A Retrospective: Development of Simulation Models for the 1903 and 1905 Wright Flyers

The centennial of flight has brought about a renewed interest in the first airplanes and their flight characteristics. It is known that the first Wright Flyers were unstable, but history showed that they were flyable. It is the longitudinal handling characteristics that are of interest in this paper. Wind tunnel tests have been performed on the 1903 Flyer and provide limited aerodynamic data, but a higher fidelity model is needed to fully simulate the aircraft within nonlinear regions. Simulation models of the 1903 and 1905 Flyers were created by using the results of wind tunnel tests, using inviscid flow analysis, and expanding the data to include high angles of attack. The two models were simulated in the PC-based FlightGear Flight Simulator, and the results show that both aircraft require continuous pilot input, but they are flyable with practice.