AOPA Pilot Magazine

Pilot Briefing

Flying machine operators wanted

BY ALTON K. MARSH (From AOPA Pilot, November 2003.)

How many hours did it take you to get your private pilot certificate? If it was a lot, you're not alone. If it was a few, here's sobering news: Students at the Wright Company School of Aviation did it in four. They were masters of the machine in two to three. The total cost of the 10-day program was $250 and students didn't have to pay for "breakage of the machine," according to the Wrights' advertising flier preserved in Dayton's Wright State University archives.

The Wrights started their school in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1909 but moved it to Dayton's Huffman Prairie Flying Field in 1910, where the Wrights had previously done experiments. At the time it was near what the Wrights called Simms Station, known today as Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The school lasted only a few years but during its existence it set historic firsts.

The first flight simulators were used there — one was a fuselage set on sawhorses while another was a balance board. To use the balance board, students carried a pole across their shoulders like a high-wire circus performer. Heavy rocks on each end assured enough mass to make the pole useful. A board was placed across a wagon axle held off the ground by its two wheels. An assistant would tilt the board to see if the student could keep his balance, since that was thought to be the key to successful flying. Balance continued to be regarded as the key to a successful pilot career for years to come. Cavalrymen were thought to be good "flying machine operators" because they had experience keeping their balance atop a prancing horse.

Once a student's balance was improved, flight training could begin. The Wrights generally did not give the flight instruction but conducted a class at the factory in west Dayton covering the construction and repair of flying machines — especially repair. Flight instruction was left to others and given in flights lasting from five to 15 minutes. Usually no more than 30 minutes of instruction was given per day. It wasn't all work, however.

Photos from the Wright State collection show a student doing a chair-balancing act, a stunt perhaps based on his tilt-board training. Another shows a student doing handstands. Among the 119 students who eventually graduated was then-Lt. Henry H. Arnold, later to become the commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II.

Competition existed among flight schools, and mild criticisms of other schools in the brochure may have referred to the Flying School and Exhibition Company started by Glenn H. Curtiss in Hammondsport, New York. The difference between the two schools was that Curtiss instructors stayed on the ground while Wright instructors flew with their students, according to Peter Truesdell, a member of the board of trustees of Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York (where history is still flying every summer weekend).

The method was still in use for training pilots to fly the relatively more modern biplanes of World War I. There is a flight-training story from that time that bears repeating, and it may even be true. In 1917 a British military instructor, Maj. Robert R. Smith-Barry, established the School of Special Flying at Gosport in Hampshire, England, to train military flight instructors using an Avro 504J tandem-seat biplane. The training course exposed students to dangerous maneuvers in a controlled manner. Timid students would refuse to take the stick when signaled to do so, so Smith-Barry would simply heave his stick over the side, forcing the student to fly or die. One day Smith-Barry tossed his stick to the wind only to see the student do the same. While the frantic instructor tried to fly the airplane using the missing stick's nub, the student smugly installed a third stick he had hidden aboard prior to the flight. Currently, in four locations around the United States, flight training has reverted to pre-World War I levels.

Several groups are planning to build and fly 1903 Wright Flyer replicas, and the method for training are often the same as used by the Wrights: Practice first in gliders. Pilots for the Wright Experience at Warrenton, Virginia, have flown Wright gliders in preparation for a flight in December at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. The Flyer built by The Wright Redux Association in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, has already flown successfully. The Virginia Aviation Museum in Richmond, Virginia, is sponsoring the construction of a Wright Flyer by three men, one of them a German builder of antique aircraft engines. In California, another Wright Flyer is taking shape and is sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

There probably will be few handstands or high jinks like those at the Wright school to show off for the crowds. Today's pilots know just how uncontrollable and dangerous the 1903 Wright Flyer could be.

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