To obtain practice, their first need was a suitable field, not too far from home. They found a cow pasture, fairly level, handy to an interurban railway, at Simms Station, eight miles from Dayton, toward Springfield. This field, often called the Huffman prairie, was part of a farm belonging to a Dayton bank president, Torrence Huffman. Compared with a modern flying-field the area of sixty-eight acres they wanted to use was not quite ideal. It contained a number of trees, besides being near power wires and poles. But it was as good as they could find and without delay the Wrights introduced themselves to Mr. Huffman to ask if they might rent his pasture for their experiments. He granted the request and told them they were welcome to use the field free of charge. But he said he hoped they would drive his cows to a safe place and not run over them.
By April 15, 1904, the Wrights had built a rough wooden shed at the Huffman pasture, in preparation for their experiments.
Even if they had tried, the Wrights could hardly have kept secret what they were doing here at the Huffman prairie, with an interurban car line and two highways passing the field they were using. But they took special precautions against being thought secretive, for they knew that the best way to avoid being bothered by newspaper people or others was to make no mystery of what they were doing. Before they had attempted even one trial flight at the Huffman pasture they wrote letters to each of the Dayton papers, as well as to each of the Cincinnati papers, that on May 23 they would attempt to fly and would be glad to have any newspaper representative who felt interested come and watch them. Their only request was that no pictures be taken, and that the reports should not be sensational. This latter stipulation was to avoid attracting crowds, but as it turned out there was no need to be concerned about curiosity-seekers.
About a dozen newspapermen showed up. Also on hand were a number of friends and neighbors of the Wright family. Altogether perhaps thirty-five persons were present—all by invitation.
The Wrights dragged their machine out of the shed to wait for a suitable wind before launching the machine from the short stretch of wooden track. As it happened, the wind was unusually high that day, about twenty-five miles an hour, and the Wrights said they would wait for it to die down a little. When the high wind did cease, it went suddenly to an almost complete calm, and a wind of at least eleven miles an hour was needed to take off from so short a track. The Wrights said they would try a flight if the wind picked up. But the wind failed to do so. The crowd waited and two or three of the reporters—too experienced to be easily fooled—began to make comments to one another. They hadn’t wanted to come in the first place. Why had they been asked to waste time on such an assignment? Most of the guests, though, had only sympathy for the brothers. They actually seemed sincere in thinking they could fly.
Though sorry to disappoint the spectators, the Wrights showed no signs of embarrassment. They had learned to take events as they came. Finally, after the day had dragged on with no sign of a more favorable wind, one of the brothers announced:
“We can’t fly today; but since you’ve taken the trouble to come and wait so long, we’ll let the machine skim along the track and you’ll get an idea of what it’s supposed to do. With so short a track, we may not get off the ground, but you’ll see how it operates.”
Then the engine misbehaved. It worked all right in the warming-up period, but began to skip explosions as soon as the machine started down the track. This was caused, the Wrights soon learned, by the flow of air over the mouth of the intake pipe—a trouble never experienced with the engine used at Kitty Hawk.
After running the length of the track, the machine slid off the end without rising into the air at all. That wasn’t much of a story for the reporters. Their assumption that they had been sent on a wild goose chase seemed to be confirmed. Would there be a flight the next day? The Wrights couldn’t be sure. First of all they must find out what ailed that engine. They might be able to do that overnight, or it might take longer. However, all who wished to return the next day would be welcome. Indeed, the Wrights said, any newspaper representative would be welcome at any time.
Two or three of the newspapermen did return the next day. The engine still sulked, but the wind was a bit more favorable and the Wrights decided to show the reporters what they could. This time the machine rose five or six feet from the ground and went through the air for nearly sixty feet before it came down. An electric contact point in one of the engine cylinders had worked loose, and only three cylinders were hitting. The few reporters present, though now convinced that the age of flying had not yet come, wrote friendly articles and made the most of what they had seen. The versions differed widely. One report had the machine rising to a height of seventy-five feet. In the Cincinnati Enquirer account was a comment that the machine “is more substantially constructed than other machines of its kind.”