or looking over the dashboard of a Cessna Skyhawk, the same principles of air pressure and lift, thrust and drag govern flight today.
It’s fascinating to contemplate the great minds that hatched the laws of aerodynamics many years before the Kitty Hawk rose into the sky. Discoveries about air flow that explain how air forced over a curved wing moves faster. And moving faster, the air creates lower air pressure over the top of the wing. This is what enables a plane to fly — the lift created by the air flowing over the curved wings.
How exciting, too, to learn about the invention of trim tabs -- flaps within flaps -- to compensate for natural aerodynamic tendencies. And how the P-factor means that the downstroke of the propeller is biting more air than the upstroke, causing the plane to yaw to the left during take-off.
It’s enthralling to be part of a process of learning to fly, to partake of a wealth of knowledge, and to share the lore of the Wright Brothers.
From the Ground Up, I’m Tony Seton.