Following the Wright Brothers

W A R R E N T O N, Va., Jan. 31 -- In a field behind his house, Ken Hyde and his comrades are inventing the airplane.

Back and forth they go, towing a handmade glider behind a station wagon. Sometimes it rises 10 feet into the air. Sometimes its pilot gets slightly wobbly — and it's back to the shop for repairs.

"Even at the slow speed of 25 miles an hour, you feel like you're doing 50," said Hyde.

What, one may wonder, are these dreamers doing?

They are getting ready for the 100th anniversary of that famous morning on Dec. 17, 1903, when Orville Wright flew 120 feet in 12 seconds. This coming Dec. 17, Hyde and his group expect to be at Kitty Hawk, N.C., to re-enact that moment as accurately as possible — and are finding it is not easy.

"It is literally much harder to re-engineer something, and find out exactly how they did it, in many ways rather than invent it," said Hyde, a retired airline pilot whose group, The Wright Experience, is trying to take every step toward flight that the Wrights did, precisely 100 years after they did it.

Much of the Wrights' work has had to be reconstructed from photographs and letters since the two brothers, fearful of copycats, left few other records. The reconstructed Flyer that hangs at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington is believed to be filled with inaccuracies, since it was put together — from Orville Wright's recollections — decades after a gust of wind destroyed it.

But Ken Hyde said his group's copy will be as close as possible to the 1903 plane.

‘Pride of the West’ Muslin

It is being built with the same tools and materials the Wrights would have had. Much of it is made from West Virginia silver spruce, the same wood the Wrights used.

One wing is four inches longer than the other — an addition the Wrights apparently made to counteract the weight of the engine, which rested just to the right of center.

Hyde's group has even copied the fabric that covered the wings — "Pride of the West" muslin, originally manufactured for ladies' undergarments.