USU's Wright Flyer shows it has right stuff

ST. GEORGE — Mel "Flunky" Aldrich spent part of his flying career chasing hurricanes in a B-17 high over the Azores years ago.

"I think we flew into the eye of four or five hurricanes back then," said Aldrich. "We didn't have any fancy instruments or satellites or anything like that, though. We finally crashed the plane, and I hurried and took a photo of the insignia on the fuselage to remember it by."

On Friday, Aldrich showed off a model replica of the original B-17, complete with his photo showing a pilot gazing into a crystal ball, at a unique gathering of aviation fans at the St. George Airport.

The star of Friday's party was a replica itself — Utah State University's Wright Flyer, a replica of the world's first powered biplane originally built in 1903 by Wilbur and Orville Wright.

"This is so cool!" said 10-year-old Kaelen Rose of Las Vegas, who watched the Wright Flyer take a short flight over the airport and later sat in the pilot seat for a keepsake photo.

USU and the Space Dynamics Laboratory, along with the U.S. Air Force, are taking the Wright Flyer around the state before transporting it to Dayton, Ohio, for a historic re-creation of the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk.

Flight tour coordinator Bruce King said USU's Wright Flyer exists because its creators had a dream.

"The real purpose of this experiment is to help the people of Utah and the nation help celebrate the monumental achievement of the Wright brothers' flight," said King. "A major focus of the tour is to stimulate young minds. We want them to think of what they might achieve when they're interested and unyielding in their pursuit of a dream."

That dream was eventually embraced by a lot of different people, but it didn't start out that way, said project director David Widauf.

"When I first thought of this idea everyone said it was the stupidest thing they ever heard of," said Widauf, an associate professor in USU's department of industrial technology and education. "But I really wanted to do this. It was a huge team effort."

An old friend of the Wright brothers gave Widauf a copy of the brothers' original design, which Widauf then gave to his engineering students.

"I asked them to look the design over and tell me what they thought about it," he said. "They came back and said they didn't think that airplane could fly."