AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - September 2024 - 54

W
This airplane retains some of the original
design characteristics of the Wright B Flyer,
which the Wright Company produced in
West Dayton beginning in 1910: open-frame
tail, counter-rotating propellers connected by
chains to a single engine. But safety standards
have changed since the Wright EX Vin Fiz
left a trail of parts across America on the first
crossing of the United States by airplane. This
" B " uses modern materials and construction.
Steel and aluminum replace ash and spruce. A
210-horsepower Lycoming YIO-390 stands in
for the original Wright Vertical 4, which put out
28 to 42 horsepower. And roll is controlled by
ailerons, which quickly eclipsed the Wrights'
pioneering wing warping system.
The Wright " B " team prefers the term
lookalike. " A lookalike is an airplane that at 100
yards, you probably couldn't tell apart from an
original. And that's what we strove to do. "
The enterprise began as a project on nearby
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the 1970s.
The Wright brothers' original drawings had
been destroyed in the Dayton flood of 1913,
so the planners took detailed measurements
of the modified Model B at the National
Museum of the U.S. Air Force and used it as
the basis for a lookalike. The Brown Bird, as
it came to be called, made its first flight in
1982, and operations soon moved to Dayton/
Wright Brothers Airport. The organization
brought the airplane to airshows and events
and offered runway hops to convey what early
flyers experienced.
" Some people are, emotionally moved to
tears, " Stepler says. " And it's happy tears. You
know, they you get to experience exactly what
the Wright brothers felt and saw and, that that
for some is an emotional event. "
The group started getting requests for
airshow appearances overseas, so they
designed a smaller lookalike-the Silver Bird-
that could be easily disassembled and trailered
in a shipping container. It flew for about 20
hours of its 40-hour flight test phase when a broken weld on the left propeller shaft
led to an accident that killed both Wright " B " Flyer Inc. pilots on board in 2011.
After the accident, the team regrouped. They decided to build another lookalike
based on the Silver Bird, with some critical design changes. The White Bird first flew
in late 2021 and made its first public appearances in 2023. Now the team hopes to
begin guest flights in the White Bird.
Racing semis
" The airplane has a personality, " says Stepler. " Well, but let me say that a little
stronger: The airplane has an attitude. "
He's talking about the Brown Bird, which flew more than 5,100 guest flights
between 1982 and 2022 and which now towers over the White Bird and other
memorabilia in the Wright " B " Flyer Inc. hangar museum. Stepler has more than
two decades of experience in the Brown Bird and trained the other Wright " B "
pilots in its unusual flight characteristics: With no wing dihedral for stability, it
requires constant control inputs; its light wing loading of 7 pounds per square foot
makes it susceptible to turbulence and a delay from control input to action means
the pilot is always anticipating.
The Wright " B " pilots say the White Bird is less squirrely. Strapping into the
passenger seat on a cool June morning, I hope so.
54
AOPA PILOT / August 2024
AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - September 2024

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