Epistem Rare Creativity Contest / Week 1 / STEM - Aeroplane by drLobes

The day when the first Romanian airplane took to the air was at the beginning of the last century, more exactly it was the summer of 1910, the humanity still has no idea what's coming for them, on one hand the world wars, but on the other hand all the advancements that will happen in the following years.

Image source is wikimedia.org

The pilot was Aurel Vlaicu who in the end saw his dream come true before his death in 1913. It all happened in Bucharest, the first two attempts were not successful on the 16th of June because there were some malfunctions with the controls for the wings. The plane just kept rolling on the field without showing any intention of letting go. Vlaicu took the airplane back to its hangar, tried to fix the issues, and was already restless thinking about the next day.

And the morning came, with the help of his friends they took the airplane out of its "cage" and started its engine. They could not understand each other speaking, their voices were covered by the noise made by the engine. The engine was a Gnôme rotary engines type Omega, with 7 cylinders, star arrangement, maximum power 50 horse power at 1200 revolutions per minute.

The plane was gaining speed and after only 40 meters there was liftoff, 3-4 meters into the air for a distance of 50 meters. Nowadays, this might not sound much, but at that time keeping the plane steady in the air even at this low altitude was a dream come true for Vlaicu, and it showed that flying can be done, no matter in what part of the world you are. This date is not to be confused with June 1909, one year earlier when Vlaicu already flew, but that was using a glider and not an airplane.

In an interview afterwards, Vlaicu said that "even if I didn't fly higher than four meters, at that exact moment even the Alps mountains felt like they were smaller than the height at which I was flying. And I was flying, this was the most important part". Two months later Vlaicu flew his airplane at the altitude of 100 meters, now nobody can argue about the sure possibility of him flying.

Image source is wikimedia.org

In December 1910, learning from all the mistakes he did with the first one, he already started building his second airplane. In the following two years he was already flying in different countries in Europe and even competing with many other well-known aviators. However, when your dreams of flying are put before even your own life, it can become dangerous, especially in a field like this. I understand that at that time the landings were done with the engine off, it seems that this was the cause of his death, he misjudged the landing procedure, the engine was off, so he really could not abort, and the plane stalled. One man's dream became an entire country's dream, and he became a national hero even to this day.

Photo taken after the first successful attempt to fly with the airplane Vlaicu model 1.
Photo courtesy of Aurelian Simionescu, source link here!

This is a modern replica of the Vlaicu 2, the second airplane with which he had the most fun and most flying hours.

Image source is wikimedia.org

I want to thank @epistem for giving us the chance to participate in such a contest, this is my first time trying to write a more serious article here on BLURT.