With a 32-foot wingspan (larger than most light aircraft), it is an impressive flying machine. With the elevator in the front and the rudder in the back, it is immediately recognizable as a Wright aircraft. And it is one of the most significant aircraft the Wrights ever built, the first machine in history with 3-axis controls. To find out just how significant, read It All Began Here. It explains how the 1902 Wright Glider is the true granddaddy of everything that flies.

It's not an inexpensive project, but you can build an historically-accurately copy for between $2500 and $3500. (For sources of materials, see Aircraft Materials.) Building it is simple and straightforward. Anyone with some modest skills can build one in a few months. In fact, you don�t even have to have any aviation experience to build a replica and do a good job of it, too. After all, the original designers had very little experience when they built the glider for the first time.

The real trick is finding a good set of plans, and that's where we can help. Click on 1902 Glider Plans. We've put together 20 sheets of engineering drawings that you can download with our good wishes for a great Centennial. You might also want to take a look at the 1909 Wright Glider, a copy of the 1902 glider that several English pilots used for flight training in 1909.

"Taxi tests" at Huffman Prairie. We ran the glider into a strong wind, testing the lift and the controls. This may be the only Wright aircraft other than the original 1905 Wright Flyer 3 that has flown at both Huffman Prairie and Kitty Hawk.

We also knew that a glider should be easier to transport and set up than a powered Flyer. And with a 32-foot wingspan, it would be just as impressive. But how could we make a 32-foot-long object conveniently portable? The answer was in the original design! When the Wright brothers built their glider in 1902, they spliced two boards together to make spars 29-1/2 feet long. They pinned and wrapped the scarf joint between the boards with waxed linen cord, permanently joining them. We simply pinned the joints, securing the pins with hairpin clips. This makes it possible to breakdown the wing section of the glider into four parts, each about 17 feet long. We can transport the glider in a small trailer and carry it through an ordinary doorway. In fact, the first question we get from kids when we set up in a school is always, "How did you get that thing in here?"

There are other minor changes that were necessary to enable the glider to break down. But for the most part it is true to history. Or, at least as true to history as you can make an airplane for which the builders never recorded construction details.

Although the Wright Brothers assembled the wings of the glider so the wouldn't come apart, you can build it to knock down for easy transport. We haul ours in a 7' x 18' trailer.

There are some old plans, fortunately. In 1934, the U.S. Army Air Corps built two replicas of the 1902 Wright Glider. One was to be given to the newly built national historic park at Kitty Hawk - a gift from the people of Dayton, Ohio. The other was to be kept in the Air Corps museum in Dayton. (You can still see the first replica at Kitty Hawk. The second - the one kept in Dayton - was run over by a truck.) The Air Corps folks who were assigned to this project had at least one meeting with Orville Wright, who told them as many details as he could remember. He also loaned them many of the photos that were taken of the glider in 1902. From this interview and the photos, the Air Corps made engineering drawings.

These drawings still exist in the archives of the U.S. Air Force Museum, although some of them are in bad shape. With the permission of the archive staff, we made digital images of the plans and used these as the secondary source for our own drawings. Our primary source was, of course, the photos. Of all the airplanes the Wright brothers made, the 1902 was probably the most photographed. This seems to have been because Wilbur was considering making some extra money on the lecture circuit in 1902, and he needed the photos for lantern slides. Consequently, we have a good photographic record of the glider from all angles.

Not surprisingly, the 1934 drawings don�t always jive with the photos. The standards of aircraft conservation in 1934 - well, there were no standards of conservation in 1934. If it looked good from a few dozen feet away, it was good enough for museum work. Consequently, there are many small errors in the drawings, especially with the hardware used to assemble the glider. Possibly the largest of these is the attachment of the front skids to the wing section. The drawings show a metal bracket that holds the ends of the skids to the front edges of the spars. This may have been correct for the glider in its original configuration. But if you study the photos of the aircraft after the Wrights added the rudder, you�ll see humps that indicate the skids were attached to the top of the spars. Rick Young, who used these brackets in the replica that he and Ken Kellet built, told me it was the only part of the aircraft he had problems with. The Wrights probably had the same problem and switched to a stronger design. Not a big deal perhaps, but a deal nonetheless.

