Kitty Hawk

Here are Morgan and Jonny on the same cardboard cut outs. Nice sunglasses Morgan.

This is inside the museum where they keep a replica of the original plane the Wright Brothers used for their first flight. I had no idea how difficult it was for the Wright Brothers to accomplish flight. I understand why they have a musuem dedicated to them because they deserve it. They were incredibly persistent. They overcame obstacle after obstacle by sheer determination. For example they would work months on a design to control the plane and test it out and it would be a complete disaster. Then they would start over and keep going. Then they would encounter another obstacle which seemed insurmountable, but they would persist until they fixed it eventually they figured it out. Below you can see the stone markers where they made their first successful flights. They took off about where Vika is standing and the first flight went to where the first stone is. It was 120 feet. The second flight went to the second stone, which wasn't much farther, but the third flight went about 700 feet. They tried to find an engine that had the right performance characteristics, but they couldn't. They needed something that produced more than 4 horsepower, but weighed less than 200 pounds and no such engine existed, so they actually made their own. The engine they produced weighed less than 200 pounds and produced over 7 horsepower. Even though they were from Ohio they chose Kitty Hawk because it had a consistent head wind high enough to keep the plane aloft. Kitty Hawk was one of the few places with adequate head winds, but far from reporters. The Wright Brothers knew that if they got close to flight reporters would hamper their efforts so they chose Kitty Hawk because it was far away from reporters.