I'll never fly again without an altimeter.
Late last summer my wife and the in-laws and I rented a house on North Carolina's Outer Banks for a week. Aside from paying homage at the Wright brothers' obelisk atop Kill Devil Hill, I hoped to scuba-dive a couple of shipwrecks. It was hot and windy, and when we arrived all the scuba schools said visibility was less than zero. By midweek my low-adventure light was flashing red, so I signed up for a hang gliding class at Kitty Hawk Kites. The name's a misnomer: Kitty Hawk Kites is nowhere near Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers proved their gliders and used them as a pattern for the first powered airplane. Kitty Hawk Kites is four miles south, near Nags Head, on the sole stretch of sand dunes left on the Outer Banks: Jockey's Ridge. I guess Nags Head Kites just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Signing up took no time at all. I put my John Hancock on a form that said I wouldn't sue if I broke my skull in a crash. Then I paid 85 bucks for five flights. The instructors showed the eight or 10 students into a small room with uncomfortable fiberglass chairs and a TV, and cranked up the VCR. The video's content consisted largely of how much fun we'd have nosediving into the sand and reminded us to laugh it off if we ended up with a compound fracture.
After the tape ended, the instructors paraded us outside to Jockey's Ridge. They both had ponytails and went barefoot. The Wright brothers dressed to the nines, even in the summer heat.
Less than five minutes after reaching the summit of the ridge, everyone else in the group had tried to fly and left to come back another day, as per the signed agreement. The 25-knot wind that sandblasted their faces was too much for that bunch of wimps, but not for me. Those exact conditions — high wind and lots of sand — were the reason that the Wrights chose Kitty Hawk. And gliding, after all, was the genesis of true powered, controlled flight. Without gliders we'd never have had our North American X-15s or Cessna 172s.
Despite anything you've seen on television (like medieval knights flying Rogallo wings — not actually flown until 1948), gliding only dates back about 200 years. The glider was invented by Sir George Cayley, who focused on fixed-wing flight in an era when most (imitating Leonardo da Vinci) were attempting to fly ornithopters (aircraft propelled by flapping wings). Cayley spent his entire life in aeronautical research, although he would be 80 and it would be 1853 before he built a glider. Its wing looked like a kite, its fuselage like a boat, and its controls like a tiller attached to a cruciform tail. This tail was not only supposed to turn the vehicle right and left like a ship, but also lift it up and lower it. Cayley's minions pushed it to a hilltop and Cayley gave his astonished coachman a quick flying lesson. Then Cayley's servants pushed the glider and it became airborne; the shaking coachman sat in the back, hand on tiller, floated to the bottom, bounced, and landed. In a famous statement he quit on site. ("Please, Sir George, I wish to give notice. I was hired to drive, not to fly!")
The man who made the most progress in gliding was Germany's Otto Lilienthal. An engineer, Lilienthal designed his first glider in 1891. Over the next five years he built 15 more. Some were biplanes, more were monoplanes. He even built a hill near Berlin where he could store the gliders, then take off for a flight. His gliders, really the first hang gliders, had their wings and tail surfaces framed from willow and bamboo, then covered with cotton fabric. But they had no controls other than Lilienthal shifting his body weight. His experiments were successful, as far as flying goes: He made more than 2,000 glides, many lasting 1,150 feet. But a problem with his designs lay in their high center of gravity: Roughly half his body stuck up through the wing. As for safety, that left a lot to be desired. In 1896 his glider got caught in a gust of wind and its nose rose, then it crashed tail first. Lilienthal broke his back and died the next day.
The brothers Wright read about this, and they decided that weight shifting wasn't enough. Total control over a glider meant everything. According to one version of the story, Wilbur was watching vultures and he noticed that to level off or bank they would turn the tip of one wing up and the other wing down. That was the exact action they needed. Still, he and his brother Orville had to find a way to transfer it onto a glider. They considered a mechanical device that would use gears to crank one wing up while it cranked the other down, but ultimately decided that it would be too heavy and too slow. Wires, though, might do the trick. They built a biplane glider and wired the wing tips to a cradle on the lower wing, which they lay on to lessen wind resistance. When they wanted to turn the machine, say, left, they would slide the cradle to the left; that would turn the left wing up and the right wing down. And it would turn the machine left. What's more, it was a natural movement. (Who hasn't leaned in the direction they want their airplane to turn?) (See " Warp: Control From Past to Future," August Pilot.)
