"Getting It Wright" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Getting It Wright

They were not just a couple of bicycle mechanics, although they were noted for the quality of the bicycles they built. The Wright brothers were remarkable men. As the monument atop Big Kill Devil Hill reads, In Commemoration of the Conquest of the Air by the Brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright Conceived by Genius Achieved by Dauntless Resolution and Unconquerable Faith.

For those who didn’t know, the Wright brothers not only designed, built and flew the first powered aircraft but they also designed and built the engine that launched them into the air and sustained them in the four historic flights on December 17^th 1903. They even calculated the co-efficient of lift -- the critical number that virtually defines flight -- with such precision that it is only slightly different from what computers use in the design of aircraft wings today.

For four years, beginning in 1900, Orville and Wilbur Wright traveled from Dayton, Ohio to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for their pioneering experiments. The site was chosen for the constancy of the winds which came off the Atlantic Ocean crossing over the low sands at 20 to 30 knots. These winds provided an excellent platform for their efforts, first with gliders and then with the powered machine.

Because the area was fairly desolate, particularly during the "off season" where the temperatures dropped to freezing and below, the Wrights had to bring with them, in addition to their aircraft packaged in crates, most of their basic living supplies. They traveled by train to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and then by boat to the Outer Banks. When a part of a plane broke, they had to ship it back to Dayton for repair in most cases, holding up experiments for days and sometimes weeks.

But it all paid off in the end, of course, and a hundred years later our world is much defined by the outgrowth of what the Wrights did that cold December day. The work of these humble men has meant that today people can travel around the globe in a matter of hours, governments can wage war without troops, and satellites can send words, sounds and pictures live from anywhere to everywhere.

Back in 1961, my family chose Kitty Hawk, just above Kill Devil Hills, as the site for a summer holiday. It turned out to be a perfect spot, as the ocean was considerably warmer than off New England where we lived, and because we savored the fresh local crab and shrimp and the luscious vegetables grown on the mainland. Over the nearly four decades that we returned to the Outer Banks, we visited the Wright Brothers Memorial several times.

But it wasn’t until I earned my private pilot’s license in 1999 and subsequently learned the details of what the Wrights accomplished that I truly understood the significance of their achievements. It also imbued me with a need to fly into First Flight Airport, a strip of tarmac installed on the other side of a line of trees from the site where the Wright brothers flew.

It’s a simple airport. Until May when to commemorate the first flights the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association built a small pilots center next to the airplane parking area, it was only a strip of asphalt. There is no fuel, service or facility to rent a plane. For pilots who don’t live in the area, or who don’t own their own planes, a practical choice is to commercially fly into Norfolk, Virginia and rent a plane at Chesapeake Regional, a few miles south of the international airport.

That’s what I did. The flight from Chesapeake in a Cessna Skyhawk took only 25 minutes. To make the event even more memorable, the squirrelly winds created by trees lining both sides of the runway required all my attention and experience to wrestle the plane comfortably to the tarmac. After a climb up to the monument, and a walk along the path of the first four flights, I got back into the plane.

The winds had shifted in the meantime, so I took off in the same direction in which the Wrights had flown a hundred years earlier. Covering four times the distance of their longest flight that day (852 feet), and in half the time it took them (59 seconds), I rose into the sky. Looking out the right window at the stone that marked that fourth flight, I felt a deep sense of honor, as a pilot and as an American.

The Wright brothers epitomize what is extraordinary about with our nation. They applied their pioneering minds and persevered with courage to answer a question that had eluded everyone before them. They did it, not for money, but to add a new dimension, literally to the lives of all who would follow. We’ve come a long way since, and we have an infinite, challenging future before us. The Wrights hold us to very high standards.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.