New Wright "B" Flyer

The Mission Statement of Wright "B" Flyer, Inc. reads as follows

To promote Dayton as the place where the airplane was invented by re-creating flights of a Wright B Flyer.

To accomplish that we have developed the following strategies:
To design, construct, and maintain Wright “B” Flyers for flight and/or display, that are safe to fly and easily disassembled and reassembled for transport.
To provide the general public with opportunities to experience flying on a Wright “B” Flyer.
To seek opportunities for flying the Wright “B” Flyer at air shows or other events around the world.
To construct and maintain a trailer for transporting Wright “B” Flyers throughout the country and around the world.

The Plan:
The first step in this process is to design a new plane. Known internally as the ""B" in the Box" it represents an interesting set of compromises. While our goal is to honor the Wright Brothers, building a duplicate of their plane doesn't meet the need of having a plane that is easily transportable and safe to fly. First of all the Wrights were limited in the size of the engine they had available. Their worked around that by designing an ultra light. They also had the luxury of moving around the country in a rail road car.

The new plane must be transportable around the world in the existing infrastructure, which is based upon 40' Sealand containers. The other issue is to be able to fly at air shows. Air shows happen in the summer and flying occurs all during the day. The very light wing loading of the original Flyer can't be flow safely when there is any kind of gusts or crosswind.

The compromises mean that we will be building a 100 yard look-alike not a replica. We will have something that looks as close to the 1911 Wright Flyer as possible while being capable of easy transportability and safe flying. To achieve that we have takens some liberty with the size and layout of the plane. The first size constraint is that a Sealand container is shorter and narrower than a railroad car. Since we need to shrink the total wing area for safe flying, the answer was to reduce the span from 39' to 32' and the wing cord (front to back) from almost 6' to 4.3'. The height took a 14% reduction making it 86% as tall as the original. We also spread the landing gear out a bit for better ground handiling.

The Wright's airfoil was a very efficient design but they hadn't advance sufficiently to have mastered efficiency combined with good low speed handling and stall characteristics. We have chosen the airfoil used on a Piper Cub (USA-35-B) for its good flying characteristics and very gentle stall. This is a safety issue and there is no way around it with a Wright airfoil.

One other interesting requirement is that the plane be operated by a crew of two. That means everything about it has to happen with only two people while it is on the road. We have established a requirement that when the Sealand contianer is delivered on the ground at the airport that the two man crew will be able to have the plane ready to fly in one hour or less. Same with getting it ready to travel. This requires that all connections be made in such a way that they go together like a sailplane, not like our exisitng plane. For example the seats with all its controls and electrical connections will fold without requiring any disconnects. When it is folded back down and locked into place everything will be operational with no chance that anything wasn't connected. It not only has to work, but it has to be safe to minimize the potential for an accident.

Modern aerodynamics, materials and systems will allow us to fly safely while giving people around the world a chance to experience history. We fully expect that over time we will be around the world and millions of people will know more about the Wright Brothers.

The new Wright "B" Flyer is being designed and built by a team of volunteers. The team is being led by Walt Hoy, who has been actively involved with home built aircraft for a long time.