Debbie: Hello, my name is Debbie Galloway. I’m on loan to the Centennial of Flight Convention from NASA Headquarters Education Division. We have a very, hopefully a very exciting program for you today. We’re going to be sharing information about the Wright Brothers, the US Centennial of Flight Commission, and also I’m going to share some pictures with you from a recent experience that I had at Killdevil Hills.

With me to day is Bill Anderson. Bill is with NASA Headquarters as well. He represents the Era of Space Technology Enterprise. And Ron Machinsky is going to be helping us as well. I want to thank you for joining us. I also want to thank the large number of folks that have been working hard to make this event possible. So that includes the Quest people out in California and certainly all the people that have been working here at NASA Headquarters.

I don’t know how familiar you are with the Wright Brothers story, but I’ll share a little background information, and again we have some pictures and some Web site information for you that will be coming up.

If you have any questions, there’ll be an opportunity for you to send in your questions via the Web, I believe, and any of us or all of us will take turns answering those as best we can.

The Wright Brothers actually first became interested in aviation as young boys. Oh, excuse me, I’ve been reminded you can fax your questions as well. The number is 202-358-2751. Thank you, Fred.

They actually became interested, first interested in flight as young boys. Their father was a bishop. He traveled extensively, and he enjoyed bringing them special things from his trips. And he brought them a helicopter toy when they were quite young, and that was really their first exposure to something that was flight related.

The boys played with it as boys do, until they actually broke the toy. And then they tried their hand and rebuilding the toy helicopter and later actually tried to enlarge it and didn’t have great success in enlarging it, but had a lot of fun playing with it.

Later, quite a bit later, actually, they started following the exploits of a gentleman named Otto [Lilienthal]. Lilienthal conducted several very successful glider flights in Germany. And it was widely reported around the world, and the Wrights were quite interested in all of that.

Unfortunately, his experiments ended tragically when Lilienthal was killed while conducting one of his experiments. His glider stalled and fell to the ground in the late 1800s. That was really thought to be quite a turning point for the Wrights concerning flight.

It was then that they began to seriously think about perhaps conducting their own experiments. They went to the library, they polled local resources and started their research. Later they contacted the Smithsonian Institute and asked for the Institute to send them information. And they also got hooked up with a gentleman named Octave [Chinoot].

Chinoot was a well-known engineer. He was a bridge builder and also built several railroad yards, I think including Kansas City. He continued to work with the Wrights for many years and provided them with extensive information and guidance, practically throughout all of the early years of their experiments. And certainly put them in touch with others around the world that were doing flight experiments.

Chinoot had tried to pull together all the different folks in all the different places and document what their research was, where it was taking place and their successes. All of that was quite helpful to the Wrights.

Again in the late 1800s, 1899, the Wrights actually built a full-scale glider. There were many things that took place before that, but by that time they had build a full-scale glider. They were interested in finding out how it would work. They wanted to test it, and they certainly realized that their home in Dayton, Ohio, was not an appropriate place.

They needed a spot that had sustained winds and really were looking for soft landing as well. So sand was a very important ingredient to what they wanted to locate.

They wrote the Weather Bureau, and they responded, sent them information. Suggested three sites that met their criteria: sustained winds and sand. One of those sites I believe was in Florida, another in California, and Kitty Hawk of course was the one we’re all most familiar with.

Kitty Hawk was a logical location for them to select for a number of reasons. It was very isolated at the time, and it was not too difficult for them to get there from the Dayton area.

So they packed up their glider in 1900, and they actually headed down to Kitty Hawk. Initially they stayed with a gentleman named Dan [Tate]. He put them up in his house and then a bit later, they established their very own camp at Kitty Hawk. And I’m going to show you some photos here as I continue to sort of walk you through this.

The picture that you should be looking at now is their original camp at Kitty Hawk. As you can see, it was a very desolate location, but again it was a wind-swept location and it had the sand that they were looking for.

In the next shot that you’re looking at is their 1900 glider. They tried to fly this as a kite and I would like for you to note the angle of the strings. This was flown from the ground and I hope you can make out the strings. You can see that the kite’s sort of pulling against the strings.

Later, again, they expanded their camp a bit and the next picture you’ll see is actually a hangar that they worked in to build and assemble their kite.

Here’s a picture of the 1900-, oops, I actually kind of misled you there. The frame building that you saw a moment ago was a picture of 1901. So I’ll back up in my story just a tad.

In 1900, they were quite encouraged at the end of the season. They were running a bicycle business back in Dayton and they returned to Dayton at the end of the 1900 season with plans to build yet another glider, which they did in 1901. And this is a picture of the 1901 version. It stood on end, gives you a good sense of what that particular glider looked like.

