News - Final Preparations for flight.
Silver Dart replica goes up into the skies and down into the history books … with its six successful test flights
What may well be viewed as perhaps one of the most dramatic days in the last 100 years of Canadian and British Commonwealth aviation history – Friday, Feb. 6th, 2009 – ended with two airport rescue / fire trucks welcoming the Silver Dart replica – C-IIGY- under an umbrella of water at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. (See photos following this article.)
This test flight at the John C. Munro International Airport was the necessary precursor for its first scheduled flight, in Baddeck Bay, Nova Scotia, on Monday, Feb. 23rd this month, when it is scheduled to celebrate 100 years of powered flight in Canada and in what was then the British Empire of the day.
Flown by retired NASA / Canadian Space Agency astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason, C-IIGY took 213.3 m (700 ft) for its take-off roll. He flew it approximately 914.4 m (3,000 ft) down Runway 24, in near-perfect level flight, about 3.6 m (12 ft) off the ground, coming to a perfect three-point landing some 50 seconds later at 2:40 p.m., Eastern Standard Time.
The six test flights were about 10 minutes apart ant the longest flight took up the entire length of Runway 24, which is 1.828 m (6,000 ft).
The event was well-covered by a large media representation. Various newspaper articles have already appeared throughout a number of local, regional and national newspapers, both in print and on-line, and many more articles are slated to be written by aviation magazine editors, writers and photographers who attended the flight tests. Both the CTV and CBC national television networks fed live the test flights footage through their different stations across Canada.
Tryggvason may not be fully aware of it, but he is the only human being in the world to have flown on the space shuttle – Discovery in 1997 - and a replica of the first powered aircraft in Canadian history. Last summer, while sitting with friends at a Russell Aviation Group hangar where the Silver Dart was undergoing final assembly, he was overheard to say words to the following effect: "As an astronaut, I'd have my rear end pointed at the earth, coming in at thousands of miles an hour. I feel just as excited at pointing my nose towards space and lifting off at 40 miles an hour flying the Silver Dart replica."
In one day this month he spanned, in six flights, 100 years of international aviation history, making it come alive for millions of Canadians in ways undreamed of by North America's aviation pioneers of 1903 in the United States, and in 1909 in Canada and in the British Empire of the day.
(Photo by Jaro Petruck for AEA 2005 Inc. from a chase vehicle which carried AEA support crew)
C-IIGY and pilot / astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason receive spontaneous water-arch salutes from airport security personnel rescue vehicles
The photographs above were taken by Jim Anes, Burlington, ON, a member of the Niagara Windriders Kitefliers Association ( www.windriders.niagara.com ). Jim took these photos on his return to the apron outside the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. At top left the two rescue / fire suppression trucks create the water arch salute and attendant rainbow effect as astronaut Tryggvason taxies C-IIGY (not yet in sight at left of the photograph) towards the museum hangar. At lower left, the water arch is seen in the background, above and behind the upper port (left) wing. The Silver Dart replica had just completed its sixth and final test flight and had returned to the hangar area.
They are too many articles and video clips about the test flights to list separately here, but a random selection of on-line articles and video clips can be found, among others, at
• avweb.com – which bill itself as one of the world's largest web site with 260,000 subscribers (Thanks to Russ Niles, Editor-in-Chief, Armstrong, BC, Canada) lead article top left of page, Sat., Feb. 7 home page at – http://www.avweb.com the video clip can be found on the following Av Web page
http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/SilverDartReplicaFliesInCanada_199721-1.html
•www.youtube.com – search for Silver Dart replica
• Toronto Globe and Mail
• Toronto Star
• Toronto Sun
• Hamilton Spectator
• Welland Tribune
• St. Catharines Standard
A special thank you for Hamilton air traffic controllers and the Canadian Warplane Heritage
Two volunteers have asked us to make use of this web site for a special thank-you message. They are Jim Griffith, a member of the AEA board of directors, and a retired Air Canada B-747 pilot - who was in one of the two chase vehicles which accompanied C-IIGY on Runway 24 during for the test flights - and Gerald Haddon, the grandson of the original designer, builder and pilot of the Silver Dart, J.A.D. McCurdy, who was in the CTV television helicopter during those same test flights: they have asked to make use of this web site to extend their own personal and professional thanks to all the
• air traffic control, security and corporate communications personnel at the Hamilton Airport
and to all staff members and volunteers at
• the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum where C-IIGY has been housed for re-assembly and final preparations for her test flights.
