The Wright Model R was a single-seat

biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...

built by the

Wright Company The Wright Company was the commercial aviation business venture of the Wright Brothers, established by them on November 22, 1909, in conjunction with several prominent industrialists from New York and Detroit with the intention of capitalizing o ...

Dayton Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Da ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, in 1910. Also known as the Roadster or the Baby Wright, it was designed for speed and altitude competitions.

Design

The Wright Model R was derived from the

Wright Model B The Wright Model B was an early pusher biplane designed by the Wright brothers in the United States in 1910. It was the first of their designs to be built in quantity. Unlike the Model A, it featured a true elevator carried at the tail rat ...

, and was a two-bay biplane with rear-mounted twin

rudder A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally aircraft, air or watercraft, water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to ...

s mounted in front of a single

elevator An elevator or lift is a wire rope, cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or deck (building), decks of a building, watercraft, ...

and carried on wire-braced wood booms behind the wing. It was powered by a Wright four-cylinder inline water-cooled engine driving a pair of pusher propellers via

chains A chain is a serial assembly of connected pieces, called links, typically made of metal, with an overall character similar to that of a rope in that it is flexible and curved in compression but linear, rigid, and load-bearing in tension. A c ...

Operational history

Wright -Baby Grand- front view on ground, Simms Station near Dayton, Ohio, 1910 (10492 A

Two examples were flown at the International Aviation Tournament at

Belmont Park Belmont Park is a major thoroughbred horse racing facility in the northeastern United States, located in Elmont, New York, just east of the New York City limits. It was opened on May 4, 1905. It is operated by the non-profit New York Racin ...

in November 1910, one being a standard model flown by

Alec Ogilvie ''For the businessman, see Alec Ogilvie (businessman).'' Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander "Alec" Ogilvie CBE (8 June 1882 – 18 June 1962) was an early British aviation pioneer, a friend of the Wright Brothers and only the seventh British person ...

and the other being a special competition model known as the Baby Grand, which had a V-8 engine and a reduced

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan of ...

of 21 ft 5 in (6.53 m). Orville Wright succeeded in flying the Baby Grand at a speed of nearly . Both aircraft were entered for the second Gordon Bennett Trophy competition which was held at the meeting, but the Baby Grand, flown by

Walter Brookins Walter Richard Brookins (July 11, 1889 – April 29, 1953) was the first pilot trained by the Wright brothers for their exhibition team. Biography Brookins was born in July 1889 in Dayton, Ohio to Clara Belle Spitler (1873–1947) and Noah Holsa ...

, suffered an engine failure during a trial flight on the race day and crashed heavily. Ogilvie's aircraft also had engine problems, having to make a stop of nearly an hour to make repairs, but was nevertheless placed third."The American International Meeting"
''Flight'' 5 November 1910 Ogilvie also flew his aircraft in the 1912 Gordon Bennet competition, re-engined with a N.E.C. engine.

Specifications

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * McFarland, Marvin (ed), ''The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright'' vol. 2. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953, p. 1199. * Munson, Kenneth, ''Pioneer Aircraft 1903-1914''. London: Blandford, 1969.

External links

"Mr Ogilvie's Wright Biplane"
''Flight''_28_January_1911. {{Wright_aircraft Wright_aircraft.html" ;"title="''Flight'' 28 January 1911. {{Wright aircraft Wright aircraft">Model R 1910s United States experimental aircraft Single-engined twin-prop pusher aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1910