The next picture is the 1901 glider, flown as a kite. They started doing this as they had done with the 1900 and they wanted to test its lift capability. You can see that the glider is sort of pulling to the right. It’s not flying straight up.

They tested this with chains, and then after they had done a number of experiments, many-, which were fairly well documented, Wilbur actually climbed aboard and did have several flights on the 1901. This was a difficult airplane to fly, not quite an airplane at this point.

This is Wilbur after a little bit of a rough landing, but fortunately because of their glider design, and because of the local topography of soft sand, the Wrights were not ever injured when they came to the ground more abruptly than they intended.

You can see that this glider has the elevator, what we call the elevator in the front of the glider. Not only was it their control surface for pitch, but it also served to cushion their landings. And came in handy for that purpose on a number of occasions.

The next picture, well I again am getting ahead of myself. I’m sorry. I want to tell you that the 1901 season for them was not incredibly successful. When they headed home at the end of 1901, Wilbur was so discouraged that he made a statement that he didn’t think that man would fly within 100 years. Their glider’s lift capability was disappointing, they were frustrated.

And so when they did return to Dayton, they knew that they, although they had followed Lillianthal’s tables of lift coefficient and they had replicated that, they were dissatisfied with the lift that they were generating with their 1901.

Remarkably, they designed a number of airfoils, small airfoils that they were able to do extensive wind tunnel tests with. And they, after many, many tests, redesigned their glider, and came up with their 1902 version, which you’re looking at now.

And you can see, I hope you sort of remember what we looked at a few moments ago, and we could probably flip back to that for just a second. Well that’s all right. I was going to take you back to the 1901.

You can see that this is pulling backwards as I pointed out earlier. And then the 1902 version that we just had up a moment ago, is flying straight up.

So they were very pleased with this particular design and felt that they had something very successful that they could continue to build on. And actually it is this design that the ’03 essentially followed.

So they went back again and this was Wilbur flying the 1902 and again they had just tremendous success with this plane, and were very, very pleased with it. In 1903, they returned again.

This time they felt that they were ready to fly a powered airplane. Now there’s lots that took place between the ’02 glider and the final design of the ’03. It had a number of problems that they needed to solve.

They had to develop propellers which they were hoping the propeller theory that already existed, marine propeller theory, would address their problems, and it did not. So they literally had to design and come up with propellers on their own. And they used the wind tunnel to design these propellers.

They actually realized that the propeller was basically a wing that pulled forward. And so they used their wind-tunnel data to design their propellers from scratch as well.

A lot of interesting stories about the materials they used for the propellers in the airplanes. Then they also had the problem of an engine. That too they thought was a problem that had been addressed and solved.

Automobiles were at the turn of the century. They had engines to run those. They contacted manufacturers and did not find any particular group that was one, interested in developing their engine, or that met their specifications.

They knew that the engine had to be light and the materials at the time were not suitable. So they decided to build their own engine. They had a gentleman that worked with them in their shop named Charlie Taylor. Charlie was a very talented mechanic, and he actually designed, using Wilbur and Orville’s drawings, an engine in a very short period of time, and it was the first cast aluminum engine I believe.

And so then after they solved all those problems, they did, you were looking at the hangar a moment ago.

They returned to Kitty Hawk and assembled the plane, and this is a picture that they actually took in 1903 of their camp with the assembled glider in the front of their hangar and tent.

They wanted to fly this plane and the first actual attempt, they had a lot of problems getting ready for the initial flight, this one. They arrived in the fall, they expected to test the engine, the airplane fairly early. They had broken propellers that had to be shipped back to Dayton, they had problems with the engine that had to be shipped back to Dayton. And unfortunately it wasn’t until December 14, 1903 that they were able to first make their initial attempts.

This is, the brothers were trying to figure out who would fly first. They flipped a coin. Wilbur won the toss and so he made the initial flight, again on December 14th. The flight was unsuccessful and this is a picture of Wilbur and the airplane at rest very shortly after he left the track, and so they did not consider this a successful flight.

They made some repairs, there was some damage done, and it wasn’t until December 17th that they were able to try again. It was Orville’s turn on December 17th and it was a very cold day.

The puddles in the surrounding area were almost frozen, but they knew that if they were ever going to get this flight in, they needed to do it as soon as possible, because the weather was turning bad and they wanted to get this done before the opportunity was lost.

