Travel & Vacation Guide, North Carolina

By: Fleur Paipa

North Carolina rightfully boasts of the very first airplane flight that was made on the sandy hills of the tiny town of Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of the Barrier Islands. The Wright Brothers had come here all the way from Ohio with their flying contraption to make it fly!

Before being bitten by the idea of inventing a flying machine, the Wright brothers were the owners of a bicycle shop in the town of Dayton, Ohio. After testing many designs and facing teething problems, they were succesful in taking their first flight in an airplane made of wood, metal and canvas that was stretched across the wings of the plane. The pilot was required to lay flat on his stomach to manouvere the controls for the flight.

The Wright Brothers had taken four years to build this newfangled flying contraption. They worked on it from 1899 to 1903 to figure out the proper aerodynamics necessary to create an airplane. Even their sister helped them by sewing and stretching the canvass across the wing’s frame. It took them many years to finalize the design of the first practical airplane.

Before they were ready with their flying contraption, the Wright brothers had made several trips to Kitty Hawk to test gliders in order to better understand aerodynamics. Thus, they were quite familiar with the area and the people when they made their historic trip in 1903. So much so that they often recruited locals to help them haul and repair the Flyer.

This flying machine was considerably heavier than the earlier models of the Wright flyers. It was 125 pounds heavier than what the brothers actually wanted it to be. Because of its weight, the plane could not be launched like the earlier versions and required the building of a 15-foot launching rail to catapult it on its trajectory. They jokingly called it “Grand Junction Railroad”.

The brothers then had to postpone their regular tests because of the inclement weather in the late fall and early winter of 1903. This lead them to doubt whether they will at all be able to achieve their intended test flight that year. Things however changed for the better soon, enabling Wright brothers to start testing again and take their historic flight.

On December 17th, 1903 the Wright brothers accomplished their goal and their Flyer took off into the air. After a quick coin toss to see which brother would serve as pilot, Orville climbed into the controls and took off at 10:35 in the morning. Although the temperatures were cold, the plane soared into the North Carolina sky for a whole 12 seconds. The flight was only 120 feet long, but enough to propel the brothers and their plane into the history books.

After the initial flight, the brothers went on to make three additional flights, with Wilbur piloting the longest course, staying in the air for 59 minutes and covering 852 feet. The great state of North Carolina bore silent witness to this feat of engineering and man on a cold December day. Today, a monument to the Wright Brothers sits on top of the hill that saw their first flight in Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina.

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Fleur Paipa is the owner of F north carolina, the #1 source on the internet for information about north carolina. For questions or comments about this article why not visit: www.fyinorthcarolina.com/articles