These 'Countdown to Kitty Hawk" Moments, written by Roger Jaynes, appear in FLYING Magazine throughout this Centennial of Flight year.
	The Moment
	Wilber Wins, But Loses
	Gloom and Confidence
	The Whopper Flying Machine
	The Little Engine That Would
	Round and Round They Went…
	The Mouse and the Cornbread
	Light at the End of the Tunnel
	Mosquitoes...and Disappointment
	Fall 1900...The First Flights
	A Place Called Kitty Hawk
	Birds...And the Twisted Box
	Lilienthal…and the Mysterious Book

Kitty Hawk Moments: Mosquitoes...and Disappointment

April 21, 2003 - Having hired a man to run their bicycle shop, the Wrights were able to leave earlier for Kitty Hawk in 1901. They arrived at their former campsite on July 11, full of confidence based on their previous year’s testing – and with a glider of the same design, but much larger, with a wing-span of 22 feet, and a weight of 98 pounds, nearly twice that of its predecessor. Their mood was tested, however, when they were greeted by a foul nor’easter with 93 mph winds, and forced to pitch their tent in the pouring rain. Four days later, they began building a hangar big enough to house their new glider, which Orville thought was “a grand institution, with awnings at both ends…” 

Two others, George Spratt and Edward Huffaker, arrived shortly thereafter – invited as a favor to Octave Chanute. Along with them came dark clouds of mosquitoes, which chewed through the men’s clothes and left lumps like hen eggs all over their bodies. At night they were forced to wrap up in blankets, with only their nose showing, but then the wind would drop and they would sweat unmercifully, forcing them to partially uncover, at which time the mosquitoes would attack again. Finally, they gained relief by burning old tree stumps next to their beds, preferring the smoke to the mosquitoes. 

On July 26, the new glider was finished, but there were problems from the start. Wilbur got in 17 glides the following day, but the first went nose-first into the sand, and although he did log one flight of 315 feet in 19 seconds, he was never in control of the machine. Time after time it flew an undulating pattern, often climbing out of control, only to stall dead in the air, forcing Wilbur (who was lying on his stomach) to quickly scoot far forward to force it down for a landing. 

Pitch control was the problem, but what was the answer? First the Wrights reduced the camber of the wing (which was greater than that of the 1900 glider) to decrease resistance and make the glider more responsive. They also reshaped the leading edge spar and added a new spar near the midpoint of each wing. On August 8, they were pleasantly surprised when Wilbur was able to soar 389 feet after just a few trials. The change in camber had solved the pitch problem. Encouraged, they loosened the warping cables, expecting it would give them complete control. 

What happened was just the opposite. For whatever reasons, the machine began turning and skidding sharply. On August 9, when the left wingtip dropped, Wilbur shifted to the right, and the craft darted down into the sand, throwing him forward through the elevator. The forward surface was badly damaged and Will suffered bruises to his nose and eye. Disheartened, the Wrights returned to unmanned tests, but all the flights were less than 200 feet. The tests confirmed the existence of a problem, but no solutions. On August 22, they left for Dayton. The new difficulty with lateral control was disturbing, and they now realized there was some mysterious problem with the wing-warping system they could not fathom. 

“When we left Kitty Hawk at the end of 1901,” Wilbur recalled a decade later, “we doubted we would ever resume our experiments.” Orville’s memory was of his brother’s exasperation on the long trip home, when at one point he had remarked: “Not within a thousand years would man ever fly!"