So I know all of you have seen this next picture. This picture was taken right after the Wright Brothers 1903 craft left the ground. Wilbur had been running alongside of the aircraft. Orville was at the controls. This flight lasted a mere 12 seconds. It covered 120 feet, but it was the first sustained, powered flight of an aircraft and a very recognizable picture by us all.

There were four flights that day. This was again the first of four. Wilbur took his hand at the next flight, also 12 seconds. It was approximately 175 feet.

So the time was about the same, the distance was a little longer. They switched again. Orville took the controls. His second flight of the day lasted 15 seconds and covered 200 feet. And then finally Wilbur made the last flight of the day and a very successful flight. It was a total of 59 seconds and covered 852 feet.

The brothers decided to kind of take a break and they had people there in the camp to help them. The local life-saving station from Kitty Hawk, its members came and helped the Wright Brothers conduct their experiments, move the glider, set up the track, and they were all taking a break when a gust of wind came rolling through and turned the 1903 flyer end-over-end and the plane was destroyed and never flew again. The Wright Brothers packed up and they headed to Dayton.

That’s kind of a very quick summary of a few years and a few of the accomplishments of the Wrights, which were incredibly significant. Next Monday will be the 98th anniversary of the first power flight. And in 1998 and 1999, Congress established legislation whose purpose was to celebrate the 100th anniversary and to provide a means to do that.

The Congress established the Commission and appointed its members from a number of organizations. The Air and Space Museum’s Director, General Jack Daley, is the Chairman of this Commission. The members also include the Administrator of NASA, the Administrator of FAA, a representative from the First Flight Foundation in North Carolina, a representative of Inventing Flight from Dayton, and the sixth member of the commission is [Typo Resnay] from the Experimental Aircraft Association.

In the legislation they asked that a Web site be established and developed and that the Web site have a number of salient features, which I’m going to talk about for a few minutes here. I’m going to be rolling through these fairly quickly.

Again the first thing I would like for you to do is to note the Web site. It’s quite easy to remember. It’s www.centennialofflight.gov.

It is the only government Web site that focuses on the centennial. It is our sincere hope that it will be a site that will help you locate all the different kinds of things that are happening that are related to the Centennial of Flight. Points to various organizations and activities that are coming up.

There are many Centennial of Flight Web sites out there because there are many folks that are beginning to get involved or in fact have been involved for a long time. But again, we’re developing this Web site for your use. We hope that it will not only provide you with a great deal of information about the Wright Brothers and the history of aviation, but will also help you find other associations, individuals, and organizations that have plans in the works.

I’m going to show you the home page first, very quickly.

And again, I don’t know how well you can see this, but the URL is at the top and I want to emphasize that it’s gov at the end for government. If you put a different ending on that, you’ll get some other stuff. That’s fine, but this is the Centennial of Flight Commission’s home page.

There are a number of things on here that are listed on the left-hand scroll bar and several features and sections of this Web site. And again I should say that the Web site is the Commission’s primary mechanism for disseminating information. There are a few exceptions to that but this is where we will be informing people of all the things that we’re doing and all the things that other folks are doing as well.

On the left-hand side, and I’m not doing this in order, I’m going to hopefully show you enough of the information on our site and some of the special items too, to get you to come back and spend some time really digging down a little bit deeper.

One of the sections is the Wright Brothers history page. And on this particular page, right now we have three special items sort of at the bottom of the home page. the Wright Brothers history home page.

We have a bibliography, the Wright bibliography that was initially done by the Library of Congress and recently updated, and it covers all kinds of terrific things, monuments, books, memorials and again this came out many years ago, and it’s just recently been updated. It is searchable from various capacities, so check that out.

I will show you very quickly a piece of the next one, the next item there which is called the [Brunsmans] articles. This is a wood cut and it is preceding an article about the Wrights as printers. This article had never been published before and we’ve been in touch with the Brunsmans and they have graciously allowed us to add this to our Web site. It’s very interesting story about the work that they did as printers, which of course preceded the work as bicycle builders and mechanics, and that was followed by their interest in and development of the airplane.

So they were very mechanically engaged way before they became aircraft builders and designers. Good article. And there’s another one on here that I won’t show you that the Brunsmans did. It’s about the Wrights and their last man’s club that they belonged to. Interesting perspective. Sort of behind the scenes and many of you may be familiar with last man’s club. It’s a good story. So I encourage you to go there and look at that as well. Also unpublished prior to being brought up on our Web site.

Another section of the Wright Brothers history page is all about engines. And this is one of several components that will be added. This, as I, we’ll be putting up different things about various aspects of the airplane. And the section that you’ll find under Brunsman is about the Wright Brothers engines. I’ve just captured one page that’s on there to share with you. Good story. It tells you all about how it worked and I encourage you to go there as well.

