PILOTS TEST FEEL OF WRIGHT FLYER.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - Air Force Capt. Mike Jansen's first attempt at flying - in a computerized aircraft simulator - the 1903 Wright Flyer ended much the same way as Wilbur Wright's first attempt.

At takeoff, the airplane pitched up, stalled and crashed.

``It's very unstable to fly,'' said Jansen, a student at the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base. ``You go from control flight to departed flight in less than a second.''

Jansen is among six Test Pilot School students who can boast of knowing how the world's first piloted, heavier-than-air craft handled: not well.

The students evaluated the handling qualities of the 1903 airplane for a graduation project and to assist the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which is trying to build a flying replica of the world's first airplane.

The AIAA is building the replica to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight. The AIAA plans to put the replica on display in 2002 and fly it in 2003.

``We knew the Wright brothers were geniuses, and we want to celebrate their genius and provide a legacy for future engineers,'' said Jack Cherne, chairman of the Wright Flyer project. ``The more we worked on this, the more we came to appreciate their genius.''

The AIAA approached the Test Pilot School to get evaluations of four possible configurations for the replica Flyer - the original configuration, a re-creation of a Wright plane built in 1908, a flight control system with a pitch stability augmentation system, and a system with both pitch and roll augmentation.

``We knew of the simulator activity at Edwards, and we approached them to help us,'' Cherne said.

The replica will not be a precise recreation of the Wright Flyer for safety reasons. The replica will have a different wing airfoil shape and changes to the canard and rudder.

From a distance, however, the changes will not be noticeable.

``The original Wright Flyer was unstable in pitch control and it was a handful to fly,'' said Capt. Jim Colebank, a Test Pilot School student and the project manager for the evaluations. ``Because of that, the Wright brothers had a couple of crashes.''

The 1903 Wright Flyer had its elevator controls at the front. Today's aircraft have them toward the rear, with the rudder controls.

``It's almost like flying an aircraft backwards,'' Jansen said.

The AIAA built a full-size, nonflying replica of the Wright Flyer for tests in a wind tunnel at the National Aeronautic and Space Administration's Ames Research Center in Northern California. The wind tunnel tests help create a mathematical model that the Test Pilot School used to program a simulator.

With the help of Virginia-based contractor Veridian, they also created a flight control program for actually simulating the Flyer's handling in the air, by flying a specially modified Lear jet fitted with the program.

``You can simulate the Flyer up to a point, but there are things you can't simulate,'' Colebank said. ``The Flyer flew at 30 knots (about 34 mph). A Lear jet can't fly below 125 knots (about 187 mph). Veridian did get the (control) response down and simulated the handling qualities.''

Even to the untrained, the differences among the four configurations are easy to discern in the ground simulator.

The original 1903 configuration requires the pilot's full attention and it is easy to slip into ``pilot-induced oscillation,'' a porpoising, rollercoasterlike motion.

The 1908 Flyer configuration isn't much better. Since the Wright brothers opted to make rudder controls separate from the roll control, there is a new burden of having to keep busy with the feet to keep the aircraft on a straight path.

The configurations with pitch augmentation works much smoother than either of the Wright configurations. Pilots can zero in on the pitch they want and keep it where they want it with little work.

To compensate for the wild pitch movements, a pitch augmentation system uses a sensor to measure pitch rate and makes a series of small corrections to keep the pitch rate stable.

The Test Pilot School students preferred the system with pitch augmentation over the one with both pitch and roll augmentation.

For the actual flying portion of the research, the TPS students ran two test missions a day between April 18 and April 20. The project involved three pilots and three flight test engineers.

Initial flights for each pilot were done at about 10,000 feet altitude to allow each of them to get a feel for the aircraft's handling. Then each of the three pilots flew approaches over Edwards' main runway about 20 feet off the ground.

Switching over from the Lear jet's normal flight control to one of the four Wright replica configurations was done with the push of three buttons. To revert back, the safety pilot merely had to hit a button on the yoke with his thumb.

Video of the pilots trying to fly the 1903 Flyer configuration show varying degrees of porpoising of the Lear jet. In cases where the oscillation was becoming too great, the safety pilot switched the controls back and pulled away from the ground.

Capt. Tim Jorris, who programmed the ground simulators and was an engineer on the project, got to fly the Lear jet for about 10 minutes. He had a rollercoasterlike ride with the 1903 configuration.

``It was eye-opening,'' Jorris said. ``You look over your shoulder and people are going up in their shoulder straps and then back down in their seats.''

The Wright brothers had similar experiences. On Dec. 17, 1903, three days after Wilbur Wright crashed in the first attempt at flying the machine, Orville Wright made the first actual flight - about 120 feet in 12 seconds. The flight was ended by a sudden pitch down.

``The course of the flight was exceedingly erratic, partly due to the irregularity of the air, and partly to lack of experience in handling this machine,'' Orville Wright later wrote, attributing the pitch problem to poor center-of-gravity balance. ``As a result, the machine would rise suddenly to about 10 feet and then as suddenly, on turning the rudder, would dart for the ground.''

The brothers' first plane never flew after Dec. 17, 1903. After four flights - the longest 852 feet - a gust of wind picked up the plane and tumbled it across the sand. The plane, repaired in 1916 after years in storage that included a soaking by a 1913 Dayton, Ohio, flood, the plane is now in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

Like the Wright brothers, the TPS students adapted. Jansen used a technique of quick back and forth movements, about an inch in each direction, to dampen the pitch control - a technique that the Wrights themselves might have used.

The TPS students will report their findings to the AIAA later this month or in June. The students will follow that up with a presentation at the Test Pilot School in June.

The project has given the students a renewed appreciation of the Wright brothers.

``It still impresses me,'' Jansen said. ``They didn't have the tools available we have today. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't the greatest design in the world, but they made it work.''

The Wright Flyer effort stems back to an earlier project by the AIAA to honor the 50th anniversary of the first flight. The AIAA built a nonflying replica for that celebration that was on display for several years until it was destroyed in a 1978 fire at the San Diego Aerospace Museum.

With the insurance money from that loss, the organization started work on the new Flyer.

The AIAA hopes to fly the replica at Kitty Hawk and perhaps even at Edwards. The organization is also planning to put the aircraft on display at various aerospace gatherings, including putting it on display in the Wright brothers' home town of Dayton, Ohio.

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Photo:

The Wright Flyer on its first attempt at flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., on Dec. 17, 1903, pitched, stalled and crashed.

Smithsonian Institution