In recent months many stories have ap-peared in various publications about theclaimed flight in 1901 by Gustave Whiteheadin Connecticut before the Wrights flew. So itwas a pleasant surprise to see the replicaWhitehead No. 21 on display next to SteveHay's Pioneer Engines Tent at Oshkosh '87.

I immediately contacted Andy Kosch, EAAmember and builder/pilot of the replica, foran interview about his project. Presentedhere is the story as Andy told it to me andOwen Billman of Mayfield, NY.

Hardie — Why did you decide to build aWhitehead replica?

Kosch — About five or six years ago Isaw an ad in the paper about a lecture onaviation history at the Fairfield Historical So-ciety in Fairfield, CT. I attended that lecture... it was Bill O'Dwyer talking about GustaveWhitehead. I thought the story was very in-teresting, the pictures were great and at theend of the lecture I went up to him and said,"I think I could build that thing and fly it." Thereason I said that was because I was a hanggliding instructor at the time and was runninga hang gliding school in the Fairfield area.This looked like a fun thing to do. It looked

like an Otto Lillienthal hang glider to me.Hardie — What is your line of work?Kosch — I've been a high school biology

teacher for the past 26 years.Hardie — How old are you?Kosch — I turned 48 four days ago.Hardie — Now, let's get into the story.

How did you begin? Where did you get thedrawings? How did you start?

Kosch — Well, first of all I had to locatea sponsor. I talked to a friend of mine whois the Bridgeport Airport manager, MorganKaolian. In fact, he's the number two pilot forthis plane when we fly it again. He put me intouch with a man by the name of Kaye Wil-liams who runs Captain's Cove Seaport inBridgeport. Kaye Williams built me a hangarand put up $10,000 for me to use as I seefit for this project.

Hardie — That's quite an investment, andquite a backing for the project.

Kosch — It sure is.Billman — What does he expect to get

out of it?Kosch — Really, he doesn't expect any-

thing. He's just a nice guy and is interestedin the history of the area and aviation.

Billman — So he became your benefac-tor.

Kosch — That's it. He really wasn't look-ing for anything. Who knew what was goingto happen? We had no idea that it was goingto be as successful and draw as much atten-tion as it has. I could have started this thing

and just dropped it, for all he knew. He didn'thand over the $10,000, but as I needed ma-terials, I just charged it to his account. Itdidn't cost us that much to build the airplane.It's been mostly manhours — I must havewell over 2,000 hours in the project. So doesmy partner, Bill Wargo.

Hardie — Before you could start, you hadto do some research on materials that wereused in the airplane, etc. How were the draw-ings prepared?

Kosch — Most of that information I gotfrom Bill O'Dwyer, who has a wealth of infor-mation. He has photographs on Whitehead;he has blueprints drawn up 20 years ago byan engineer, Irving Burger, at Sikorsky Air-craft. Other people have since modifiedthese — a man by the name of Herb Kelley.And another, Bjorn Karstrom's, were pub-lished in Aircraft Modeler magazine. I thinkhe used the original Burger blueprints be-cause the specs are about the same. Theremay be minor differences here and there,but that's what we used — photographs andblueprints and discussions and looking overthe literature and the specs that were givenin Scientific American, newspapers and jour-nals of the day.

Hardie — When did you finally get to thepoint where you could start building?

Kosch — Well, it wasn't very long. I thinkwe had the frame built in a couple of monthsfrom the time I started . . . on September 1,1985, the first day we moved into the hangar.

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Hardie — So, you've been at it for twoyears.

Kosch — That's right. The anniversary iscoming up.

Hardie — You said you built the body first.Kosch — We used Sitka spruce for that.Billman — You might mention the crew

that you got. You got some people who arereally dedicated.

Kosch — We didn't have a crew at thebeginning — I started out all by myself. Iused to make model airplanes, and con-structed hang gliders and put together ul-tralight airplane kits, but never really tackledanything as big as this. So I went to a localboat builder right at the seaport, a young fel-low named Steve Hadik. He showed me howto loft out the frame. I showed him the blue-prints, he came over to my house and we gota couple of 4x8 sheets of plywood and putthem together as a platform. So we had afull scale drawing right on the plywood. Wecut out the framework and then I assembledit.

