117 years ago today...

Not to mention a camera that weighed almost as much as the airplane! ;)

D5B0061A-AC02-48BF-86A7-DA1A03601A71.jpeg
 
Crazy to think how far we came so fast! I look at my bird that took flight 8/21/47 just 44 years after this and it’s amazing... Mankind had been seeking flight since we began walking upright if not before, and these two guys cracked the code...

Now we argue over oil additives and ROP vs LOP when just 5 score and 18 years ago we were arguing how to get a motorized vehicle to just leave the damned ground!
 
Lady Luscombe visited August 30, 2019. Also 12/17/1903 was my grandfather's birth date.

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Four flights each longer than the first.



Wilbur's only flight wast the longest

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I am one of the oldest licensed pilots here, and from my first flight in a 65 HP Piper, to the present, have been flying intermittently for 74 years, more than half the years that people have been flying. I have had a license for 51 years. My first flight at CGS, College Park, America's oldest continuously operated airport was 1959, 53 years after the Wright Brothers started the Army flying school there. 53 years later, I was not only a pilot who had flown at CGS more than half of the years it existed, but also the oldest pilot on the field with a valid medical.

Still, I am not the oldest pilot here on POA. JohnWF and Bobmrg, and possibly others have me beat.

The curater at the College Park Museum has called me to explain what some of the items that were donated might be. Usually, I can explain,and she writes down that information, and attaches it to the item. These are donations from an estate of a deceased pilot, and the executor only knows they are old and flying related.

Unfortunately, 2020 is the first year since 1969 that I have not been up in a private plane. Hopefully, 2021 will be a better year.
 
Just over 48 years between that first powered flight and the first jet passenger service.

About 65-1/2 years to the first moon landing.

66 years to the first B747 passenger flight.
 
Note that the Wright Brothers foresaw the controversy over tail draggers and nose draggers, and built theirs with skids. That made their planes acceptable to all except Curtis.

Many large planes have wings longer than those flights in 1903.
 
If you look at the photo very carefully, you can clearly see "Barriquand & Marre" on the engine data plate.
 
IK04 said:
It was all faked. Filmed in a studio on the moon, where there was almost no gravity...
Click to expand...

Looks rather like a moonscape, doesn't it.
 
What really gets me about the Wright brothers. Many, if not most technological or scientific developments happen from multiple sources at once, often in competition. The Wrights were alone. They were the only ones with even a possibility of success. Had they not done what they did the development of powered aircraft might not have happened for another decade or more.
 
steingar said:
What really gets me about the Wright brothers. Many, if not most technological or scientific developments happen from multiple sources at once, often in competition. The Wrights were alone. They were the only ones with even a possibility of success. Had they not done what they did the development of powered aircraft might not have happened for another decade or more.
Click to expand...
And as I recall, it wasn't done using government grant money.
 
Makes me want to fly to FFA...

geezer said:
Note that the Wright Brothers foresaw the controversy over tail draggers and nose draggers, and built theirs with skids
Click to expand...

They also foresaw the high vs low wing controversy and created an aircraft with both. Still they probably should have just gotten a Bo.
 
It's incredible.. in just over over 11 decades we went from the Wright Flyer to Supersonic commercial flight to people at home with CAD being able to build flying machines (Mr Peter Raptor). Incredible stuff
 
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