Aviating

Big secret (okay, not very secret): I hate flying.

Upon reflection, though, much as I may think I hate flying today, I really, really, seriously would have hated flying in 1911.

Now, while a lot of people (myself included, secretly) are thinking back to junior high school history class and trying to remember if planes even existed when the Handbook was published (they did), we need to handle something more important here. Planes were indeed available. But they were much, much simpler and much, much scarier.

(This airplane is from 1912. Hence, when the Handbook was published, this was the future of aviation. The future of aviation involved buddying up to some other dude in a suit while dangling your feet off of an airplane.)

The airplanes our 1911 scouts were learning about were only a step ahead of the Wright brothers' plane, with canvas stretched over wood-framed, parallel wings, steered by a network of pulleys and wire cables by a pilot who sat on seat mounted to the bottom wing (or, in the case of many planes, on the wing itself).

The planes we're talking about here were also much, much less useful than the planes we think about today -- the maximum speed we could achieve was perhaps 40 miles per hour (and this was the record-breaking "Silver Dart," made out of a reassuring combination of "steel tube, bamboo, friction tape, wire, wood, and silk"). In general, speeds and ranges were lower still.

Hold on for discussion, tomorrow or Thursday, about a few more aspects of early planes -- I'm looking into some information about the early altitude record-holder, but work is getting in the way. Boo.

Additionally, I'm trying to decide how to go about model-building. The Aviation badge requires a flight of 25 yards, which is hardly much, but is exactly enough that I feel like I want to approach this as seriously as possible. While some folks are pretty intense R/C model builders (some of whom I'm hoping to speak to, as well), I do want my model to be at least a little bit 1911-accurate. Ideas?