Orville and Wilbur Wright first became interested in flight as boys when their father gave them a rubber-band-powered helicopter toy. And on a brisk winter’s day in 1903, the brothers became the first to pilot a heavier-than-air machine for a prolonged length of time. The pair crashed most of the planes they built, but they never gave up.
More than a century later, a small group of high-schoolers stand on a stage at the National 4-H Youth Conference Center just outside Washington DC. Kettering Fairmont High School’s FlyerBirds team --made up of Troy Belshe, Phillip Gindelberger, Brian Hack and Abigail Riffle-- has just won the “Best All-Rookie Team” Merit Award at the National Real World Design Challenge.