When I put it together it looked like it wasabout to fly around the corner — I had thingsa little crooked. Right about that time a re-tired industrial arts teacher named Bill Wargocame by. He's also a model airplane builderand a member of EAA. He's a heck of a guy,68 years old and a very experiencedcraftsman. He took a saw and made a coupleof cuts and that frame was as straight ascould be. He's been with me ever since. Billis usually out there flying radio control mod-els and gliders. He's been a wonderful helper— without him I couldn't have done this. He'salso the number 3 pilot for the project. Bill'solder brother, Jim, has also been very helpfulas a "jack-of-all-trades". Another schoolteacher friend, Dick Lomberg, has done mostof the rigging of the wires. Jeff Cronin, amotorcycle mechanic, has kept the engineshumming. My brother, Harry, a hang gliderpilot and ultralight enthusiast, has been help-ful in tuning the wings. There are a dozen orso who have helped at various times. Wereally have quite a variety of backgroundsand talents involved in this project.Whitehead also had a variety of friends andneighbors who helped him.

Hardie — So, what's next?Kosch — That took care of the framework.

As we continued building, people would stopin the hangar. We get lots of characters com-ing in there — guys who have flown, guyswho knew Gustave Whitehead, people whojust have an interest in aviation, engineersfrom Sikorsky Aircraft, etc.

Billman — Relate the reason for puttingthe hangar where it is.

Kosch — The hangar was placed therebecause it's only a quarter mile from whereWhitehead's house was. In fact, his addresswas 241 Pine St. Right now there's a buildingthere called West End Moving, a stone'sthrow from where I'm building this airplane.

Hardie — Let's get back to the historicalbackground. Did much of this come fromO'Dwyer?

Kosch — Yes. Most of the historical infor-

mation, photographs, documents.Hardie — So he's actually a historical con-

sultant on the project.Kosch — Absolutely.Hardie — Now that you had the fuselage

done, what came next?Kosch — Well, we had to work on the

wings. We got the bamboo poles from aplace in New Jersey. They claimed they soldbamboo to the Wright brothers back in thosedays. It was a place called Bamboo and Rat-tan Works in New Jersey.

Hardie — I would dispute that, because Idon't think the Wright brothers used bambooin their airplanes. Curtiss did.

Kosch — That's what they claim. Whoknows. I got that from O'Dwyer who wentdown there and picked up the bamboo. Sup-posedly Whitehead could have gotten hisfrom that company indirectly through a localstore in Bridgeport. They're one of thebiggest importers of bamboo today in thecountry.

Hardie — Bamboo is rare stuff today — Iknow (Dale) Crites had a hard time gettingit for his Curtiss.

Kosch — This place has warehouses fullof bamboo, so this would be interesting forhim to know. So that took care of theframework for the ribs, and then I contactedan old hang gliding buddy of mine namedGunnar Graubaum, a young fellow born inGermany. He and his father make hangglider sails and ultralight airplane sails —he's up in Windham, CT. I got together withhim and he found a friend who donated somethin nylon to make a sail to fit on the wings.That's the sail we used for our early experi-ments. We didn't know where to get silk sowe took the next best thing — nylon. Wemade the sail and put it on the wings andgot some canvas from a local canvas com-pany for the fuselage. Another retired en-gineer and model airplane buff, Bud Coffin,came along and built us some great woodenwheels with steel rims.

Hardie — That's what you have on theairplane now?

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Kosch — Yes. He did that for us andhelped with fabricating the metal parts.About that time I contacted you, George.

Hardie — I wrote to O'Dwyer and he saidyou were the pilot. I got your address fromEAA and wrote to you asking if you neededany help.

