Learning to learn to fly

How would you like to solo on your first time in an airplane? Students of the 1910s did, but there's a catch. They didn't actually fly that first time in a single-seat airplane, and it wasn't even called an airplane-it was a flying machine. Pilots were called operators.

Glenn H. Curtiss established his Flying School and Exhibition Company in Hammondsport, New York, in December 1910, only one year after the Wright brothers established the Wright School of Aviation. The difference between the two schools was that Curtiss instructors stayed on the ground, while Wright instructors flew with their students. That information comes from Peter Truesdell, a member of the board of trustees of Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York-where historic airplanes actually fly every summer weekend-and a curator at Long Island's Cradle of Aviation museum. Curtiss used his single-seat Curtiss Pusher as a trainer. Students would make taxi runs or short hops before attempting to lift off, returning after each run to get tips from the instructor who monitored their progress.

Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome pilot Dan Taylor said the official term for the technique was grass cutting. Students would wait for each other at opposite ends of the field. One would fly it down the field; the next would fly it back. Students didn't attempt to turn the Curtiss Pusher in the air-that was done manually after landing. Taylor flies the Curtiss Model D aircraft and a 1909 Bl�riot XI during shows at Old Rhinebeck.

Much the same method was used in France. The French used the (Louis) Bl�riot System of flight instruction, which involved intentionally limiting the capabilities of the single-seat Bl�riot XI trainer, Truesdell said. Bl�riot was the French aviation pioneer who became famous for flying the English Channel in 1909 before devoting his energies to aircraft manufacturing.

Beginning students-cavalrymen were often selected because they were experienced with the "prancing" behavior of early aircraft-used a trainer with wings clipped to half their normal span and powered by a three-cylinder, 25-horsepower engine with a restricted throttle. It was called the Penguin, and it taught students to use the rudder bar for ground operations. They graduated from that to the Roller, a trainer with full-span wings that could barely fly. Finally, advanced students flew a trainer with a 50-hp rotary engine (the whole engine spins about the crankshaft) and were later given training orders such as, "Ascend to 1,000 meters [3,280 feet] and stay there an hour." The Germans adapted a similar method of training by taking the fabric off the lower wing of a biplane to prevent it from flying.

One of the few places in the United States that offered in-air flight instruction was the Wright School of Aviation in Dayton, Ohio. It was established in 1909 in the South and moved to Dayton in 1910. How many hours did it take you to earn your private pilot certificate? If it was a lot, you're not alone. And if you are bursting with pride at how few it took, here's sobering news: Students of the Wrights did it in four. They were masters of the machine in two to three.

The Wrights had modified a Wright Model B in 1909 allowing the wing-warping controls to be operated by an instructor in the right seat. This became their trainer. They also used some of the first flight simulators, according to Dayton-based National Park Service Ranger Bob Petersen. One consisted of the body of a Wright Model B set up on sawhorses. Another "simulator" had students trying to stand on a balance board while an assistant tilted it. There are pictures of these simulators in use, and also a photo of students doing handstands for the camera.

For $250, which also covered the breakage of the plane, the Wright school provided 10 days of training, including "four hours of actual practice in the air and such instruction in the principles of flying machines as is necessary to prepare the pupil to become a competent and expert operator." Among the 119 students who graduated was then-Lt. Henry H. Arnold, later to become the commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. The late Arnold once recalled that the students spent much of their time in the factory in west Dayton learning from Orville and Wilbur Wright how to assemble and repair the aircraft. The Wright brothers themselves did not generally give actual flight instruction.

It wasn't always a good thing to have a flight instructor in the airplane. As students in England learned, they can be a little cranky at times. 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. His method of combining classroom and dual instruction was copied around the world and stayed in vogue for 30 years. The training course did not avoid dangerous maneuvers, as most courses of the time did, but instead exposed students to them in a controlled manner, according to the British Fleet Air Arm Archive history site on the Web. Sometimes timid students would refuse to take the stick when signaled to do so, so Smith-Barry came up with a unique solution.

According to a story told by the late Cole Palen, founder of the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, the frustrated Smith-Barry would remove his stick and heave it over the side. The student had to take over or perish. One day Smith-Barry tossed his stick into the air and was shocked to see the student do the same. While the frantic instructor tried to fly the airplane using the missing stick's nub, the student installed a third stick he had hidden aboard and flew the aircraft to a safe landing. An official of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum said he has heard the story, but added that it may have been embellished over time.

Another training innovation first employed by Smith-Barry was a rubber tube installed in the Avro 504 that allowed the instructor to communicate with the student while in flight. It became known as the Gosport speaking tube-the Gosport tube for short-and was the precursor to today's aircraft intercoms.

Despite the improved instruction, "The training accident rate in World War I exceeded the aircraft combat losses at the front line," Truesdell said. That was partly due to the fact that aircraft beat up in the war were returned and used at training bases.

Several groups have built and plan to fly-or have already attempted to fly-replicas of the 1903 Wright Flyer, and the methods for training used by many of them are the same as those used by the Wrights: Practice first in Wright gliders. Pilots for The Wright Experience at Warrenton, Virginia, flew replicas of Wright gliders in preparation for a flight at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, on December 17, at the site of and 100 years to the minute after the Wrights' first successful powered flight. The Flyer built by The Wright Redux Association in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, has already flown successfully. Tethered tests were conducted by pulling it on a trailer at flight speeds. The Virginia Aviation Museum in Richmond, Virginia, sponsored 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 sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

There will probably be few handstands before or after the flights to show off for the crowds. Today's pilots have learned just how uncontrollable and dangerous the original Wright Flyer can be.

Alton K. Marsh is a senior editor for AOPA Pilot magazine. He holds a flight instructor certificate with instrument and multiengine ratings and an airline transport pilot certificate, and has accrued 2,500 flight hours.

Photos courtesy Wright State University Archives

Want to know more?

The following resources offer additional information on topics discussed in this article.

• The Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome's Web site contains a wealth of information on early aircraft in its collection.
• Learn more about the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, and especially the Huffman Prairie Flying Field-now part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base-where the Wrights operated the Wright Company School of Aviation from 1910 to 1916.
• Read a history of Maj. Robert Smith-Barry's School of Special Flying and the Avro 504 airplane that it employed.
• Visit the Web sites of the various Wright Flyer replicas that have been constructed for the centennial of the first powered flight.
• Find out more about the observation of the First Flight Centennial, which takes place on December 17 in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

Links to these resources are available at AOPA Online.