WARRENTON, VA. — First in an occasional seriesWARRENTON, Va. - On a grass runway last fall, amid the low rolling hills of the countryside, Terry Queijo prepared for takeoff.
Her 32-foot aircraft, a reproduction of a 1902 Wright brothers glider, resembled an overgrown box kite made of wood and bed sheets. It hardly looked flight-worthy.
Resting belly to earth in the glider's cradle, the Eastern Shore resident concentrated intently as a pickup truck ahead cruised down the runway at 25 mph - glider in tow.
Within moments, Queijo ascended, hovering 20 feet above the earth. She craned her neck to see the grass below and then, tweaking a front lever, gently "skipped" in the air - rising and falling and rising again - inhaling the aromatic scent of apples that permeated the breeze from a nearby orchard.
For Queijo, an American Airlines captain, the spectacle was a training session.
She is the lone woman among four pilots competing to portray Orville or Wilbur and fly the first exact reproduction of the 1903 Wright Flyer near Kitty Hawk, N.C., on Dec. 17 next year - the 100th anniversary of the world's first powered, heavier-than-air flight.
The flight will culminate a yearlong series of events beginning Tuesday to celebrate the birth of aviation and the two tinkering inventors from Dayton, Ohio, who made it possible.
On that September afternoon, shifting the wings in opposite directions through a wiggle of her hips, she executed rolls and turns and honed her understanding of the glider's "wing warping" mechanism - the signature element of the Wright brothers' invention of three-axis aerodynamic control. By sunset, Queijo had soared a half-dozen times in the autumn air.
When it was all over, she drifted the wheelless, 112- pound craft down, climbed out and reported to engineers: "Very smooth - like flying a Kleenex."
That was good news for engineers and craftsmen at the Wright Experience, a vintage plane-restoration company on 25 acres here that has been hired to reproduce the 1903 Flyer - in the smallest detail possible - for the centennial moment.
It's no easy task. The Wright brothers worked in secret to keep imitators from stealing their ideas. And many of their early prototypes were destroyed, along with construction documentation and drawings.
Wright re-creations
Founded in 1998, the company has been re-creating the Wright brothers' 12-year period of evolutionary design to understand the science behind the bicycle mechanics' breakthroughs.
Its first project - a duplicate of the 1899 kite that confirmed the brothers' wing-warping theory - was completed in 1999. A year later, the company constructed the 1900 glider and last year, the 1901 glider, both kite descendants. Next month, after a decade of research, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and more than 2 1/2 years of construction, it expects to finish an authentic 1903 Flyer. A copy of the first mass-produced military airplane, the 1911 Wright Model B, could be finished by March.
Reproductions of five other Wright Flyers built between 1904 and 1910 and a 1911 glider are in the research phase.
"There really hasn't been anything that has contributed so much to the change of our lifestyle or the way we do business - not even in this country, but in the world - as the airplane," says Ken Hyde, Wright Experience president and founder, and another pilot candidate.
"Here were two men who were not members of the aeronautical community, or the academic community for that matter, who in four years solved the problem of flight when for hundreds of years people had been trying to solve it. The thrill of seeing a re- enactment can be nothing but inspiring for the new generation."
It also reaffirms the American ethos, says Randal Dietrich of the Experimental Aircraft Association, which is organizing the centennial events in Kitty Hawk.
"There is an affinity for these two inventors and the spirit of innovation they encapsulated," Dietrich says. "People can identify with the Wright brothers, as inventors, as homebuilders, as independent individuals. It's the American story in a way: two people who had a dream and achieved it."
The brothers first turned their thoughts to flight in 1878 when Wilbur was 11, and Orville was 7. Their father, Bishop Milton Wright, brought home a Penaud toy helicopter, powered by rubber bands, and released it as he entered their room. They were amazed that it did not fall to the floor, but with a buzzing sound, rose to the ceiling.
Immediately, the boys attempted to build larger toys but failed because they did not realize the scientific necessity of proportionately increasing the power. By 1903, Wilbur and Orville, at ages 36 and 32 respectively, had solved the age-old riddle of human flight. Two years later, they built the first fully practical airplane.
Wilbur died in 1912 of typhoid fever at age 45. In 1948, Orville suffered a heart attack and died. He was 76.
