Daring aviator risks his life to bring history alive

kickingfrog · February 5, 2009

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...Story/National/

Test pilot will fly replica of the Silver Dart to mark 100th anniversary of the curious flying machine that put Canada in the record books

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

February 4, 2009 at 4:32 AM EST

A special and ancient-looking airplane sat on the polished floor of a Hamilton airport hangar this week.

Surrounded by jet fighters and Second World War bombers, it conjured up the age of Leonardo da Vinci. A skeleton of steel and bamboo, covered with gossamer fabric and strung with silver bracing wires, gave it the look of a flying harpsichord.

A few meters away, test pilot Bjarni Tryggvason sat at his laptop computer, running mathematical formulas that predicted how this intimidating machine might fly - and what he would have to do to keep from killing himself.

This was no small undertaking. The airplane is a replica of the Silver Dart, a flying machine that put Canada in the aviation history books: In 1909, pilot and designer J. A. D. McCurdy flew the Dart from a frozen Cape Breton lake, capping years of experimentation with a group that included the legendary Alexander Graham Bell.

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Bjarni Tryggvason will fly a replica of the Silver Dart within the next few days. He calls it the most challenging test-flight assignment he’s ever taken on. (Peter Cheney/The Globe and Mail)

Although Mr. Tryggvason's aviation background includes everything from jet fighters to the space shuttle (he flew on mission STS-85 in 1997), he considers the Dart replica the most challenging test-flight assignment he's ever taken on.

"For this airplane, there is no prepared set of responses," said Mr. Tryggvason, who expects to fly the replica within the next few days. "It's a whole new world. Back then, no one really knew how to do this."

Like the Wright Flyer, the Silver Dart is a throwback to aviation's risky beginnings. Pilots such as Mr. McCurdy confronted a set of hazards that no one really understood. Many paid the ultimate price.

"We've spent the past hundred years figuring things out and improving airplanes," Mr. Tryggvason said. "These guys didn't get the benefit of other people's experiences."

The search for information about the Dart's flying qualities has taken Mr. Tryggvason down a number of paths. Mr. McCurdy, who earned the first pilot's licence ever granted in Canada, wrote very little about his flights. Mr. Tryggvason pored over the cursory notes of an RCAF pilot who flew (and crashed) a Dart replica built in 1959 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Mr. McCurdy's achievement.

The pilot noted that the Dart was highly unstable, demanding quick yet tempered responses from the pilot. His flight ended when a gust of wind pitched the Dart into a steep climb that he was unable to counter. At the top of the climb, the Dart pitched over and crashed to earth, splintering it. The pilot was injured, but survived.

Mr. Tryggvason has also tested models of the Dart replica in a wind tunnel, analyzing how the machine responded to controls. His tests revealed a series of potentially fatal flaws, including pitch and yaw instability, and an incorrect centre of gravity - the critical balance point that determines whether an airplane will fly correctly and recover from a stall.

"This is not a typical airplane," Mr. Tryggvason said. "I have to analyze it and think it through."

The new Dart replica was built by a group of volunteers who began the project nearly five years ago, working out of a garage in Welland, Ont. Among them is Doug Jermyn, a retired engineer who once built a high-performance aluminum airplane at home, using nothing but blueprints and raw material. But the Dart, he said, made even that look easy.

"This was a serious challenge," he said. "There were a lot of things to figure out."

Although Mr. Jermyn and his fellow volunteers scrounged up copies of some of the drawings made by Mr. McCurdy, Mr. Bell and their fellow experimenters back in the early 1900s, much was left out. To keep the machine authentic, the builders used tools and techniques from Mr. McCurdy's era. The struts that connect the upper and lower wings, for example, were shaped from planks with a carpenter's jack plane. The project has been given an extra bit of historical resonance by the participation of one of Mr. McCurdy's relatives - grandson Gerald Haddon, now in his mid-60s.

Mr. Haddon, who fabricated some of the steel components in the replica, spent a great deal of time with his grandfather before his death in 1961.

"He was my hero," Mr. Haddon said. "A truly unique and gifted man."

The replica has been given a handful of refinements designed to improve Mr. Tryggvason's comfort, not to mention his chances of survival. Brakes have been added. (The original had none.) The bare plank that Mr. McCurdy sat on has been replaced with a padded seat and a rudimentary instrument panel made out of a cake tin has been attached to the framework.

Then there's the fuel system. The original Dart used a simple, but dangerous, setup: the fuel tank sat behind Mr. McCurdy's head, so that gravity could pull gas down to the engine. In a crash, the crude tank would probably rupture, turning it into a Molotov cocktail centimetres from the pilot's head. The replica uses a burst-proof fuel cell from a racing car, mounted far from the engine to reduce the chance of fire.

Mr. Tryggvason has overseen the modifications and improvements with the keen eye one gets when one's life is on the line. He hopes to fly the replica within the next few days at the Hamilton airport. After that, the Dart will be disassembled and loaded into a pair of transport trucks for the trip to the lake ice near Baddeck, on Cape Breton, where Mr. Tryggvason hopes to fly it on Feb. 23, exactly 100 years after Mr. McCurdy's flight there.

His flight plan is based on survival: "I'm going to fly straight ahead," he said. "If I get to 20 feet, that'll be fine. I want to come back in one piece."