The Air Corps also used some machined parts and commercial hardware that common sense told us wasn�t available to the Wrights in Kitty Hawk in 1902. Remember that the Wrights were running an aerodynamic research laboratory in a remote part of the world that was a three-day journey to the nearest hardware store in good weather. They made repairs to the glider and changed its configuration almost every time they flew it. They couldn�t anticipate their hardware needs (other than basic items like screws) and they couldn�t afford the time it took to run and buy special parts. What did they do?

The 1902 Wright Glider replica at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was a gift from the people of Dayton, Ohio and the U.S. Army Air Corps at Wilbur Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base).

This is a portion of the 1934 Air Corps plans. The draftsman consulted Orville before making these plans and may have had him look them over when they were complete. There are some pencil corrections on some of the sheets that look suspiciously like Orville's handwriting.

There is a strong hint at the probable solution in the 1934 drawings. Many of the metal parts that are used as pivots, such as the attachment between the ribs and the outriggers, are bent from 1/8-inch-diameter mild steel rod. They aren�t attached with screws, but lashed to the wood. The Wrights seemed to have an affinity for this design - Wilbur�s drawing of their 1899 scientific kite shows wire hinges And the strut fittings that join the wings to the struts - one of the few pieces of Wright hardware for which they made drawings - are sophisticated wire hinges.

Wire hardware would have solved a multitude of problems for the Wrights. They could have taken a small supply of 1/8-inch and 1/4-inch-diameter mild steel rod with them to Kitty Hawk and made any part they needed. Most probably, they heated the steel on their gasoline stove then bent it on a hardwood block using nails or screws as bending pins. By lashing this homemade hardware to the parts of their glider, they conserved screws and eliminated the need to bring a supply of many different screw sizes with them. And the lashing itself would have added structural strength to those critical connections. Screws might have caused the wood to split during a hard landing; lashing compressed the wood and prevented it from splitting.

In the 1934 drawings, flat hardware such as brackets were often made from 16-gauge mild steel plate. This, too, seems to fit the circumstances. The Wrights could have included a supply of steel straps in their tool kit, then bent the parts they needed either by taking a small vise with them or rigging a vise from two pieces of hardwood and a couple of clamps. This strap hardware was always screwed in place on the Air Corps drawings, but there�s no reason it couldn�t have been lashed if the Wrights had needed to do so. We followed the Air Corps' lead when their engineering drawings showed a piece of hardware that seemed to fit the special circumstances at Kitty Hawk. But we devised simple wire or strap hardware for those connections that showed store-bought hardware, especially if we suspected these connections had been altered or repaired during the 1902 test flights.

In addition to doing a little blacksmithing, we also had to learn something about marlinship to construct this airplane. Marlinship is a crusty old word that is little used today, but it was a skill that almost every Victorian boy learned when he was old enough to tie his shoelaces. The last vestige of marlinship that survived the turn of the twenty-first century is the knot-tying section of the Boy Scout Handbook. Marlinship was a crucial skill for a handyman when the Wright brothers were building gliders, and waxed lined cord was the Victorian equivalent of duct tape. By using this material to hold the airframe together, the Wrights made it able to withstand hard landings - each joint would give slightly when stressed then return to its original position. And if a part did break, it was easy to repair. Just cut the old lashes and lash in a new part.

The Wrights used two knots over and over in making building the glider frame. The ribs are attached to the spars with saddle lashes. Almost all the remaining parts, including most of the hardware, are attached with whiplashes. The waxed linen cord, we quickly found out, is magic stuff for lashing. Because the cord is waxed, it sticks to itself or the wood while you tie off the knot. As a result, it�s much easier to make a tight lash - you don�t have to hold the tension of the cord while you tie the knot. We also found out that this cord will eat your hands when you lash a row of ribs. A pair of close-fitting leather gloves with the fingertips cut out are an important piece of equipment for good marlinship - something the Boy Scouts fail to mention.