Kosch — You sent me a bunch of informa-tion on Lilienthal, how he attached his wiresto the bamboo. You were very helpful and Imodified the information you gave me on Li-lienthal and came up with a little device forattaching the wires to the bamboo ribs. Be-fore long we had a covered frame and a setof wings which we pulled into the wind, justa bunch of guys running into the wind, andthe darned thing flew as nice as could be.We have video tapes of all this stuff.

Hardie — What kind of weight did youhave?

Kosch — Just empty weight at the time,about 350 Ibs. We just wanted to fly it. Nextwe started investigating the engines. I had acouple of old Weedhopper ultralight airplaneengines I thought I might try. They're a slowturning, two-cycle engine and I could changethe timing on them to get counter rotatingpropellers.

Hardie — Before you get into the engineand propeller details, let's go back to thewings. According to what I've read aboutGustave Whitehead, he had these bamboowing ribs so they could be pulled togetherand more or less collapsed.

Kosch — Yes, folded up just like a fan.Hardie — And they were braced from this

center post?Kosch — That's what is called a king post

in hang gliding — looks like a mast on asailboat.

Hardie — And he had this bowsprit out infront like a sailboat?

Kosch — That's correct — to hold thewings forward.

Hardie — And he had a system of pulleyslike you have to pull the wings together. . .is that correct?

Kosch — The pulleys are not for foldingthe wings. To fold the wings all you do isdisconnect it at the bowsprit. That pulls thewings backwards. The pulleys are attachedto the landing wires and down below youhave the flying wires.

Hardie — Is that a part of the warpingsystem?

Kosch — It could be. You see, there area lot of possibilities here. There are thingswe're not quite certain about and we're in-vestigating all of them. I'm trying every pos-sible method of control.

Hardie — You're making a "cut-and-try"approach to the whole thing?

Kosch — Right. We examine the photosand other documents and then try to workout how it affects the operation of theairplane.

Hardie — Getting back to the wheels . . .I notice the back ones are on an axle thatswivels.

Kosch — That's right. He turned the planewith the back wheels which are steerable.On the front wheels he had a separate en-gine that could drive the airplane along. Hewould drive to wherever he was going to fly.When he was getting ready to take off, hewould use the front wheels for power to getup speed.

Hardie — Then he would throw full powerto the props?

Kosch — How and when that switch wasmade, I'm not certain yet — but we're takingit one step at a time.

Hardie — Is this the way he controlledwhat you might call the warping of thewings?

Kosch — Again, he talked about anumber of different ways of controlling thisplane. He talked about weight shifting forone, like you do with a hang glider, so we'reexperimenting with weight shifting. He talkedabout slowing down and speeding up thepropellers so he could kind of yaw around.If one prop is running faster than the other,you should be able to yaw around a turn.

Hardie — I notice he doesn't have a rud-der.

Kosch — That's correct. It's claimed hedid have a rudder later on but we don't seeevidence of one in the 1901 picture that wehave. So, we're trying it without a rudder.I've been able to fly it and I think it will dojust fine.

Hardie — We talked about whether theflat tail plane warped. Can you explain whatyou thought about that?

Kosch — On the early tests that I've doneso far, I've set the plane of the tail in oneposition, a good glide angle, and just left itright there. I do have it so it's moveable. Ican adjust it, but I haven't made any at-tempts to control my pitch with it. I've beenusing weight shift for pitch control.

Hardie — What you're saying is that youare still investigating these things and at thisstage of the game you're not positive onthem, right?

Kosch — Of course, I'm not positive onanything with 100% certainty at this time.

Hardie — If I remember correctly, you hadthe plane on a trailer for your first tests?

Kosch — Yes. Previous to the motorizedtests we set the plane up on a trailer towedby a pick-up truck in the early tests and Iwould stand on the back of the truck andhang onto the bowsprit and we'd go shootingdown the runway into the wind.

Hardie — How fast did you travel?Kosch — We started out slowly and

gradually built up speed. The plane actually

lifted off at about 15 or 20 miles an hour.This was before we had it fully loaded up.I've forgotten what the weights were exactly— I could look back in my records and findout — but the thing floats like a hang glider.It doesn't take much to get it up in the air.

