Pratique du Shadowing: How can you legally fly a plane designed in 1910? - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo
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In 1910, a few years after their first flight, the Wright brothers started to sell aircraft.
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The Model B wasn't some experimental prototype or a custom build.
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These were made to order.
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About a hundred of them.
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For civilians and the US military.
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Only two of those aircraft survive.
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One of them is on display near here at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.
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And the other one...
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The other one is also a display of the museum because this is not the original.
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This is a look-alike.
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Designed to look as close as possible to the original, albeit safe to fly with passengers in the 21st century.
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So we're going to head up to about 1,000 feet.
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And obviously I have some questions, but given it's a little bit windy up here, I thought it might be best to ask those down on the ground.
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We went with a look-alike because there are actual replicas.
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People have built very close to scale replicas of a 1911, 1910 Wright Flyer, but they found the same problems the Wrights did.
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The airplane isn't exactly what you call reliable.
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Very often it crashed, and frankly we don't want to have to fix our airplane after every flight.
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We don't like the crash word, so we built out of modern materials with modern building techniques so that we could fly on a frequent basis.
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we'd like to be able to land the airplane and put somebody else on it and continue flying.
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This is amazing!
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I can see why you're wearing the mask.
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My cheek is just right racing.
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The airplane is very, very close to what a 1911 Wright B Flyer would have looked like.
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Once you get 100, 200 feet away from it, if we overfly people, a 1911 Wright Flyer is what you see.
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We're trying to recreate what people in 1911 Dayton, Ohio would have seen if Orville or Wilbur had flown over top of them.
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And when you're inside the airplane, this is not an open cockpit airplane.
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This is a no cockpit airplane.
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You are literally sitting in front of the wing
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and experiencing flight the way that people did at the early turn of the century.
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So this does use steel and aluminium, sorry, aluminum, but the parts inside the wing are still wooden, just like they were in the original.
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And these wings are covered in fabric like the original, although these days it's from material science fabric.
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There are a few other changes too, like how you steer.
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The Wrights knew that in order to roll the airplane, they had to change the lift of each wing.
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They literally just twisted the wings.
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The wood would bend inside the airplane had the small tray that they sat on.
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And when they shifted their body, there was wires that were hooked to the ends of the wing.
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And that would twist each wing in opposite directions to be able to give them that lift differential.
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The replicas that have flown have done that.
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It's incredibly difficult to be able to control.
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So to be able to get something where you can safely and repeatedly do that is very, very, very challenging.
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And that's why we went with the ailerons.
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And here's the thing.
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That original Model B that's hanging in the Air Force Museum, it was modified the exact same way.
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The folks who bought it realized that ailerons are far, far better than wing warping, so they've retrofitted it.
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The Wrights actually started out as bicycle engineers, if you will.
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They were bicycle mechanics, so they were very familiar with chains, and when they realized they could only have one engine
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but they needed two propellers to generate the thrust that they needed to overcome the weight, They very quickly realized a single chain going to each propeller.
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One of them is inverted so that you have counter-rotating propellers was the way to do it.
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So we've done the same thing on our airplane.
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We have one engine and we have two propellers that are driven by, frankly, a very, very, very strong and very industrial chain.
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Yes, it looks like a bicycle chain, but when you get up close to it, we've got a pretty, pretty solid chain on this airplane for very good reasons good reasons.
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We have a Lycoming IO390, probably the largest four-cylinder general aviation engine that we could get to put on the airplane.
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So rated at 210 horsepower.
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The Wrights had anywhere from 32 to around 40 horsepower, but sometimes you got a little less, sometimes you got a little more because they were all hand-built.
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So here's the big question I had.
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How do you convince the U.S.
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Federal Aviation Administration to sign off on a brand new plane with what is basically a brand new design.
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The answer is start small, work up, and eventually get enough flight hours that they're sure it's safe.
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It actually flies much like any other conventional general aviation airplane, except for the fact that you're not sitting inside of the airplane when you fly.
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You and I are both part of the drag equation of this airplane.
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You are impacting the drag of the airplane when you stick your hand out and wave.
