The new glider had a wingspan of 32 feet, 1 inch; a considerable increase over the wingspan of 22 feet for the 1901 glider. Its lifting area, 305 square feet, was not much greater than the glider of the previous year. Their wind-tunnel experiments having demonstrated the importance of aspect ratio, the brothers made the wingspan about six times the chord or fore-and-aft measurement instead of three. Weighing 112 pounds, the glider was 16 feet, 1 inch long. In the 1900 and 1901 gliders, the wing-warping mechanism had been worked by movement of the operator’s feet. In the 1902 glider this mechanism operated by sidewise movement of the operator’s hips resting in a cradle on the lower wing. Wilbur wrote his father from camp, “Our new machine is a very great improvement over anything we had built before and over anything any one has built.”
Kitchen in the living quarters of the remodeled camp building at Kill Devil Hills, 1902.
One of the successful glides made in October 1902 with the 1902 glider, camp buildings in distance.
This was the first Wright glider to have a tail, consisting of fixed twin vertical vanes, as well as a front rudder. The tail’s purpose was to overcome the turning difficulties encountered in some of the flights with the 1901 glider by maintaining equal speeds at the two wingtips when the wings were warped. The tail was expected to counterbalance the difference in resistance of the two wingtips. If the wing on one side tended to swerve forward, then the Wrights thought the tail, being more exposed to the wind on the same side, should stop the glider from turning farther.
The tail on this glider, however, caused a new problem that had not occurred in their previous gliders. At times, when struck by a side gust of wind, the glider turned up sidewise and came sliding laterally to the ground in spite of the effort and skill of the operator in using the warping mechanism to control it. The brothers were experiencing tailspins, though that term did not come into use until several years later. When tailspins occurred, the glider would sometimes slide so fast that the movement caused the tail’s fixed vertical vanes to aggravate the turning movement instead of counteracting it by maintaining an equal speed at the opposite wingtips. The result was worse than if there were no fixed vertical tail.
Wilbur Wright making right turn in glide from West Hill, Oct. 24, 1902 (Kill Devil Hill in background.)