I’m going to skip to the education page, something that’s near and dear to my heart.

We feel that the education section of our Web site is a very important one and it’s a big focus of the commission. Currently we have a couple of things up there. The first one I’m going to show you is the education matrix.

And you see the home page of the Matrix up on your site now. And if you go to the bottom of that page, you’ll see the word, that’s the education page, okay. We need to go to the Matrix home page.

Great, and there’s an intro there and at the bottom of that is the big red Matrix. Click on that.

What you get when you click on the Matrix is quite a long list of organizations. Actually there are over 50 organizations on this page. Each of them are related to air and space. Most of them are associations, but they all have an interest in educational materials and they support educational initiatives in various ways.

If you go to the upper right-hand corner of that long list, you will see a pull-down bar and a number of categories. That includes aviation camps, museums, workshops, all kinds of things. And there are a couple of ways you can use this. First of all I’ll tell you there are about 500 links on the surface of the matrix that connect to about 7000. So first of all, let’s check out the all links section, which is again on the pull-down bar.

Okay. We’re going there. If you select all links, you’ll get each association’s logo, you’ll get the name of the association. There’s a description that you can click on as well. And under that for each section that’s relevant for that association, you’ll have a link. So for example, the AMA has information that relates to aviation museums. They do in fact have an aviation museum. They have curriculum materials, they have educator grants, educator workshops, scholarships, you can see the list. And if you click on any of those, it will take you directly to the section of their site that relates to let’s say educator grants.

And the idea here was to help teachers go directly to the information they were looking for, opposed to having to search extensively through various sites. Now you can also find information directly about any one of these topics by again going to the pull-down menu,

and selecting one of those that you’re interested in.

If you were interested in grants for example, that, you would pull up all of the information located in the Matrix that’s directly related to grants.

Let’s check out the aviation museum link which does the same thing for aviation museums. It lists the name of the organization and it gives you a hot link to the museum information for each of the organizations in the Matrix that have information on museums. And if you scroll down, you will see there’s a number of them.

I wish I had more time to walk you through all these links, but we’d be here for about a week.

All right, let’s continue. Also on the education page, you’ll see a link to posters and bookmarks. The Centennial of Flight Commission in cooperation with NASA’s Education Division, has developed two Centennial of Flight-related posters.

And they’re behind me. I see that I’m on the camera again. Those posters are actually hanging behind us. And they’re also on the Web site.

Do we have the pdf? Okay, we’re going to pull up these posters individually so you get a better shot. We’re trying. There we go.

There are two. The first one, the one that you’re looking at now relates to mathematics and engineering, as do all of the activities on the back of this poster.

This poster and the other one that I’m going to show you, are downloadable. You can see the outline of North Carolina. Hopefully you can see the outline of North Carolina behind the Wright Brothers pictures. And the activities on the back of this poster, all of the panels are also downloadable. They cover all levels. There’s actually an activity for the elementary level, one middle school activity and also a fairly high-level high school activity related to math and engineering.

And a wealth of information about the Wrights is included on the back of this poster as is information about the various resources that we feel would be useful if you have an interest in the history of aviation or the Wright Brothers. For educators, there are suggested things that can be done in a classroom to get your kids involved in studying the

history of aviation and developing their own posters and their own timelines.

I’ll show you the other poster and then I’ll come back to something that you can do. The second poster is a science poster.

Again, activities at all levels are on the back. Gives you the history of the Wright Brothers. You can see from pictures there, including the toy helicopter that I referred to earlier. You should see the shape of Ohio.

Again the Wrights spent many formative years in Ohio and of course did their flight experiments at Kitty Hawk, so we wanted to honor both states’ involvement in this significant event.

Now not all aviation history took place in Ohio or North Carolina, obviously, every state, every county probably

has a legacy in aviation. And so we are trying, we the Commission, are trying to get people involved and interested and excited about looking into their own aviation history. And we hope that you’ll do that. And I’ll talk a little bit about how to show you what’s going on now and a way for you to let us know what you’re up to in just a moment.

Okay, also on this site is a bookmark. This is downloadable. We’ve designed it so if you run it off on your printer, you can fold it and tape it shut. It gives you information about our Web site, the major features. And on the right-hand side, you can see quite a bit of text. That is designed to help students and teachers navigate the site and to explore the various exciting things that we have on it.

In the education section, we have a lot of things coming, and this is actually true of all of the different areas of our site.

In the fall, we have another poster that will be available. We’re developing a K-12 curriculum and we’ll be adding this stuff as we go.

