Name: How can you legally fly a plane designed in 1910?
Uploaded: 2026-01-15T17:31:12.000Z
Duration: 7 min 16 s
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In 1910, a few years after their first flight, the Wright brothers started to sell aircraft.

The model B wasn't some experimental prototype or a custom build.

Basic passive voice

These were made to order about a hundred of them for civilians and the US Military.

One of them is on display near here at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.

And the other one, The other one is also a display of museum because this is not original.

This is a look alike designed to look as close as possible to the original while being safe to fly with passengers in the 21st century.

So we're going to head up to about 1,000 and obviously I have some questions, but

given it's a little bit windy up here, I thought it might be best to ask those down on the ground.

We went with a look alike because there are actual replicas.

People have built very close to scale replicas of a 1911, 1910 Wright Flyer.

But they found the same problems the Wrights did.

The airplane isn't exactly what you call reliable.

And frankly, we don't want to have to fix our airplane after every flight.

So we built out of modern materials with modern building techniques so that we could fly on a frequent basis.

We'd like to be able to land the airplane and put somebody else on it and continue flying.

The airplane is very, very close to what a 1911 Wright B Flyer would have looked like once you get 100, 200ft away from it.

If we overfly people, a 1911 Wright Flyer is what you see.

We're trying to recreate what people in 1911 Dayton, Ohio would have seen if Orville or Wilbur had flown over top of them.

And when you're inside the airplane, this is not an open cockpit airplane.

You are literally sitting in front of the wing and experiencing flight the way that people did at the early turn of the century.

So this does use steel and aluminium, sorry, aluminum, but

the structures behind the wing are still wooden, just like they were in the original.

And these wings are covered in fabric like the original, although these days it's material science fabric.

There are a few other changes too, like how you steer.

The Wrights knew that in order to roll the airplane, they had to change the lift of each wing.

They had a small tray that they sat on and when they shifted their body, there was wires that were Hooked to the ends of the wing and, and

that would twist each wing in opposite directions to be able to give them that lift differential.

The replicas that have flown have done that.

It's incredibly difficult to be able to control.

So to be able to get something where you can safely and repeatedly do that is very, very, very challenging.

And that's why we went with the ailerons.

That original Model B that's hanging in the Air Force Museum, it was modified the exact.

The folks who bought it realized that ailerons are far, far better than wind warping.

The Wrights actually started out as bicycle engineers, if you will.

And when they realized they could only have one engine, but

they needed two propellers to generate the thrust that they needed to overcome the weight, they very quickly realized a single chain going to each propeller, one of them is inverted so that you have counter rotating propellers was the way to do it.

So we've done the same thing on our airplane.

We have one engine and we have two propellers that are driven by frankly a very, very, very strong and very industrial chain.

when you get up close to it, we've got a pretty, pretty solid chain on this airplane for very good reasons.

We have a Lycoming iO390, probably the largest four cylinder general aviation engine that we could get to put on the airplane.

So rated at 210 horsepower, the Wrights had anywhere from 32 to around 40 horsepower.

But sometimes you got a little less, sometimes you got a little more because they were all hand built.

federal Aviation Administration to sign off on a brand new plane with what is basically a brand new design?

The answer is, starts for work up and eventually it actually flies much like any other conventional general aviation airplane, except for the fact that you're not sitting inside of the airplane when you fly.

You and I are both part of the drag equation of this airplane.

You are impacting the drag of the airplane when you stick your hand out and wave.

And that's why we're required to go through the flight test process, because the FAA knows the airplane is going to have a personality.

The FAA has a very rigorous process when you're building even an experimental airplane.

We loaded the wings down with salt bags to simulate the load of three and a half GS.

So the airplane we know can pull three and a half GS.

You're never going to see three and a half GS in this airplane.

We've been up to maybe 1.2 GS in a 30 degree banked turn and that's about as steep as we're going to go because we don't need to do anything more than that.

So maybe we over engineered the airplane.

But you know, to me, when I'm flying it, that's the kind of stuff I'm really interested in having underneath me.

I'd like to think that somewhere down there as we come into lunch as a kid, just looking out the window going, we get a lot of head turning, we get a lot of waves as we go by.

We're trying to preserve early aviation history.

I've been airborne and I've looked down and there's another airplane flying underneath of me.

And that's just a view that you don't get from many other airplanes.

There was one more story that I had to put in this video though, and

it is the greatest nape drop that I've ever heard in my life.

Our original airplane we call the Brownbird, it first flew in 1982.

It has flown over 5,100 passengers over the years.

we're going something now that's a little bit more advanced, a little bit easier to move around.

I figured if I'm on camera, I better not screw this up.

A lot of people that have come out over the years have said, hey, I'm a pilot, I've got years of experience, I would really like to fly your airplane.

And we don't let other people fly the airplane.

And it's very difficult to fly the airplane.

We did make an exception once about 15 years ago.

We took a look at his credentials and we thought, okay, you know what, we're going to give this gentleman a chance.

It was impressive how well he could control the airplane.

So we've told other people, if you've walked on the moon, we'll probably let you come fly our airplane.

But until then, you know, we're just going to kind of take you for a ride when we take you flying.