The Experiments Continued

Experiments continued on 20 August 1896. This time the team consisted of Avery, Herring, Chanute and Charles Chanute, Dr. Ricketts and a Russian sailor, William Paul Butusov. Butusov stated that he had made true soaring flights in Kentucky several years earlier. The group took a flatbed boat to Dune Park, a desolate site at Lake Michigan where it was hoped that newspaper reporters would not find them as easily as they did during the previous month at Miller Beach.

A man with a canvas-wood hangliding device.
A Good Start

Chicago Times Herald, 12 September 1897.

This image from the 1896 experiments at the dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan shows a pilot coming in to land. The insert (upper right hand corner) shows the line of flight; the pilot is getting some lift from "quartering flight". Today the term "quartering" means "ridge soaring."
A miniature glider hangs above a display case holding books and photographs.
Octave Chanute's 1896 Biplane Glider, 1:8 scale model

Designed, drawn and built by Curt Lewis, Loves Park, IL - October 2001.
A man hangliding above a field.
11 September 1896 near Dune Park

Courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institute. Negative 1A-20359 84-10696.

The pilot is unknown, but could possibly have been William Avery or A.M. Herring.The photo was published in the Journal of the Western Society of Engineers, vol 2 no. 5, October 1897 accompanying an article on “Gliding Experiments” by Octave Chanute.
In a modern photograph, a man grips a large two-tiered wood-and-canvas flying machine.
Octave Chanute's 1896 Biplane Glider

Designed, drawn and built by Curt Lewis, Loves Park, IL - October 2001.