Flying machine market has been very unsteady the past two days. Opened yesterday morning at about 208 (100% means even chance of success) but by noon had dropped to 110. These fluctuations would have produced a panic, I think, in Wall Street, but in this quiet place it only put us to thinking and figuring a little.
They proceeded on the Flyer much as if they were building a truss bridge, only with the attention to detail of watchmakers, Orville keeping a day-by-day record in his diary.
Thursday, October 22 We worked all day on lower surface and tail.
Friday, October 23 Worked on skids during morning, and after dinner finished putting on hinges.
Saturday, October 24 We put in the uprights between surfaces and trussed the center section. Had much trouble with wires.
On Monday the 26th, they worked again on the truss wires until the afternoon, when the wind veered to the north, and they spent two hours at Kill Devil Hills flying the glider and succeeded in breaking their previous record for time five times and covering distances of as much as 500 feet.
George Spratt had rejoined them, and on October 27 he and Dan Tate started up the engine on the machine.
Monday, November 2 Began work of placing engine on machine. . . .
Wednesday, November 4 Have machine now within half day of completion.
But when the next day they started up the motor, the magneto—a small generator utilizing magnets—failed to deliver a spark to ignite the gas and the vibrations of the misfiring engine tore loose and badly twisted the propeller shafts.
With little chance of more flight tests anytime soon, George Spratt chose to go home, taking with him the damaged shafts as far as Norfolk to be shipped back to Charlie Taylor in Dayton.
Two days later Octave Chanute appeared. The weather turned miserably cold and rainy, and there was little to do but sit around the stoves and talk. Chanute told the brothers it was as if they were “pursued by a blind fate” from which they were unable to escape.
“He doesn’t seem to think our machines are so much superior as the manner in which we handle them,” Orville wrote to Katharine and their father after Chanute had left. “We are of just the reverse opinion.”
Days passed still too cold to work. Puddles about the camp turned to ice. All the same, the brothers were entirely comfortable and had no trouble keeping warm, as Wilbur wrote reassuringly in another letter home, cheerful as ever and off on another of his wry renditions of coping with the travails of camp life.
In addition to the classifications of last year, to wit, 1, 2, 3 and 4 blanket nights, we now have 5 blanket nights, and 5 blankets and 2 quilts. Next come 5 blankets, 2 quilts and fire; then 5, 2, fire, & hot-water jug. This is as far as we’ve got so far. Next comes the addition of sleeping without undressing, then shoes & hats, and finally overcoats. We intend to be comfortable while we are here.
In the last days of November, snow fell, something they had not seen before on the Outer Banks. Water in their washbasin froze solid. Cold or not, they succeeded meantime in getting the engine to run with practically no vibration even at high speed. The Flyer would be launched on a single wooden track, to serve like a railroad track 60 feet in length on which it would slide. The total cost for materials for this innovation was all of $4.
By all evidence the brothers had suffered in spirit not in the least. “After a loaf of 15 days, we are down to work again,” Orville wrote to Charlie on November 23. “We will not be ready for a trial for several days yet on account of having decided on some changes in the machine. Unless something breaks in the meantime we feel confident in success.”
New propeller shafts made of larger, heavier steel tubing arrived from Charlie, only to crack during an indoor test. With no delay, Orville, the better mechanic of the two, packed his bag and on November 30 left for Dayton to see what could be done, with Wilbur remaining behind “to keep house alone,” in his words.
In Washington, by the morning of December 8, the cold wind eased off, and to Charles Manly and the Smithsonian technicians working with him, conditions for another test of Samuel Langley’s much publicized, much derided aerodrome looked as favorable as could be hoped for given the time of year.
Cakes of ice could be seen riding with the current on the Potomac, but the day was bright, the air calm, and given that money for the project was nearly gone by now, any further postponement seemed out of the question.
The brave Manly was again to be the “steersman,” the only one to risk his life, and it was he who made the final decision to proceed. As he saw it, it was “now or never.”
The giant airship, with its wings again set at a pronounced dihedral angle, was to be launched as before by catapult from atop the same monstrous houseboat, tied up this time just four miles below the city at Arsenal Point. Some five hours of frantic effort went into the final preparations. Not until four in the afternoon did everything appear ready, and by then it was nearly dark and the wind was rising.