Seattle has the Space Needle, St. Louis has the Arch, and a group of aviation enthusiasts say Dayton needs a giant replica of the Wright Flyer soaring atop a 250-foot-tall pedestal at the I-70/75 interchange.
Aviation enthusiasts say the Wright Flyer monument will be 25-stories-tall. That's three times bigger than the original Orville and Wilbur Wright flew 109 years ago.
Curt Nelson with the Wright Image Group says engineers and students at Ohio State are experimenting with the design plans using computational fluid dynamics.
“There have been tornadoes in the past and there are frequently ice storms and a variety of bad weather. We need to be sure that our iconic model is not going to take off and fly away on us in those kinds of wind storms,” he says.
Nelson says the group has raised about a million dollars toward the 12 million dollar price tag.
Nelson says the monument symbolizes that Ohio is the birthplace of aviation.
“And it also symbolizes everything that Ohio has available to the aerospace industry today. An industry that was also born as a result of that aviation heritage and we have 100,000 jobs here in the state of Ohio that support aviation and aerospace,” says Nelson.
