KRONFELD ON GLIDING AND SOARING.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

THE WRIGHTS 43
the brothers made steady progress. They had recognized
that true soaring demanded not only better machines but
also better trained pilots. The Wrights still interpreted
the word " soaring " as the power to maintain a position
in the air above one spot. Often they succeeded in doing
so for a time, and they also knew the difference, not yet
clear to many even to-day, between soaring and gliding.
They said : "In principle soaring is exactly equivalent
to gliding, the practical difference being that in the one
case the wind moves with an upward trend against a
motionless surface, while in the other the surface moves
with a downward trend against motionless air."
The only difference between this and our present conception
of soaring is that now we not only hover in the wind,
but can even make headway against it and climb.
In the autumn of 1903 the Wrights had achieved flights
of more than a minute's duration. Often the plane hovered
calmly above the same spot so that an onlooker ignorant
of its nature might have thought that it only needed feathers
on its wings to fly like a bird.
By this time they had accumulated a mass of material
for their calculations, and the problem of balancing in
steady as well as in gusty winds was practically solved.
The further work of the Wrights belongs to the history
of motor flying. Through them the great importance of
soaring and gliding had been demonstrated for the first
time, and the addition of a motor was a step towards
perfection. The way of experiment and apprenticeship
in gliding flight had been a long one, but it was a silent and
almost invisible herald of the victorious career of motoraided
flight.
Although, yielding to the spirit of their time, the Wrights
devoted themselves later entirely to motor flying, they were
nevertheless the first to realize fully what might be achieved
by means of soaring. They were convinced that men would
one day be able to build themselves wings which would
surpass those of even the best soarers among the birds.
" However, when gliding operators have attained greater
skill, they can, with comparative safety, maintain themselves
in the air for hours at a time in this way, and thus by