This page shows a computer drawing of the Wright
brothers' 1902 aircraft.
This was the third
unpowered
aircraft built by the brothers.
The aircraft was flown repeatedly at Kitty
Hawk, North Carolina, during 1902 as a piloted
glider
and as a
kite.
The Wright brothers used this aircraft to answer some of the problems
encountered with the 1901 aircraft. They
also used this aircraft to develop their piloting skills because this
was the first aircraft in the world that had active controls for all three axis;
roll, pitch, and
yaw.
The 1902 aircraft has two wings and an elevator/stabilizer mounted in
the front like the 1901 aircraft. As with previous aircraft,
the pilot lies on the bottom wing and controls the roll of the
aircraft by warping the wing shape. On the
1902 aircraft, and on all later flyers, the warping was controlled by a
hip cradle instead of the pedals on the 1900 and 1901 aircraft.
You can study the design of the 1902 aircraft by changing the
view using the buttons at the
bottom of this Java program.
Due to IT
security concerns, many users are currently experiencing problems running NASA Glenn
educational applets. The applets are slowly being updated, but it is a lengthy process.
If you are familiar with Java Runtime Environments (JRE), you may want to try downloading
the applet and running it on an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) such as Netbeans or Eclipse.
The following are tutorials for running Java applets on either IDE:
Netbeans Eclipse
You can download your own copy of this applet by pushing the following button:
The program is downloaded in .zip format. You must save the file to disk and
then "Extract" the files. Click on
"1902.html" to run the program off-line.
There are some major differences between this aircraft and its predecessors.
Data from the
1901 wind tunnel
experiments showed that a longer,
thinner wing gave less
drag
and a better L/D
ratio than a short thick wing.
So the aspect
ratio (ratio of wing span to wing chord or width) was changed
from 3:1 on the 1901 aircraft to 6:1 on the 1902 aircraft.
In an attempt to solve the problem of adverse yaw from the 1901
glider, two 6-foot rudders were added to the rear of the craft.
Initially, these rudders were fixed to their struts to keep the nose
pointed straight ahead.
Test flight went better than in 1901, but in about one glide in 50 the glider would
spin out of control on recovering from a turn at low speed. Lying
awake one night, Orville concluded that the rudders were acting as
vertical wings in which turning generated an
angle of attack
and thus
an unwanted force in the wrong direction. His solution was to
replace the twin fixed rudders with a single moveable rudder.
The next morning Wilbur agreed and offered the
idea to tie the
rudder turning
into the wing warping system. Once
done, the glider worked beautifully, keeping the nose of the aircraft
pointed into the
curved
flight path. On the 1902 aircraft, the pilot
could also change the angle of the
elevator
to control the up/down
position or pitch of the nose of the aircraft. For the first time in
history a craft could be controlled in three dimensions. With this
new aircraft, the brothers completed over a thousand
gliding flights; flying
over 650 feet in length, staying aloft for nearly 30 seconds a flight, and
flying in high winds. By the end of the 1902 season, the brothers
were the most experienced glider pilots in the world and owned all of
the gliding records.
Here is a photo taken in 1902 of the actual aircraft flying at
Kitty Hawk.
The 1902 aircraft was the largest glider flown to that time. The
aircraft had a thirty two foot wing span,
a five foot chord and five feet between the wings. Without the pilot,
the 1902 craft weighed about a hundred twenty pounds. This photo
taken in 1902 clearly shows the new rudder of the aircraft.
At the end of 1902, it seemed that all that remained for the first successful
airplane was the development of the propulsion system. During that
winter and spring the brothers built their
engine
and perfected their propellers for
the 1903 flyer.
When they returned to Kitty Hawk in the fall of 1903, they used the
1902 aircraft to keep their piloting skills at a high level. They also
began to fly the aircraft in a different way. Rather than staying close to the
earth, they would pull the aircraft up into a strong wind and attempt to
"soar", to remain nearly motionless over a spot on the ground. With the
new technique, they were able to complete glider flights of over a minute
in the air.
Replica
To celebrate the Centennial of Flight in 2003, several people around the country
have built replicas of the Wright 1902 glider. The 6th grade
students of the Orono Middle School from Orono, Maine, have donated a
half scale model
of the aircraft to NASA to share with other students.
Activities:
You can build your own model of the 1902 Wright aircraft using a styrofoam
meat tray and some toothpicks.
Plans for this model are available
with step by step instructions. The final model looks like this:
You can also build a flying model of the 1902 Wright aircraft using balsa
wood and tissue paper.
Plans for this model are available
with step by step instructions. The final model looks like this:
