The likeliest “flying field,” they concluded after some investigation, was a peaceful cow pasture of approximately eighty-four acres eight miles northeast of town called Huffman Prairie. For years a popular science teacher at the high school, William Werthner, had been bringing his students, including Orville and Katharine, on field trips there—outings Orville loved, which probably had something to do with the choice.
The setting was spacious and relatively private, yet nothing like Kitty Hawk, with its broad horizons, wind in abundance, and nearly total privacy. Here, the space to maneuver had clearly defined parameters. Barbed wire and trees lined the borders, and there were besides a number of trees within the pasture, including one fifty-foot honey locust covered with thorns. The field itself, as Wilbur said, was so full of groundhog hummocks it might have been a prairie dog town. In addition the electric interurban trolley line from Dayton to Columbus skirted one side of the property and so could provide passengers on board ample view of whatever might be going on.
The work to be done here, the brothers knew, could well be the final, critical stage in the maturation of their whole idea. Here they would have to learn to do far more than what they had at Kitty Hawk. They must master the art of launching themselves safely into the air, of banking and turning a motor-propelled machine, and landing safely. Therefore, Wilbur stressed, they would have to learn to accommodate themselves to circumstances.
If space was limited, then all the more need to learn to make controlled turns. If the interurban trolley meant daily public exposure, it would also provide ready, inexpensive transportation—a ride of forty minutes for a 5-cent fare—to and from town, and with a handy stop known as Simms Station at the edge of the field. They also knew the trolley’s schedule, so if need be they had merely to time their flights to those hours when no one would be passing by.
The pasture belonged to Torrence Huffman, president of Dayton’s Fourth National Bank, whom the Wrights knew. When they inquired if they might rent it for their use, he said there would be no charge, so long as they moved the cows and horses outside the fence before flying their machine. While he liked the brothers well enough, Huffman was among the many who had little faith in their project. “They’re fools,” he told the farmer who worked the adjoining land.
Meanwhile, in what time they had to themselves, the brothers were sawing and planing lumber for the ribs of the new machine and working with Charlie Taylor on the new motor.
Their nephew Milton, who as a boy was often hanging about the brothers, would one day write, “History was being made in their bicycle shop and in their home, but the making was so obscured by the commonplace that I did not recognize it until many years later.”
With the advance of the spring of 1904, Wilbur and Orville could be seen out in the grass at Huffman Prairie swinging scythes or working with shovels leveling off ground hog mounds. When it came to building a shed in which to assemble and store their new machine, they put it in a corner as far removed from the trolley stop as the field permitted.
Prior to their first test flight, lest anyone think them overly secretive, the brothers invited friends and neighbors to come and watch. The press would be welcome, too, but on the condition that no photographs be taken. Their concern centered on the chance of photographs being used to study those devices and control mechanisms of their own invention, which set their machine apart from others.
On May 23, a Monday, despite an early morning rain, some fifty spectators gathered at Huffman Prairie. Bishop Wright, Katharine, Lorin and family were all present, as were a dozen or more reporters. But there was too little wind, and the test flight had to be postponed. Motor or not, wind was still essential.
On Wednesday, when the crowd gathered again, rain caused another cancellation. The morning after, May 26, there was more rain. But then, during a brief lull in the afternoon, and with hardly any wind and signs of another storm about to break, the brothers decided to “make a start.” With Orville at the controls, Flyer II rose a mere 8 feet and came down at once, within seconds after leaving the starting track. Something had gone wrong with the motor.
It was hardly a premiere to stir excitement or silence the doubters. A few reporters, in an attempt to say something of interest, either praised the sturdiness of the machine or took liberties with the facts, such as to say the plane had gone 75 feet in the air. Bishop Wright, who had been watching with perhaps greater anticipation than anyone present, could only record in his diary, and accurately, that Orville had flown all of 25 feet.