Hardie — What is the final weight youhave arrived at so far before you go further?

Kosch — It's in the vicinity of 500 Ibs.empty weight.

Billman — And your area is what?Kosch — About 450 sq. ft. of sail area,

including the tail. Actually I think it's about360 square on the wing area and about 90on the tail. Gross weight is about 700 Ibs.

Billman — A very low wing loading.Kosch — Less than two Ibs. per square

foot wing loading.Hardie — How does that compare with

hang gliders you have flown?Kosch — There are many hang gliders

that are right in that ball park. In the earlydays we had larger hang gliders with greaterwing area and lighter wing loading, but nowas you increase the efficiency of these hanggliders you have a heavier wing loading.

Hardie — What's the wingspan on it?Kosch — About 35 feet. If you include the

bowsprit and the tail, it's about 35 feet long.The fuselage is16 feet.

Hardie — So you have it ready to go. Whatprops did you use for the test?

Kosch — First we flew the plane emptyon the trailer, and then I put some sand bagsin it equivalent to my weight. Finally, I gotcourage enough to get in it and let someoneelse hold onto the bowsprit and control it.Then after awhile I could just float there andcontrol it with weight shift. We weren't surejust how much we could turn, what the wingwarping would do, etc. because we weretethered to the trailer. There was alwayssome doubt as to what would happen if ityawed to one side, since the ropes wouldstop us. So we weren't sure if weight shiftalone would bring it back, or if wing warpingwould be needed. We did many experimentsand finally I decided I wanted to put motorson and go out and give it a try. I didn't believethat the trailer tests were conclusive enough.

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As you know, Cliff Robertson came down asa guest test pilot. We had quite a crowd andgot some good publicity when he was theremaking tethered tests.

Hardie — You might say these were train-ing flights that you were doing.

Kosch — Oh, sure.Hardie — In other words, this was a

strange machine to you, considerably differ-ent to the hang gliders you were used to.Also, you were trying to arrive at the controlmethods used by Whitehead.

Kosch — And to see if everything wasstrong enough and if it was going to holdtogether.

Hardie — Emphasis should be made herethat you were trying to keep everything au-thentic, and as close to what you could deter-mine as to how the machine was built andflown, right?

Kosch — Yes. I've been trying to be asauthentic as possible. There are caseswhere, just for convenience sake, we haveused stainless steel cable instead of pianowire, or a couple of pieces I built up out ofplywood because we just happened to havesome scrap of the right size. We may haveused some aircraft bolts instead of thehardware variety, but I'm working toward au-thenticity. Eventually I hope to have it asexact as I can make it. I've had a lot of peoplecome in — engineers who tried to re-en-gineer Whitehead's plane and make it fly bet-ter, things of that sort — but I really don'twant that at all. I want to do it the wayWhitehead did. Anybody can, in hindsight,now improve on his airplane and make it flybetter, but the fun of this to me is to see if Ican do it the same way he did it. It certainlyhas been a thrill and I'm learning so much.

Hardie — This, in a way, can be comparedto what Curtiss tried to do with the Langley.

Billman — Curtiss had to modify theLangley to get it off the water.

Kosch — I really don't like that compari-son too much. I've been doing a little readingon Curtiss and Langley and what Curtiss didto get Langley's plane to fly. I don't reallywant to do that — I don't want to changethings.

Hardie — What I'm saying, Andy, is thatinevitably this comparison will be made andyou are in a position to clarify this so thereis a clear understanding.

Kosch — I hope it is clear that I don'tintend to change Whitehead's plane around.I want this to be just like Whitehead's. As Isaid, I used Weedhopper engines just to getthis thing flying but I'm not claiming that thisis the way Whitehead did it. I'm going to goback to that. I just wanted to show that thedesign is capable of flight.

Hardie — You're trying to explore theaerodynamics and flight characteristics ofthis airplane, right?

