Builder/pilot Ken Hyde talked with ANN, and told us, "I could be doing better, but I'm OK." He broke his right ulna (right lower arm), and he has surgery scheduled for Wednesday, when, "they'll bolt it back together." He went straight to the airplane's condition: "I'm OK; the airplane is being taken apart. It's a step backwards, but it will fly again."

Contrary to early reports, he told us, "We did not spin in. We'd be in a lot worse shape, if we had."

"What basically happened, he said, was, "We were doing taxi tasts, and we got to a point where had to either fly, or go through some ditches." So he took off. "We got about a mile or two, and did two or three turns. On the fourth turn, it was obvious that we were going to hit something -- power lines or trees -- so I let the outer wing panels take the brunt of it."

First flight wasn't planned that way.

"This was the first time it was pulled into the air," Ken said. "What we were trying to do was to see what our taxi limitations were, to get it up to speed -- that's how we got ourselves into a corner." Flying wasn't in the plans, but flying probably saved a lot more (just as the Wright Redux folks figured out a couple weeks back). "In retrospect, I probably could have gotten hurt just as badly, going into the ditch, or something."

The original Wright engine (Serial Number 20) worked like a charm.

Fortunately, there were no detectable systems or manufacturing failures.

Ken had a way of telling us that he thinks he knows what happened: "We'll find out what went wrong," he said; then he pretty much eliminated the airplane from the equation. "There was nothing that I see that was mechanical..."

"The [Model] Bs," Ken related, "were quite dependable, even back then." This airplane is powered by an actual, original Wright engine, that had been in storage in Dayton for years. Ken told us, "It came from the grandson of the guy who owned Lincoln Storage in Dayton (OH). He had the Wright engine, and there was finally some $216 due on it. He contacted the Wrights, saying that they should either pay for it, or it was going to a museum; Orville said they could keep it. We called everybody in Dayton with that last name, until we finally found the grandson." The engine itself, Ken says, "...has about 8 hours now, in dyno and demonstration test." The engine was totally undamaged.

Still on schedule...

This machine, a 1911-style Model B, was being built for a television special, and, Ken notes, "We'll get the Nova film back on schedule." As for his other Wright projects, "The '03 Flyer is on schedule. The pilots are training, and we'll all be ready. We're dedicated to find out exactly what happened."

Building it was hard. Flying it is harder.

Mr. Hyde said that, concerning these projects, "The hardest part is raising the funds. The second is not to change anything." Flying it wasn't easy, either: "These things are unforgiving, and they're not stable. You've got to fly 'em all the time." The brief flight confirmed another belief about the Wrights: "It clearly demonstrates that these airplanes were very difficult to fly -- Orville and Wilbur were way ahead of us." It's a learning experience, he noted: "we're working hard to learn everything we can, just like the Wrights... We're concerned about all the Wright Experience pilots."

What about that simulator?

It's helpful, Ken said, within its limitations. "The simulator is basically a procedural trainer -- there's no G forces. Think of it like a bus steering wheel -- you turn it, the picture changes. That's kind of the way we practiced." In the real world, though, "The trees were growing faster than I was climbing."

Even when you know what's going on, though, reaction time isn't lightning-quick: "The controls weren't inuitive, either -- fore and aft, for wing warping, for instance," he noted.

Both the building and the flying have one main thing in common: that was then; this is now. "I've always said that about flying these machines, the hardest part is to unlearn what we've already learned about flying," Ken said. "I think I proved that last night."

FMI: www.wrightexperience.com