New book about the Silver Dart replica: C- IIGY Flies!
• C-IIGY Flies! is the title of a new book now in the manuscript stages by Welland, ON author Ted Beaudoin, who has acquired the world rights to tell the story about this remarkable replica and the even more remarkable team of men, women, companies, government organizations and associations, sponsors and contributors who helped the AEA 2005 Inc. volunteers put it together over the last five years.
The book tells the space-age story of why … and how they did it … who helped them from Canada and the USA - and what is expected to happen to this replica.
One-third of all royalties from the sales of this book will be donated to assist the legacy of the AEA 2005 Inc. role in Canada’s centennial of flight celebrations after the Feb. 23rd commemorative celebration flight.
Dismantling and re-assembling C-IIGY now almost a breeze as its support team found out between Niagara Falls and Hamilton, ON
It’s been quite a learning curve to disassemble C-IIGY for transportation and re-assemble it for flight testing, a learning curve that will speed up things when C-IIGY gets to Baddeck, NS for its commemorative flight on Feb. 23rd this month. C-IIGY’s support team can now disassemble it and put it back together in about two-and-a-half days.
The Silver Dart replica has been in the Warplane Heritage Museum hangar at the John C. Munroe International Airport in Hamilton, ON, Canada, since late January and has been prepared for its flight tests, scheduled to take place during the first week of February, weather permitting.
While it was housed in the museum’s spacious hangar, C-IIGY drew the rapt attention of many admirers, the press and electronic media who got wind of its presence - in the company of many other prestigious and noted warplanes housed by the museum, whose thousands of members and hundreds of volunteers support it and maintain it as an international aviation heritage site.
C-IIGY, resplendent in all its glory inside the Warplane Heritage Museum at Hamilton, ON, is seen here nose-to-nose with a venerable workhorse of the air - the museum’s DC-3 - while it awaits its “horizontal rudder” assembly before engine tests.
(Photo AEA 2005 Inc. )
AEA 2005 Inc. receives two more donations – totalling $1,500
(1) - Air Force Association of Canada 434 (Niagara Peninsula) Wing membership chairman, Chuck Leguerrier, left, presents Doug Jermyn, President, AEA 2005 Inc. with a donation of $1,000 from the 408/437 Wing of the AFAC at the January 15, 2009 meeting held in the Fonthill Royal Canadian Legion.
(Photo Jaro Petruck for AEA 2005 Inc.)
Norm Sonnenberg, Port Colborne, ON, left, presents Doug Jermyn, President, AEA 2005 Inc. with a donation of $500 from from the John Deere Welland Works
Retirees`Association at the Jan. 15 meeting of Air Force Association of
Canada 434 (Niagara Peninsula) Wing held in the Fonthill Royal Canadian
Legion.
(Photo Jaro Petruck for AEA 2005 Inc.)
Mackie Moving Systems of Oshawa, ON, to move Silver Dart replica to Hamilton airport
It took nearly five years to dream it, plan it, find supplies, bits and pieces, find volunteers to build it and finally find funding to support it, but the Silver Dart Centennial Replica is now complete. What at first looked like, in the words of this web site editor, K.P. Wade, a rudimentary pile of sticks has wonderfully morphed into a magnificent flying machine, registered by Transport Canada as C-IIGY. The aircraft is almost ready to commemorate the first officially-recognized flight of a powered aircraft in Canada and in the then British Empire, back on Feb. 23rd, 1909. As a parallel to the Silver Dart build program, Mr Jack Minor of Port Colborne put together a comprehensive program of educational lectures on the Silver Dart and its creator, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell.
