From it’s first test flight as a kite, it was evident that their new glider was vastly superior to their two previous machines. The amount of lift produced by the new wing design was very close to what the brother’s had predicted. Within a few weeks, they were making glides of over 500 feet. For the first time, Orville began to fly. As Wilbur had done with earlier machines, he smashed up the glider in a spectacular crash, resulting in "a heap of flying machine, cloth, and sticks…with me in the center without a scratch or a bruise." But it took more than a crash to discourage the brothers at this point -- they put the glider back together and kept on flying.

One problem persisted. The glider still slipped in turns. The tail did little to stop it; in fact, Orville suspected it actually aggravated the problem. When the wings were warped and the plane began to turn, the set of wings inside the turn was moving slower (and therefore generated less lift) than the wings on the outside. At the same time, the fixed tail –- no longer parallel to the air stream –- presented a broad surface that dragged in the air, increased the skid, and further slowed the inside wings. The wings dropped as they lost more and more lift, and the glider went into an uncontrolled spiral the brothers dubbed "well-digging."

Thinking it through, Orville determined that they could avoid digging wells if the fixed tail were transformed into a movable rudder with its own separate control. This would allow the pilot to adjust its angle during a turn to overcome the drag from the high wing, keep the inside wing from losing too much lift, and  prevent the aircraft from skidding . Wilbur accepted the idea, but suggested the pilot already had enough to do without another control. Instead, the brothers coupled the wires that turned the rudder to the wing warping mechanism.

This was the last piece of the control puzzle. The movable rudder made the 1902 Wright glider the first aircraft capable of being precisely balanced in flight. The wing warping controlled roll, raising or lowering a wing. The elevator controlled pitch, turning the glider’s nose up or down. And the rudder controlled yaw, moving the nose left or right. So basic was this breakthrough that every aircraft (and spacecraft!) flying today still uses the same fundamental roll, pitch, and yaw controls first developed by the Wright brothers.

The 1902 Kitty Hawk camp was a crowded, busy place. The Wright’s brother Lorin turned up unexpectedly, his curiosity having been aroused by their letters home. Octave Chanute and George Spratt visited again, along with another of Chanute’s aeronautical acquaintances, Augustus Herring. Herring was the co-designer and builder of the 1896 biplane glider that had inspired the Wright’s own design. He brought with him an altered version of that craft, with wings that rocked back and forth to keep the craft balanced. It was a humiliating failure, barely able to glide 50 feet. Herring left after a few days, understandably jealous of the Wright’s success. The remaining visitors helped the brothers launch their craft again and again, sometimes making over 100 flights in a single day.