Kosch — That's right. And we have madethe propellers as you brought up a minuteago. Wes Gordeuk, a retired engineer fromPratt & Whitney, and Don Richardson, a re-tired aeronautical engineer from SikorskyAircraft, have been on the Whitehead projectfor 26 years. Wes hand carved these propel-lers and tried to do everything just the wayGustave Whitehead did. He used horsehideglue and laminated spruce. Don did themachine work, mounting the props.

Hardie — Are the ones now on theairplane designed for your flight tests?

Kosch — They are solid at the hub. They

don't have the adjustment Whitehead had tocontrol pitch. They're stronger than whatWhitehead had, but we have a replica whichshows the way Whitehead did it and we in-tend to do it that way eventually.

Hardie — I noticed you used regular pipefittings on the sample propeller. Are you surethat's the way Whitehead did it?

Kosch — Wes Gordeux seems to bepretty sure that that is the way Whiteheaddid it. Looking at the drawings and thephotos you can see what appears to be pipe.I don't think he had threaded pipe becausethat would be kind of weak. He probablyeither brazed or welded the pipe.

Hardie — Are these the shady areaswhere you're going to have to assume?

Kosch — Of course. If anybody wants togive us some suggestions, we can modify tomake it more accurate. We're trying to behonest on this and not trying to pull any Cur-tiss-Langley deal. I'm not interested in that.

Hardie — It loses its meaning then,doesn't it?

Kosch — It really does.Hardie — Now that you have the propel-

lers made and mounted, what's next?Kosch — Right now we have a reduction

gear on it so we can swing the propellers atabout 600 or 700 rpm, the way Whiteheaddid, using Weedhopper modern engines.Eventually we'll get an engine built likeWhitehead's and we'll then fly with his pro-pellers and his engine, we hope. One morething I should mention. The propellers I usedon the test flights with the Weedhopper en-gines were made by the Tennessee Propel-ler Co. I told them what I wanted, the speedI'd probably be flying and the rpm. They builtme two propellers, left and right hand — wehave counter-rotating props the wayWhitehead did.

Hardie — Then these other propellers thatare on there now you put on after you testedwith the standard modern propellers?

Kosch — That's right, because we're get-ting ready for flight test now with theWhitehead propellers. We also have sinceconstructed silk wings. A silk company inJapan donated the material — they gave usquite a bit of it.

Hardie — Do you have a value of it?Kosch — I've been told it's about $6000

worth of silk. It's really enough to make aboutfive sets of wings. Whitehead usedJapanese silk so we wanted to be authentic.O'Dwyer went to New York City and talkedto the Chamber of Commerce and they puthim in contact with the Kanabo Silk Co.which is one of the oldest silk companies inJapan. They in turn gave us 500 yards of silkand we were very happy to get it. In fact, wedisplayed the airplane at the Waldorf AstoriaHotel in New York City early in August as agesture of thanks. It was their 100th anniver-sary. They wanted our wings to include witha showing of some of their products.

Hardie — It must have been great public-ity for them.

Kosch — It was, and we just had a greattime. We made a special fuselage we couldget into the elevators. We had a folding fuse-lage — it was really only a 3/4 scale fuselagebut the full scale wings. They illuminated itwith lights underneath. It looked like a bigJapanese lantern. Really quite beautiful. Sowe have a few things we're looking forwardto. I've flown with the nylon wings so now Iwant to fly it with the silk wings. I want to test

the new propellers that we have, with themodern engines. We're in the process ofhaving the engines built by a number of dif-ferent people. O'Dwyer has a group in Ger-many looking at the engine and studying it.I have a fellow in upper New York Statenamed Vincent Versage who is a retiredmachinist and a model maker. He's in Cud-debackville, NY and he's also working on theengine.

Hardie — When we're talking about en-gines, what do you mean?

Kosch — It appears to be a modifiedsteam engine.

Hardie — You said it was not for steambut a kind of hot air engine?