And I should mention, I forgot to say earlier when we were talking about the Wright Brothers history section, we actually have about 14 essays that address the Wright Brothers. Pre-flight, Address Lighter than Air, Rotary Craft, and we’re working hard to get those up on the site live for you. They are populated with great pictures, companion pictures that we think you will enjoy.

And also we’re going to be adding the 303 digitized images of the Wright Brothers original glass plates, the original photographs that they used using glass plates. We’re going to have those on our site in the near future as well. So I encourage you to keep coming back.

I’ll mention two other sections of our site. I won’t go there, just because I know the time is running and again we could spend quite a bit of time doing this. But I would encourage you to look at the exhibit section of our site. The exhibit is, we’ve got three exhibits, they’re all the same, but you can borrow the exhibits. So check out that part of the site. Many educators have been using our exhibits and others. So check that out and if you’re interested, there’s a contact-us button at the bottom of the exhibit.

We have an extremely exciting section called Sites and Sounds of Aviation. If you go there, now you will find the pictures of the Wrights that I showed at the beginning of this session. You’ll also find movies of the Wright Brothers flying in the early days at Ft. Myers. Other folks are featured, Lindbergh certainly, Erhardt, and this again is an area of our Web site that we’ll continuously be adding information to.

We’re working on engine sounds. We hope to be bringing those to you fairly soon. And astronaut interviews, as well as some other things. So please check that out.

The last main section of the Web site that I do want to show you a little information about is our calendar. This is a very important aspect of the site. And the first page you’re going to see is the calendar front page or home page.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page,

you can see that we’ve got the dates from now until the big 100th anniversary which is December, 2003. And you can click on any of these particular months to bring up that calendar, and we’re going to do that. We’re going to click on this December, this month, right now, December ’01.

When you do that, the month pops up and it’s populated with events.

And they are listed by state first and then city. If we go to today, December 13th, there are two events and one is in Louisiana and one is listed in California, Moffitt. We’re going to click on the California event and information pops up about this event.

Now at the top, you see Louisiana and New Orleans. The way that this is designed is that tells you what else, where other events are happening at the same, on the same day. But or actual event, the NASA Quest Web site, Webchat, is the event that you see listed there and all the information about what it is and where it’s taking place.

I’m going to go back to the December calendar page and at the top of this, you will see a couple of things. Not the very top, there we go, that’s perfect.

In the middle above the calendar it says long-term events. If you click on that button, it will give you a listing of events that are occurring that day, but also they’re long-term events, so over many days.

These are usually events that are taking place at museums for the most part, or long-term, as I said, long-term events.

If you go back to the main December page again, in the same general area, you will see to the right a submit-an-event button. And I want to make sure that I’m in the correct place here.

The submit-an-event button, if you click on that, pulls up a form. And this allows folks that would like to add information to our calendar about events that are taking place, that relate to the history of aviation or the Centennial of Flight, allows them to put in the information and send it to us. And after about a day, maybe two, we do review the information and we move it to our calendar.

Now at the end of that page, there’s a little box that says would you like your event to be recognized by the Centennial of Flight Commission and you can check yes there if you’re interested. We’re not going to do that now, we can’t really, because there are required fields on this form that have to be filled out before you can get to the next form. But if you do in fact check "yes," another form will pop up and if you would like to be recognized by the commission, we ask certain questions and that would give you permission to use our logo, for example, at your air show or your conference or your educational workshop, whatever.

If you go back to the top again, you can see our menu bar stays up on the left-hand side at the top. And under calendar, and this is going to be a little tough for you to see, but under calendar, I don’t see it. I’m looking for this link right here. There’s a search button that allows you, we might have to go to the main calendar page here.

There we go. And scroll down just a little bit. That’s not the right one. I’m looking for, we have a search-, sorry about the confusion here. We have, let’s go back to the main, should we go back to the home-, there we go. And let’s scroll down. There we go.

Under Calendar of Events, it shows you not only the submit-an-event button, but also search-an-event button. And if you click on search an event, it allows you to search the calendar by date, by type of events, by locations or even by the airport code identifier, which is a three-digit-, it’s a combination of letters and numbers or letters or just letters. So you can for instance type in the state of Texas and find out what’s happening in the entire state or you can narrow your search significantly.

Well I hope that that has been somewhat interesting, it’s hard to drive you through a Web site and keep your interest. I know it’s very, very difficult to see the Web pages as we’re pulling them up and that’s really not the point. What we wanted to do was give you a quick overview of some of the things that are included out there.

I’ve said several times that we’re going to be adding things continuously through the 100th anniversary of flight in December, 2003. And if I neglected to mention the actual date of the anniversary, I’ll do that now or I’ll repeat myself. And again the 100th will be December 17th, 2003.

