The two-place Wright-Martin R was built in 1917 as a landplane and a single pontoon floatplane. The land version was used briefly in the Mexican Border campaign, and seaplanes went to the Philippines.
Fourteen were built (AS108 and 109, and AS522-533) but some records show the total as 27, which might indicate prior production of 13 by Martin in 1916, before the merger.
Some versions had diagonal end-struts replacing the wire bracing.
Jim Wright built an exact replica of Howard Hughes’ first airplane, then set a world airspeed record for the plane’s weight class on 13 September 2002 at 352.38 mph.
His replica of the Hughes H-1 racer – a one-seater called the Hughes 1B, NX258Y – crashed and exploded in a fireball in Yellowstone National Park, eight miles north of Old Faithful geyser on 4 August 1003, killing the 53-year-old pilot and machine shop owner.
Howard Wright designed and built helicopters, ornithopter, biplanes, and series of monoplanes, including five Avis.
Named “The Golden Plover” – and fitted with an Anzani three-cylinder delivering 25 to 30 hp – this wing-warping monoplane was delivered to the Scottish Aviation Syndicate in 1910.
The 1909 Howard Wright monoplane was designed and built by Howard T.Wright in the UK.
In December 1908 Howard Wright was asked to build an aircraft for Malcolm Serr Keaton. The design was similar to the contemporary Voisins, a pusher biplane with a front-mounted elevator and a rear-mounted box-like biplane tail, but differed in some details, most obviously in having biplane front elevators and an undercarriage consisting of a single wheel carried by a pyramid of struts in front of the wings, with supplementary wheels on either wingtip.
It was powered by a 50 hp Metallurgique engine, which drove a pair of contra-rotating two bladed propellers. Lateral control was by means of four small ailerons fitted to the trailing edges of both wings.
The two-seat aircraft was displayed at the 1909 Olympia Aero Exhibition and flown successfully at Camber Sands.
Leo and Vivian Walsh helped to lay the foundations for both military and civil aviation in New Zealand. The brothers were determined to build and fly an aeroplane and succeeded in obtaining financial backing from Auckland businessmen A. N. and C. B. Lester and A. J. Powley. They then bought the plans for a British Howard Wright biplane together with materials and an eight-cylinder engine, worth about £750 in total. It took about 5½ months for the brothers to assemble the aircraft at their family home in Remuera. They were helped by fellow enthusiasts, and their sisters Veronica and Doreen, who machine-sewed hundreds of yards of material for the wings.
Walsh Brothers aircraft Manurewa
The finished aircraft, named the Manurewa No 1, bore an inscription ‘The Walsh Aeroplane Co. Aeronautical Engineers Constructors Auckland’. Beneath this was a crest and the words ‘Aero Club New Zealand’.
Walsh Brothers aircraft Manurewa
Walsh Brother’s Manurewa No 1 made the first undisputed powered flight in New Zealand – flown by Vivian Walsh on Sunday, February 5, 1911, from a grass field at Glenora Park, a total distance of 400 yards at a maximum height of 60 feet (flight data figures differ somewhat depending on the source).
German Flugmaschine Wright-Gesellschaft (Johannisthal) Wright biplane designed by Deutsche Wright pilot Robert Thelen in 1911. It had only a single propeller, directly attached to the drive shaft of its 50 hp NAG engine. Thelen used at least one of this type with the Ad Astra Fluggesellschaft, a flight school and exhibition company that Thelen formed with Rudolf Kiepert, also a Wright pilot.
All Aero 