Kosch — What the engineers andanalysts are telling me is that it was a sepa-rate combustion chamber where he burnedacetylene and liquid air and fed thoseexhaust gases into the steam engine, andthis seems quite feasible to many of thesteam engine experts here at Oshkosh. I'vebeen talking to them about it. They're lookingat my mock-up engine and suggesting wherethere might be some corrections.

Hardie — The engine you have mountedthere now is just a dummy?

Kosch — It's a mock-up made to look likeWhitehead's. I didn't want to come here withWeedhopper engines on it.

Hardie — What you're saying is that thesedummy engines are models from whichworking engines can be constructed? Youwill develop working engines from thesemodels?

Kosch — Correct. The dimensions arebasically the same but there's still a questionon the valve timing. That'll be worked out.

Billman — I'm curious about that liquidair. Was that a common product back inthose days?

Kosch — It certainly was. I have a news-paper article that says "Liquid Air Available"in the Bridgeport Post and in the New Havenpaper in the early 1900s. It was availableright there — in fact, it said, "It can be usedin aviation, in submarines and in refrigera-tion." It had all these various uses for it. I wasquite surprised.

Billman — You know, builders talk aboutwelding with gas and air. Do you suppose itcould be gas compressed oxygen?

Kosch — It says air and it sounds like it'sair and not oxygen.

Hardie — I think that's part of the confu-sion that arises out of these stories wherethey say Whitehead used acetylene. Peoplecan't understand exactly how the acetylenewas used. I thought it was used as a fuel tofire a boiler.

Kosch — I'll show you some articleswhere he generated his own acetylene withwater and calcium carbide, and thatacetylene somehow burned in a separatecombustion chamber. Maybe he used liquidair because it could be controlled bettergoing into a combustion chamber and thoseexhaust gases could be fed into the modifiedsteam engine, a double acting piston, etc.

Hardie — At this stage of the game youhave a feel for the control of the airplane, solet's go to your experiences of flying it. Yousaid it was flown on three different days.

Kosch — Well, the first day, December 7,was an accidental hop. I can't really call thatflying. I left the ground and went through theair and shut the engine down right away andflew for quite a distance. It must have been

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between 30 and 60 feet. That was really asurprise.

Hardle — Was that the only flight youmade that day?

Kosch — I believe I may have attemptedone other, but I'd have to look back at thevideo tapes. I remember that one very well— I have a picture of it. I might have triedone more, but I'm not certain. Three weekslater, on December 27,1 was more preparedfor it and we made a number of short hops,I think in the vicinity of 10 or 15, ranging froma couple inches off the ground to about 4 or5 feet.

Hardie — This was with the Weedhopperengines?

Kosch — Yes. With the ultralight enginesand under power. Then on December 29 wehad a nice day and I was again ready, pre-pared to try to go a little further. We had avery successful day. We started off with acouple of short hops, probably 60 or 70 feetin length, and then I went over 100 feet verysoon thereafter, and then over 200 feet. Fi-nally the last flight of the day, around the20th flight, I went over 330 feet, about 5-6feet off the ground.

Hardie — You had a different rig under itthan the wooden wheels you have here?

Kosch — That's correct. I realized that inlearning to fly this plane it wouldn't take toomuch to send those wooden wheels upthrough the floor. So I took an old landinggear off one of my hang glider type airplanes— called a Jet Wing, a hang glider with atricycle gear underneath. There's some sus-pension, bungee cord suspension onaluminum and rubber wheels, so we wereusing that for our flight test. Eventually I in-tend to fly it with the wooden wheels. I'vehad some soft landings like a feather, andI've had some hard ones. I don't want to haveto rebuild every time I land it so I'll continueto use the suspension until I'm sure of whatI'm doing.

Hardie — In order to control his airplane,I think Whitehead said he stood up in thebody.

Kosch — That's right. I'm standing in theairplane — in fact, I'm using weight shift forpitch control at this stage. I'll get my speedup to somewhere in the vicinity of 25 or 30miles an hour, then shift my weight back-wards. I'm standing at the center of gravityso the nose will come up. As soon as I getairborne, I throw my weight forward and leveloff.

