Our first trials of the glider, which we built on the arrival of the members of the Experiment Association, were made in the dead of winter, when the snow lay deep over the hillsides. This made very hard work for everybody. It was a case of trudging laboriously up the steep hillsides and hauling or carrying the glider to the top by slow stages. It was easy enough going down, but slow work going up; but we continued our trials with varied success until we considered ourselves skilful enough to undertake a motor-driven machine, which we mounted on runners.
[CHAPTER II FIRST FLIGHTS]
It was my desire to build a machine and install a motor at once, and thus take advantage of the opportunity furnished by the thick, smooth ice over Lake Keuka at that season of the year. But Lieutenant Selfridge, who had read a great deal about gliders and who had studied them from every angle, believed we should continue experimenting with the glider. However, we decided to build a machine which we believed would fly, and in due time a motor was installed and it was taken down on Lake Keuka to be tried out. We called it the "Red Wing," and to Lieutenant Selfridge belongs the honour of designing it, though all the members of the Aerial Experiment Association had some hand in its construction. We all had our own ideas about the design of this first machine, but to Lieutenant Selfridge was left the privilege of accepting or rejecting the many suggestions made from time to time, in order that greater progress might be made. A number of our suggestions were accepted, and while the machine as completed cannot properly be described as the result of one man's ideas, the honour of being the final arbiter of all the problems of its design certainly belongs to Lieutenant Selfridge.
Now that the machine was completed and the motor installed, we waited for favourable weather to make the first trial. Winter weather around Lake Keuka is a very uncertain element, and we had a long, tiresome wait until the wintry gales that blew out of the north gave way to an intensely cold spell. Our opportunity came on March 12, 1908. There was scarcely a bit of wind, but it was bitterly cold. Unfortunately, Lieutenant Selfridge was absent, having left Hammondsport on business, and "Casey" Baldwin was selected to make the first trial. We were all on edge with eagerness to see what the machine would do. Same of us were confident, others sceptical.
Baldwin climbed into the seat, took the control in hand, and we cranked the motor. When we released our hold of the machine, it sped over the ice like a scared rabbit for two or three hundred feet, and then, much to our joy, it jumped into the air. This was what we had worked for through many long months, and naturally we watched the brief and uncertain course of Baldwin with a good deal of emotion. Rising to a height of six or eight feet, Baldwin flew the unheard-of distance of three hundred and eighteen feet, eleven inches! Then he came down ingloriously on one wing. As we learned afterward, the frail framework of the tail had bent and the machine had flopped over on its side and dropped on the wing, which gave way and caused the machine to turn completely around.
But it had been a successful flight and we took no toll of the damage to the machine or the cost. We had succeeded! that was the main thing. We had actually flown the "Red Wing" three hundred and eighteen feet and eleven inches! We knew now we could build a machine that would fly longer and come down at the direction of the operator with safety to both.
It had taken just seven weeks to build the machine and to get it ready for the trial; it had taken just about twenty seconds to smash it.
But a great thing had been accomplished. We had achieved the first public flight of a heavier-than-air machine in America!
As our original plans provided for the building of one machine designed by each member of the Association, with the assistance of all the others, the building of the next one fell to Mr. Baldwin, and it was called the "White Wing." The design of the "Red Wing" was followed in many details, but several things were added which we believed would give increased stability and greater flying power. The construction of the "White Wing" was begun at once, but before we could complete it the ice on the lake had yielded to the spring winds and we were therefore obliged to transfer our future trials to land. This required wheels for starting and alighting in the place of the ice runners used on the "Red Wing." An old half-mile race track a short distance up the valley from the Lake was rented and put in shape for flights. The place was called "Stony Brook Farm," and it was for a long time afterward the scene of our flying exploits at Hammondsport.
It would be tiresome to the reader to be told of all the discouragements we met with; of the disheartening smashes we suffered; how almost every time we managed to get the new machine off the ground for brief but encouraging flights, it would come down so hard that something would give way and we would have to set about the task of building it up again. We soon learned that it was comparatively easy to get the machine up in the air, but it was most difficult to get it back to earth without smashing something. The fact was, we had not learned the art of landing an aeroplane with ease and safety–an absolutely necessary art for every successful aviator to know. It seemed one day that the limit of hard luck had been reached, when, after a brief flight and a somewhat rough landing, the machine folded up and sank down on its side, like a wounded bird, just as we were feeling pretty good over a successful landing without breakage.