June 1, 2003
USU's Wright Flyer shows it has right stuff
Replica's short flight is a long time coming
Nancy Perkins
Deseret
News
ST. GEORGE — Mel "Flunky" Aldrich spent part of his flying career chasing hurricanes in a B-17 high over the Azores years ago.
"I think we flew into the eye of four or five hurricanes back then," said Aldrich. "We didn't have any fancy instruments or satellites or anything like that, though. We finally crashed the plane, and I hurried and took a photo of the insignia on the fuselage to remember it by."
On Friday, Aldrich showed off a model replica of the original B-17, complete with his photo showing a pilot gazing into a crystal ball, at a unique gathering of aviation fans at the St. George Airport.
The star of Friday's party was a replica itself — Utah State University's Wright Flyer, a replica of the world's first powered biplane originally built in 1903 by Wilbur and Orville Wright.
"This is so cool!" said 10-year-old Kaelen Rose of Las Vegas, who watched the Wright Flyer take a short flight over the airport and later sat in the pilot seat for a keepsake photo.
USU and the Space Dynamics Laboratory, along with the U.S. Air Force, are taking the Wright Flyer around the state before transporting it to Dayton, Ohio, for a historic re-creation of the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk.
Flight tour coordinator Bruce King said USU's Wright Flyer exists because its creators had a dream.
"The real purpose of this experiment is to help the people of Utah and the nation help celebrate the monumental achievement of the Wright brothers' flight," said King. "A major focus of the tour is to stimulate young minds. We want them to think of what they might achieve when they're interested and unyielding in their pursuit of a dream."
That dream was eventually embraced by a lot of different people, but it didn't start out that way, said project director David Widauf.
"When I first thought of this idea everyone said it was the stupidest thing they ever heard of," said Widauf, an associate professor in USU's department of industrial technology and education. "But I really wanted to do this. It was a huge team effort."
An old friend of the Wright brothers gave Widauf a copy of the brothers' original design, which Widauf then gave to his engineering students.
"I asked them to look the design over and tell me what they thought about it," he said. "They came back and said they didn't think that airplane could fly."
That's when Widauf challenged his students to redesign the Wright plane using materials the brothers would find in today's world. Two years and thousands of hours later, the Wright Flyer was born.
Finding the right pilot for the experimental aircraft was a bit of a challenge, said Widauf.
"The computers told us it would fly, but we wouldn't know until we did it," he said. "I have pilot friends who fly F-16s who wanted to fly it, but we were looking for someone who was used to flying low and slow."
Enter Wayne Larsen from Tremonton, a pilot with more than 15,000 hours in the air — much of it flying 3 feet above the ground at more than 100 mph while dusting or seeding crops.
On Friday, Larsen and his co-pilot, former Utah Sen.Jake Garn, took the Wright Flyer up for St. George spectators. They didn't fly far, and it wasn't a picture-perfect flight, as the Wright Flyer fought gusty winds and eventually had to be hauled back to the airport hangar because of strong crosswinds.
"That was my fourth flight in the Wright Flyer," said Garn, who is scheduled to co-pilot the aircraft during its historic flight in Ohio in July.
"That's the worst plane I've ever been in. Compared to modern designs, it's not very good. Whenever it's on the ground it just wants to turn into the wind. Despite its lousy rudder control and not having a fuselage, it's still a remarkable achievement."
Larsen planned to pilot the Wright Flyer again Saturday morning in St. George, winds permitting, he said. After that, the aircraft will be taken apart into four pieces, loaded into a special van and driven to the Ogden Hinckley Airport, where it will go on public display June 21.