There are many exciting things that are planned by several different folks all over the country and the world and you will find that information on our calendar. And we hope that you will get involved in planning your own events, and if you do, or if you know of others that are doing that, we hope that you will add them to our calendar, because we’d certainly like to share that information with other folks.

I think I’m going to pause for a second. Bill, do we have questions?

Bill: We do.

Debbie: And I’ve got one more segment I want to show you, but let’s take a break here and address some of these questions. Bill’s been busy typing over here.

Bill: Well the questions have been coming in, I think some of them from all over the world as a matter of fact. So let’s have a look at them. One of them, first question was from Davida and she says what was it about Orville and Wilbur’s approach that made them first?

Debbie: Well that’s a great question, Davida. The Wright Brothers worked very closely together all of their lives. They were incredibly mechanically inclined, they were methodical in their research and their problem solving. They tackled one problem at a time, worked through it. They did the testing, the research as I said a moment ago and just from start to finish, they recorded their work, they knew what did in fact, what worked for them and what did not. And proceeded to move forward.

Many folks had tackled the flight problem all over the world, and I’m reminded here if you-, Fred help me out here. You want them to fax that? Okay. If you wish to fax in a question, the number again is 202-358-2751.

So anyway, they worked well together. Sometimes they argued with each other. Actually they did that quite a lot, bouncing ideas off of one another. And as I started to say, there were people all over the world that were working this problem, and had made tremendous contributions.

The Wrights collected all of that information, studied what others had done and they were very fortunate in that they had the first powered flight.

Bill: Let me add to that. I’m in the middle of reading a book right now. I wish I could say I had finished it, but I haven’t. The title of the book is The Bishop’s Boys and it’s by Tom Crouch. And you can get it through amazon.com and probably other online places. I bought a copy as a Christmas present yesterday at the Air and Space Museum.

And what I learned in reading it is that he’s very specific about what made the Wright Brothers different, how they were first. He said that they were the first to, instead of tackling the problem alone, to go back and look at all the available literature, everything that anybody had written about the problem of flight, and pull it all together and make sense of it all before they began to tackle it. And it was doing that research in advance that gave them a leg up.

Debbie: I’m looking at the next question and it’s from Kevin, an engineer in Hampton Roads. He’s talking about the wind tunnel and would like to know how he can learn more about it. Actually we have some plans to put wind tunnel information up on our Web site. We’re working with some folks that have the original airfoils and we hope to develop some educational programs that will show exactly how that worked and give you information about the data they collected.

There are a number of people that you can contact, Kevin, that are doing experiments and certainly very, very knowledgeable about all of this.

Bill: My suggestion, and I hope that Kevin has already seen this, because that’s part of the typing I’ve been doing, if you will send your email address to the moderator, she’ll get it to me, and it’ll just take one phone call and I’ll get the right telephone number for you and tell you who to get in touch with down there at the Langley Research Center.

Debbie: Right, we’ve got lots of names that we’ll share with you.

Bill: Okay, the next question is from Margaret. And she says my eleven-year-old son and I live in Germany. While at Kitty Hawk a few years ago, I promised him we would attend some of the 2003 events. If I had to choose one time to be in the United States to participate in the celebrations, what would you recommend?

Debbie: Margaret, that’s a tough question because there are some outstanding events that will be taking place not only in 2003, but in 2002. Certainly the largest events will be happening in 2003 and I hope you pull up the calendar. It would be unfair of me to recommend one over another. But I think you’ll find what you’re looking for by looking at that calendar.

There’s just going to be a tremendous opportunity to choose and pick something that works best for you as far as time and length of time and location. So please check the calendar out.

Bill: Okay, thanks. We have another question here. This one’s from Will, and he says what will be the most exciting event of the Centennial of Flight?

Debbie: Well, Will, I hope that will be your event. So come up with a very exciting event to celebrate the centennial and add it to our calendar, and I’ll repeat, reiterate what I said to Margaret, which is there is just a tremendous number of very, very significant and exciting events. So please go through the December 2003 calendar. There’s more information being added to that calendar all the time, as well as all of the various sections of the site, so please come back and check out the calendar on a routine basis.

Bill: All right. The next question is from Sarah and she wants to know what other groups besides NASA are on the Centennial of Flight Commission?

Debbie: Well, Sara, if you go to our Web site, one of the first links at the top of the page is about the Commission. And I mentioned the six commissioners earlier that represent Air and Space Museum, NASA, FAA, North Carolina, Dayton, and the Experimental Aircraft Association. But in addition to the commissioners, we also have an advisory council that includes 17 members, and we’re working with a number of agencies and organizations that are involved as well. And all of that information is provided to you on our Web site. We have a number of partnerships. Those are located also under About the Commission.

