PirateWilly

I will say this about the build. Gerald Wingrove, in every single one of his books, points out and emphasizes that "YOU SHOULD NOT TRY TO USE THE ORIGINAL MATERIAL TO SIMULATE THE ORIGINAL MATERIAL ON A SCALE BASIS. IT DOESN'T WORK." For my aircraft, I am going to use steam-bent wood. It will be covered, so this should not be obvious. I am not going to use ANY bamboo if I can avoid it. It doesn't glue well, it returns to it's original shape as time passes, and even with steam bending, it is nearly impossible to form. On most of the original early aircraft I have been lucky enough to get access to, the bamboo parts are typically straight, such as supports for the tail surfaces or to link separate sections together.

I just ordered my kit from Model Shipways, and they reference this build log, which I came and looked at very briefly. I will go over the entire build log over the next several days. I can't wait for my kit to arrive! Several years ago on PBS, there was a special on this aircraft on the site, and a group of Brazilians researched the aircraft, built a replica and actually flew it. It was as hard to fly as everyone on here surmises. After his death, Santos-Dumont's heart was removed from his body, placed in a glass decanter, and is on display in a Brazilian museum. I hope to visit there and go see it someday. About 10 years ago, I flew into Dayton, Oh, to examine a flight control problem on a Learjet 35, where they were having problems getting the aileron rigging adjusted. I got that sorted out, and then went to the Wright Brothers bicycle shop and the area surrounding it, which is now a Historic District. They have very little there because the Wright Home and most of their estate went to Henry Ford in Greenfield Village. But they DID have some of the Wright Brothers personal tools in a display cabinet. The ranger who showed me the tools, when she found out I was an airplane mechanic, asked if I would like to actually TOUCH them, and I told her "ABSOLUTELY!!" and she opened the case for me, and allowed me to closely examine the tools, actually handling them and examining them very closely. I was absolutely ecstatic, and thanked her profusely! That was a real event in my life, I can tell you! Actually handling the tools the Wright Brothers used, and their mechanic Charles Taylor, also, was an incredible treat! The few remaining houses in that district were obviously very upper-class, with a lot of detail work, and were very large. The Wrights lived and worked in a very prosperous area of Dayton, I can tell you. I visited several other buildings in the area, which were related to Wright history, but most were occupied by other businesses, some were vacant. But it was still great just to see them. Many of the streets in the area just have 1-2 houses on a street that are original, and there are a lot of vacant lots where other houses stood in the time of the Wrights. That was a wonderful afternoon that I will never forget! (There are lots for sale in that area, but the house you build must fit the architectural style of the area (1890's Victorian) in order to be approved for construction. Anyway, the whole point of this post was to mention the Brazilian effort to build and fly one of these for real, and if it has been mentioned in this forum topic previously, I will soon find out about it, and am sorry for a duplicate post mentioning it. But if it has not, the PBS show was VERY interesting and would be worth hunting down for anyone who has a kit on order and is planning on building it.