On Saturday afternoon, July 18, Sinclair personnel plan to meet with Collins at a National Aviation Hall of Fame reception in Dayton and reunite her with the one-ounce airplane model that she flew into orbit.
“It’s a real honor,” said Dave Meyer, an engineer, pilot and Sinclair professor of manufacturing/operations technology who supervised the students involved in making the Wright Flyer miniatures.
“It’ll be a tremendous source of pride,” said Amanda Wright Lane, great-grandniece of the Wright brothers, who plans to attend the meeting.
The gathering is to take place just hours before the National Aviation Hall of Fame adds Collins and three other prominent aviation figures to the 199 it has previously admitted to its ranks.
The Wright Flyer miniatures were initially produced as a class project for the 2003 celebration of the centennial of powered flight, marking the 100th anniversary of Wilbur and Orville Wright’s 1903 maiden flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.
Sinclair personnel then contacted NASA about flying one of their models aboard the space shuttle. NASA agreed, but insisted upon a lighter model than the one-pound version Sinclair had, Meyer said Thursday. The Sinclair participants used thinly rolled sheet brass to produce a one-ounce model with a four-inch wingspan, small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand.
Sinclair officials were originally told that the model would go aboard a shuttle flight in 2003. But the Feb. 1, 2003, disaster in which shuttle Columbia disintegrated while re-entering the atmosphere caused a long delay before the flights were resumed.
The miniature plane flown aboard the shuttle in 2005 was returned to Sinclair and has remained in the college’s safekeeping since then.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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