Hardie — Is there any way of controllingthe warping of the wings while you're stand-ing?

Kosch — There are a number of ways ofdoing it. We're trying all of them. You canpull upper cords, you can pull lower cords,you can put a separate pulley to a wire, pul-ling a collection of rings at the bottom that Ishowed you. I can point that out better onthe airplane. In fact, I believe that the wingswere warped without any pulling on thewires, just by shifting weight in one direction.One wing loads more than the other, some-thing like a shifting-billow hang glider.

Hardie — As I understand it, this is theway Lilienthal's worked.

Kosch — His were smaller gliders, theydidn't have all this weight.

Hardie — I can see that yours has agreater span — maybe 20 feet for his to your35 feet.

Kosch — He made a number of differentgliders — some were large and some weresmall.

Hardie — I would hope that at this stagewe're still trying to understand whatWhitehead did. Isn't this why you are doingthis experiment?

Kosch — I went into this for the fun ofmaking and flying the airplane. It can be dif-ficult at times because I'm being drawn intothe controversy and I personally don't likecontroversy, but you can't seem to avoid it. . . when you start talking about who flew whatand when. I hope that I'm being honest andaccurate in what I'm doing.

Hardie — Re-examining history is noteasy. This is exactly what you are doing, withvery sketchy data which is a part of the chal-lenge and a part of the interest — right?

Kosch — And a part of the fun.Hardie — What do you think will be the

outcome of your experiment after you're allfinished?

Kosch — I really don't know what the out-come will be. I'll probably do this for the restof my life. I've spent every weekend for thepast two years working on this project. I thinkthat eventually I'll be able to duplicateWhitehead's first flight. I want to fly a half amile down Fairfield beach the same way hedid. I'd like to fly here at Oshkosh next yearand go half a mile down the runway undercontrol. I'd even like to do S-turns to showthat it's under control.

Hardie — What about the flight thatWhitehead is supposed to have made in1902. Was it the same airplane?

Kosch — No, it wasn't. That was Model22 and had a different engine. It had akerosene engine and instead of bambooribs, he used steel tubing. He hadaluminumn covering on the fuselage. It's adifferent airplane — I really don't know muchabout No. 22. I'm concentrating on No. 21— it's the one that I want to study. It's the

one that flew a half a mile and I want to flya half a mile with this one, with the samepowerplant and everything the same, asnear as I can make it. I don't know how longit's going to take, but I hope I have the cour-age to stick with it.

Hardie — When did you arrive at the Con-vention?

Kosch — I've been here since lastWednesday. Art Morgan arranged for abeautiful spot alongside Steve Hay's PioneerEngine tent. I couldn't ask for a better spotand I really appreciate it. The peculiar thingis that when Whitehead displayed his pic-tures at the Aero Club of America exhibit in1906, they were right alongside the Wrightengine, just like here.

Hardie — That's where the originalcrankshaft and flywheel of the 1903 enginegot lost. Orville had loaned them for displayand never got them back. That's why there'sa dummy in the airplane. Incidentally, haveyou had contact with others who furnishedinformation?

Kosch — A lot of historians have beenreal helpful and have been feeding me somuch information it's unbelievable. I'm hav-ing a hard time digesting it all, but I'm learn-ing an awful lot. Gene Husting gave me hisopinions on a lot of things, including informa-tion on Augustus Herring, and informationon Whitehead. Most of my information,though, came from Bill O'Dwyer. I even metStella Randolph who wrote the original book,"Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead", back in1937. I went down to Wilmington, NC lastmonth and met with her — a wonderfulwoman, 92 years old, as honest and lovelya lady as you can find. She's very pleasedthat we're doing this and hopes this will helpget credit for Whitehead while she's stillalive.

Hardie — Well, that about wraps it up.We'll certainly be watching and waiting tohear more about this project as you progresswith your plan.

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