The Wrights also added a forward elevator to control the craft's ascent and descent. And they placed it forward because they figured that at the slow speeds they flew it would react more quickly. (Too, they hoped that with the high winds at Kitty Hawk it would stay aloft in one place, where they could observe it.) They also wanted the elevator forward to absorb the impact if they crashed into the sand — which they did, over and over, as they learned how to fly their machine. The elevator and the minimal length of the glider both contributed to undulating flight. It took — it takes — a highly skilled pilot to fly a Wright machine.
They built their first glider and flew it in 1900; the second, bigger glider they flew in 1901; and the third glider they flew in 1902. The last one they designed with research from their own wind tunnel; it had more sophisticated wings based on aspect ratio rather than mere square footage like Cayley's, Lilienthal's, and the Wrights' first two gliders. And it flew better than all the previous gliders. They felt they had perfected the form well enough to add power and props. And thus, on December 17, 1903, the two made their first four flights before witnesses from the Kitty Hawk Lifesaving Station. The age of powered, controlled flight had begun.
And yet, people still wanted to fly like birds. They just didn't know it until a few decades later.
It all started back in 1948 when a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) engineer named Francis Rogallo designed a simple triangular glider. It consisted of Mylar fabric with parachute lines dangling along two sides and down the center. It was as simple as the Wrights' gliders were complex. At Jockey's Ridge he tested it with his wife, Gertrude, but when she rose about four feet off the dune the tow rope broke and she belly-flopped down the dune. She quickly gave up gliding.
Fast forward to the space race. The Russians landed their crewed space capsules on land, while the Americans splashed down in the ocean. America's way was more expensive, requiring a ship and helicopters and frogmen. NASA thought it could use Rogallo's wing to unfold on a Gemini spacecraft after it reentered the atmosphere, letting the capsule glide onto U.S. soil. It never got past the experimental stage.
Australian John Dickenson, however, got wind of Rogallo's wing and he thought it would make a great device to tow behind speedboats. Dickenson slightly improved the wing: His was an aluminum-tube V covered with nylon cloth with another aluminum tube Bisecting the V; the pilot steered with a metal triangle attached to that center tube.
As time passed, hang gliders grew more complex, with ribs and two surface wings that are more swept than delta. And being more aerodynamic they had less of a sink rate. But like the old wings these newfangled wings work by a combination of weight shifting and steering. At least that's what the videotape told me.
Atop Jockey's Ridge the two instructors had me step into a lap harness, and they hooked it from my rear to a line that formed a pyramid with the aluminum triangle. I lay down on the sand holding onto the bar while one of them gave me final instructions: Shift my weight to the left and turn the bar left and the wing turns left. To turn right I do the opposite. I figure I'm not going to pull a Lilienthal because this wing has a lower center of gravity — at least with me strapped below it. If I want to climb and I have enough speed I push the bar forward. If I'm too low and slow the wing stalls and I'll come in for a landing. I don't want to stall from too great an altitude, of course, or I'll do that Lilienthal thing. If I do pull the bar toward me and I have enough altitude I'll gain speed and maybe even ascend. But with little speed I'll dig my nose into the dune.
I stood slightly and ran while the instructors launched me by running along with ropes tied to both wing tips. In my time on the dune I managed to dig my nose in to the left, stall after nearly digging my nose in to the right, nearly stall then fly maybe 10 feet before diving, and fly low and level for a few feet then skid on my belly for a few feet more. I didn't crack my skull but I did get to taste a mouthful of sand.
I hear that advanced hang gliding is fun. Once I watched people calmly run off the sheer cliffs like Wiley Coyote, at Ellenville, New York. Advanced hang glider pilots circle the thermals for hours or glide calmly to the field well below. The world record, in fact, was set in August 2000 by a pilot who flew 344 miles. For some reason, though, it's safe. According to the Soaring Safety Foundation, there were three fatalities in 2001, but those may have included sailplanes. The same year there were 321 aircraft fatalities. Of course, there are many more airplanes up there than hang gliders, and few gliders get into one of those stall-spin messes on takeoff.
Anyway, my fifth glide seemed like the best yet. The wind let up and the guys holding the wingtip strings ran a few feet and let go; I soared all the way to the dune's bottom. As I got closer I descended and stalled and landed right on my feet. Orville, I felt, would have been proud. So would have Frank Rogallo.
The wind picked up and it was starting to resemble a sandstorm scene from The Mummy. Along with the instructors I sidled the hang glider up to the top of the dune, and helped disassemble it. No more hang gliding today, even if I wanted to pay another 85 bucks for five more flights.
My wife, Krista, had showed up to watch my final three glides. Eventually she asked me how high I thought I'd gone on that last one.
"It must have been 25 feet," I said.
"It was more like five," she said.
And that humiliation after a wonderful glide is why I'll never, ever fly without a working altimeter.
Phil Scott is a freelance writer and pilot living in New York City.