Now, 99 years, 11 months and 1 day later, on Jan. 24, 2009, it only took only a few hours to dismantle it … for its test flight. Below are some of the volunteers at the Russell Aviation Group hangar at Niagara Falls South airport moments before they began to prepare C-IIGY for its move during the last week of January, 2009, to the John C. Munroe Hamilton International Airport for its test taxi runs and its test flights in preparation for the centennial flight scheduled for Feb. 23rd, 2009, in Baddeck, NS. From left: AEA 2005 Inc. director Dave Gladman, astronaut / pilot Bjarni Tryggvason, Doug Jermyn, Ray Larson, Ron Zwarych, Jaro Petruck, Gerald Haddon, Randy Brinkman and Russ Pooler. Mackie Moving Systems, Oshawa, ON, has donated a covered low-bed box trailer to ferry C-IIGY over to Hamilton . The Silver Dart replica will be re-assembled in hangar space donated by the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, located at the airport. The flight test is scheduled for between Jan. 29 and Feb. 2, depending on weather.
(Photo by Jaro Petruck for AEA 2005 Inc.)
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (100 years later)
On Sat., Jan. 17th, the St. Catharines Standard ran a major front page story on the Silver Dart replica project, with two headlines – one for the print edition of the newspaper (above) - and another for the web site edition of the same daily newspaper (below)
Team of Niagara volunteers building Silver Dart replica that will take to the skies a century after original flight over Nova Scotia
The print edition headline - in giant boldface type across the full width of the page - was reminiscent of the type of headlines that might have appeared in print 100 years ago, complete with a full-page width photograph of the original Silver Dart flight of Feb. 23rd, 1909.
The print edition continued the story – written by staff reporter Grant LaFleche - on all of Page A9, running a total of five photographs – two on the front page and three on Page A9.
The story begins …
It doesn`t look like it should fly …
The entire article can be seen at the following web site:
http://stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=139273
In yet another newspaper … the Toronto Sun columnist Mike Strobel ran one of his humourous tongue-in-cheek columns, asking Can it fly?, with the following headline:
Really wild blue yonder
A former astronaut is going to try to get a replica
of the Silver Dart up in the air
… Readers are invited to read the entire story published
on the Toronto Sun web site, Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 …
An accompanying video taken at the same time (Wed., Jan. 21) ran on the newspaper’s web site and it can be found at
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/mike_strobel/2009/01/23/8120991-sun.html#/news/2009/01/22/pf-8116731.html
www.silverdartreplica.com web site getting good hits from search engines and compliments from happy readers in 15 countries and 118 cities – all thanks to Niagara College
The AEA 2005 Inc. group of associates and its volunteers are getting good returns from search engines and fine compliments from readers on its Silver Dart replica web site.
These kudos are in large measure thanks to Linda Roote, the Niagara College New Media Web Design course co-ordinator in Welland, and some of her second year students who, along with her, designed and built the web site.
While the students who designed the web site have now graduated, Linda has volunteered her services and helps refresh and update the web site on a regular basis whenever the group needs to do so.
In the first 24 days of January this year alone, 919 individual visitors viewed the web site 1,094 times, from 15 countries and 118 cities. This is not bad at all for a web site which has not been registered with any search engine, which has not been advertised and which is being successfully googled – often it seems, in many places.
Congratulatory comments have ranged from
• it`s quick to load,
• it`s clean, and colourful
• it`s simple, yet loaded with good photographs
• it reads well and
• it simply looks great!
All told, it makes all of the volunteers and associates in the AEA 2005 Inc. group beam with a wee sense of pride.
Linda has been with Niagara College since 1999, having worked as a multimedia / web developer for a number of years.
Niagara College launched its New Media Web Design post secondary program in 2006. “New media” students learn a wide variety of web design and development skills in a largely project-based environment. In Term Four students work with non-profit groups such as the Silver Dart group to create effective web solutions.
This year`s students are now preparing web pages for such groups as the Red Cross, Port Colborne High School, the new Niagara Peninsula choir, Coralis Camerata, and the Niagara Regional Exhibition, among others.