There are several press releases there about our partnering organizations, which include AIAA, and I shouldn’t go down this list because I’m sure I’ll leave out several people. So let me just mention that one of them is AIAA. Again that info is on our Web site.

Bill: All right, the next question is from Andy and he wants to if you’re a pilot.

Debbie: Yes Andy, I am a pilot. I’ve been flying for a long time. I fly an airplane that I hope to share with you in a few minutes, I know we’re going to have to transition into that last section here in a moment. I’m going to do that. I fly a 1946 Globe Swift, and I became interested in aviation very early on and have had my pilot’s license since 1977.

Bill: Paula wants to know what it was like to fly in the glider.

Debbie: Uh oh. We’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Bill: Well all right.

Debbie: Okay, well that’s a great opportunity for me to transition. Paula, I’m not going to just tell you about what it was like. I’d like to show you what it was like. So I know there are many other questions out there. We’ll try to get back and answer these in the next couple of weeks. And I know that the folks at Quest do a great job or archiving these Quest chats.

So if you’ll forgive me for not answering more of your questions online, excuse me, live, we’ll try to answer them online and come back to the Quest site, and hopefully we will have the answers to your questions.

Bill: Okay.

Debbie: Is that all right?

Bill: Tell us about what it was like to fly the glider?

Debbie: That was Paula?

Bill: Yeah.

Debbie: Thanks for asking that Paula. That was a good cue. One of the events that was listed on our calendar for September 9th, 2001, and you won’t find it there now because that September calendar is no longer available because it’s history as it were.

But there’s a gentleman, there are many folks as a matter of fact that are building replicas of Wright kites, Wright gliders, Wright airplanes.

As a matter of fact there’s a gentleman named Ken Hyde that’s building the airplane that will be flow at Kitty Hawk on the 100th anniversary at the exact time, 10:35 in the morning, that the Wrights flew 100 years back.

There is another gentleman named Nick Engler that hails from Ohio. And on September 9th, he took his 1901 and 1902 replicas to the North Carolina area. We were at Jockey’s Ridge simply because the actual hill that the Wright Brothers flew their gliders off of and then in the proximity of their powered flight, has been stabilized by putting grass on it, so the monument will stay in one place. So there is no longer a sand dune there.

But about four miles south of the original flight, where the original flight took place is Jockey’s Ridge, and many of you I’m sure have been there. And I had the opportunity to fly myself down to Kitty Hawk and land at First Flight on September 9th to see what was going on. I was very excited to find out how that was all going to go.

This is a picture of me approaching the tent where these airplanes were being assembled. The airplane under the tent right now that’s coming together is the 1901 glider. Obviously a replica of it. And the Wright Brothers aero plane company is listed on our Web site. It will be listed more prominently with other Wright related sites very soon. The gentleman that has built these planes and is the owner of this Web site is Nick Engler.

Well when we got, when I got there that day, I watched them for the first time assemble this particular machine and [technical problems]

Bill: While you’re sorting through this, let me make one more comment. We’ve been asked to repeat the fax number. And the fax number is 202-358-2751.

Debbie: Thanks Bill. Well I’m trying not to get these out of order for you guys, so I’m going to just go to this one next and I may have to back up in my comments.

We actually carried the-, this is the 1901 up to the top of Jockey’s Ridge and low and behold we ran into a couple of folks that looked sort of familiar. These gentlemen were there for the occasion and this is Orville and Wilbur of course. Had a little time machine there while we were along with the gliders.

This is another shot of Wilbur and Orville and myself and the ’01, more importantly. This is very exciting. The wind was quite light that day. This was a picture of Nick Engler, he’s testing the wind. It was only about 11 miles per hour that day, which was extremely light. The Wrights liked Kitty Hawk because the wind was generally sustained at over 20 miles per hour and they actually needed 25 to 27 to fly this particular airplane.

This has a gentleman that is a hang-glider pilot. You can see him here, that’s testing the wind. He’s also a commercial pilot as well. I just was very excited to be hanging onto one of the ropes as we flew this like a kite, testing the wind, very, very much like the Wrights did in the earlier pictures you saw. Very thrilling experience.

You can see where, this is the ’01, it’s pulling back, just as the Wrights ’01 did.

Here’s another shot, I have a couple of these, again pretty much the same. And there’s another here, also similar. It gives you a chance to see the elevator in the front. And you can see this plane has no bottom, this glider, excuse me, has no bottom. When it’s on the sand, that lower wing lies flat on the sand.

