The Outer Banks - Kitty Hawk

It was interesting to see the area of Kill Devil Hill, where the Wright Brothers accomplished the first controlled flight. They spent many years traveling from their bike shop in Dayton, Ohio to this area around Kitty Hawk to work on their ideas for aerodynamics.

There are photographs of this historic event because Orville had taken an interest in photography. They had tossed a coin to determine who would make the first attempts with the 1903 glider. Wilbur won the toss, but lost his chance when he oversteered on that flight and caused damage to the glider. After repairs, on December 17, 1903, Orville was able to sustain a controlled flight for 12 seconds, flying 120 feet. Three more flights were made that day, with Wilbur, on the last flight, flying 852 feet and staying aloft for 59 seconds.

The location has been covered with grass, but originally it was a sand dune. I'm sure the park service is attempting to control erosion, but it doesn't really give you a feel for what the area looked like in 1903.

This is the boulder marking the distance of the first flight and farther out are markers for each progressive flight.

The memorial at the top of Kill Devil Hill.

We stopped up the road at Kitty Hawk, where they have been teaching hang gliding for many years. In fact, a good friend of ours, Randy Cobb, worked here in the 70's.

This is probably more how the sand dunes looked when the Wright Brothers were flying their gliders down the road at Kill Devil Hill.

It has sure been a long time since I've taken a picture of Les in front of a hang glider!