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She's got a personality to her, and that's why we're required to go through the flight test process, because the FAA knows the airplane is going to have a personality.
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The FAA has a very rigorous process when you're building even an experimental airplane.
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We loaded the wings down with salt bags to simulate the load of 3.5 Gs.
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So the airplane we know can pull 3.5 Gs.
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You're never going to see 3.5 Gs in this airplane.
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We've been up to maybe 1.2 G's in a 30 degree bank turn.
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And that's about as steep as we're gonna go because we don't need to do anything more than that.
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So maybe we over-engineered the airplane, but to me, when I'm flying it, that's the kind of stuff I'm really interested in having underneath me.
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I'd like to think that somewhere down there, as we come into left, there's a kid just looking out the window and going...
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We get a lot of head turning.
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We get a lot of waves as we go by.
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We're trying to preserve early aviation history.
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I've been airborne and I've looked down and there's another airplane flying underneath of me.
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And that's just a view that you don't get from many other airplanes.
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There was one more story that I had to put in this video though, and it is the greatest name drop that I've ever heard in my life.
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Our original airplane, we call the Brown Bird.
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It first flew in 1982.
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It has flown over 5,100 passengers over the years.
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Really fun to fly, but we're going with something now that's a little bit more advanced
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and a little bit easier to move around.
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Oh, that was smooth.
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That was one of my better ones.
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I figured if I might can't run, I better not screw this up.
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A lot of people that have come out over the years have said, hey, I'm a pilot, I've got years of experience, I would really like to fly your airplane.
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And we don't let other people fly the airplane.
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And it's very difficult to fly the airplane.
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We did make an exception once, about 15 years ago.
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We took a look at his credentials, and we thought, okay, you know what, we're going to give this gentleman a chance.
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It was impressive how well he could control the airplane.
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His name happened to be Neil Armstrong.
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So we've told other people, if you've walked on the moon, we'll probably let you come fly our airplane.
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But until then, you know, we're just going to kind of take you for a ride when we take you flying.
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Thank you.
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Thank you so, so much.
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That was incredible.
Why Practice Speaking with This Video?
If you’re using a shadowing site or trying the shadowing technique, this video is gold. It blends technical details with casual storytelling, making it perfect for practicing both formal and conversational English. You’ll hear real-world phrases like “frankly, we don’t want to fix our airplane after every flight” and “she’s got a personality to her”—the kind of natural speech you won’t learn from a textbook. Shadowing this dialogue helps you mimic rhythm, pauses, and emphasis, so you sound more like a native. Plus, topics like aviation history keep it engaging, making shadow speech practice feel less like work and more like exploring a passion.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
- Conditional structures: “If we overfly people, a 1911 Wright Flyer is what you see.” This mixes present and future in a real condition, great for practicing cause and effect.
- Passive voice for process: “The airplane is required to go through the flight test process.” Passive voice is common in technical contexts—learn to use it smoothly.
- Colloquial emphasis: “very, very, very challenging” (repetition for effect) and “frankly, we’ve got a solid chain” (frankly to soften a statement). These add personality to your speech.
- Relative clauses: “The FAA has a rigorous process when you’re building even an experimental airplane that…” Clauses like this help you connect ideas clearly.
Common Pronunciation Traps
Watch out for words like “ailerons” (ay-luh-ronz, not ay-ler-ons) and “Lycoming” (LYE-kom-ing, stress on the first syllable). The speaker uses a casual tone, so contractions like “we’re” and “don’t” are quick—practice blending them. Also, phrases like “3½ Gs” (three and a half Gs) and “IO390” (eye-oh-three-ninety) test your ability to pronounce technical terms. Use the shadowing technique to mimic the speaker’s pace—they slow down for key details, so follow that rhythm. With this video, you’ll master both clarity and natural flow, making shadow speech a breeze.
Learning English with videos like this isn’t just about words—it’s about stepping into a story. So grab your shadowing tool, hit play, and start speaking like someone who’s passionate about aviation history. You’ll improve faster, and you might just fall in love with early flight along the way!
Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?
Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.