Dudley the pilot took a short hop, he wasn’t having a great deal of luck, again because we didn’t have any wind. And I thanked Nick profusely for the opportunity to help fly the ’01 as a kite. That was very, very exciting for me. Told him that we needed to pack it up and head for home. And he looked at me and asked me if I wanted to take it for a spin and I about fell over.

I sort of looked back and said, "Don’t ask me questions like that unless you mean it." So I threw on the helmet.

This is Dudley saying, "Okay, this is what you need to do." Asking me if I have hang-glider experience and I said, "No, not a lick." And there was a little bar, I’ll try to put the mouse on it here, without clicking out of this.

This particular bar is where you put your hips, it’s just a piece of wood, and then there is another bar up here and Dudley was telling me, "Okay, that’s where you put your hands." And then back behind me you’ll be able to see it a little bit better later, is where you put your feet.

Let’s see this is I hope not the same shot, no.

Okay, more instructions. This whole instruction session took about a minute. Here we are ready for liftoff.

All of us are kind of saying, "When?" When, when, when, when? And none of us wanted to call it. We were hoping for a little bit of a gust of wind that would make this a little more successful. I was very excited at this point. And the way this works is this is sort of your propulsion system here. You’ve got to run with this puppy and then if you do get airborne, you need to pick up your feet and put them behind you on a little piece of wood back here that actually controls the wing warping.

So at some point Nick Engler said, "Now," and we all started running down the hill.

Moments later, right after I got airborne, this is the landing gear of the aircraft in motion. It’s on its way to the back of the glider. So this is again an in-motion shot here.

And I think I have another one, I hope I have the right one here. Let’s try this one.

Yes, this is another shot that was taken at about the same time from a different camera, again right after I left the ground and my feet are in motion. Not sure, I can’t-, okay.

This is an earlier shot that was taken of Dudley when he had his short hop. All right, then about 70 or 80 feet later, I’m not at all sure, the plane came to a rest and I, it was such an incredible experience I can’t even begin to describe it.

And you can see that I did get my feet behind me. There is a little bar there that you use your feet, at least in the ’01, you used your feet to control, or the Wrights used their feet to control.

And I have [technical]. I’m missing the one of the final shot of me kneeling on the sand after the flight was over. I don’t see it on here, so I won’t just click around.

But like I said, it was an incredible experience. It might be this one.

Yes, there it is. I’m just beside myself. Like I said, it was a very exciting experience. Wonderful. And as I said earlier, this glider lies flat on the ground.

After that, my hubby and I headed for the airport. At Kitty Hawk, we jumped in our Swift which had transported us down there and flew back to the Washington, D.C. area. That’s the Wright Memorial in the background. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s no longer a sand dune, the hill has been stabilized. I didn’t need an airplane to fly home that day.

I probably would have made it without one. I was on cloud nine to say the least.

This picture is significant for me in other ways as well. This was the last day that we have flown our airplane. Several airports are still closed since 9/11, unfortunately and our airport happens to be one of them.

Right after we took off from Kitty Hawk,

we actually flew back to Jockey’s Ridge and took some aerial photographs and I’m sure these are very difficult to see, but there is the 1901 on the stand and there are some other folks flying hang gliders, that you can easily identify. The shadows help.

And let’s see, I’ve got a couple more. So we circled-, this one’s a little harder. The beach is to the left, again two gliders that are down the hill. The 1901 at the top, and another hang glider here as well.

This is the shot I was looking for earlier. This is when the glider was being carried up the hill the first time. Very hot day of September, in the 90s.

And that concludes my presentation, and I see it’s 2:00 o’clock. And want to thank you all very much for tuning in. I hope this was of interest. I hope I got my facts straight today.

We had a lot of information to cover and I especially hope that you will look at our Web site and continue to come back and look at it. And as importantly, get involved in the Centennial. There’s something there for everyone, certainly the history of aviation involves people all over the world, and this is an international celebration. We all have very significant people that have made wonderful contributions. And it amazes me that Monday, the 98th anniversary of the Centennial of the first flight has literally taken us from the sand dunes of Killdevil Hills to a permanent presence in Space.

So again, I thank you, I thank my colleagues, Bill, thank you very much and Ron, you were wonderful. I appreciate all your help today. And you guys take care and happy holidays, Bill?

Bill: One last thing, we’ve been asked to remind everyone that that fax number for submitting questions will be live for one week only and the number again is 202-358-2751 for faxing. Thanks Debbie, that was great.

Debbie: Thank you.