Skinning the completed airframe was a bit more familiar, but just barely. The Wrights used a fabric called Pride of the West-brand muslin. It was a finely woven 100 percent unbleached cotton with 102 threads per inch in the warp and 107 in the weft, or the thread count of 209, and was commonly used for ladies undergarments. We got close with a 197 thread count unbleached cotton fabric called Made-Sew-Fine muslin, but the thread weight (denier) is heavier, making it thicker and heavier cloth than what the Wrights used. (This is available through Jo-Ann Fabrics, but the thread count on the bolt will say "200." That�s a little optimistic. According to the manufacturer - Springs of South Carolina - it has 104 threads per inch in the warp and 93 in the weft.) On the next replica of this glider, which we are building for the Crawford Transportation Museum in Cleveland, we will come very, very close with a 213 thread count "glider cotton" available from Ross Walton at World War 1 Originals. Anticipating the need for a cotton aircraft skin suitable for covering pioneer replicas and restorations as the Centennial of Flight approaches, Ross had a Belgium weaver manufacture a few thousand yards of this fabric. It�s pricey, but it�s as close to authentic as you�re likely to get.

The fabric is installed on the bias, with the warp and woof running 45 degrees to the ribs and spars. We had to cut the bolts of cloth apart, then sew them back together so the weave ran diagonally. Oriented thus, every thread in the fabric becomes a cross brace, adding a great deal of strength to the structure. I had my doubts about a lashed-together framework until we skinned it, then I was surprised at how strong it became. The wing covering, not the lashing, seems to hold the wings together.

The fabric must be fitted to the frame the way a tailor fits a good suit. Apparently, this wasn�t a big deal for the Wright brothers. Their mother was a highly skilled seamstress and this was one of the many talents she passed on to her sons. Friends of the family claimed that Wilbur could sew a shirt or a dress "as well as any woman." The Wrights apparently tailored each wing covering to fit, sewing individual pockets for each rib and a hem in the trailing edge. We did the same. Then we cut the back saddle lashes on the ribs, slipped the ribs into their pockets, and re-tied the lashes. The rest of the work, including the cloth fairings that cover the rear spars, was all done by hand.

We cut the lashes the held the ribs to the back spars and slipped the ribs into the pockets...

...then we retied the back lashes.

With the cover in place, we lashed the trailing edge to the end of the ribs with quilting thread...

...and stretch the leading edge over the front spar and pinned it to itself. We then sewed it in place.

So how does it fly? It depends on your historical perspective. We took it with us to Kitty Hawk on October 22, 2000, the centennial of the Wright�s first gliding flights. We flew our replica of the 1900 Wright Glider on the centennial with champion hang glider pilot Dudley Mead at the controls. The next day, October 23, we set up the 1902 glider and both Dudley and I made flights. It was wonderfully exhilarating and incredibly frightening. This is a very primitive aircraft, and it behaves like it. It is not stable; the Wrights disdained stability, I�ve come to believe. The pilot must fly the craft at all times. The pitch control is very responsive - overly responsive, in fact - while the roll is sluggish. There is no such thing as a landing. You simply pancake into the sand. I was amazed throughout the whole experience that no matter how hard we tried to smack the glider against a sand dune, it absorbed the punishment with little complaint. And, quite frankly, it was awe-inspiring beyond words just to see it in the air.

The Wright brothers were most probably just as awed, but for very different reasons. Unlike Dudley and myself, they had never flown anything that flew as well as this glider. While we had our problems controlling it, the Wrights were elated that their 1902 glider could be controlled, period. What felt sluggish to us was to them the Ferrari of the air. It was enough to convince Wilbur and Orville to abandon whatever ambitions they had for giving lectures on gliding and go for the Big One, the brass ring of aviation, the first controlled, sustained powered flight.

Getting ready to launch the glider.

We're off!