It could be argued that the hot-air balloons of the 1800s gave man his first non-gravitational gift of height. But his yearning to take control of the sky and eventually fly would have to wait until the 20th century.

Two brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, helped attain that goal on Dec. 17, 1903, when the pair launched a rickety contraption in Kitty Hawk, N.C. The brothers had built gliders before, but the Wright Flyer was the first plane that could be controlled while in the air. It stayed aloft for 12 seconds and flew 120 feet.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Wrights' historic flight—a flight that was the hallmark of a new means of transportation that would become an industry of its own, changing how governments operated, how wars were fought and ultimately how the world saw itself.

The appreciation of this centennial anniversary can also be found close to home, where several Willow Glen residents keep the dream of flight aloft as pilots and flight instructors.

One couple follows the Wrights' inventive examples and flies contraptions that are pushed off piers. Some are content to stay on the ground, where they have exchanged the kites and strings of childhood for powered models tethered by radio frequencies. And another takes to the sky.

Darrall Dalberg was one of those wide-eyed children. His appreciation for flight began with admiration for his uncle, who flew fighter planes in World War II. The 45-year-old remembers as a child watching the giant planes depart and land at Moffett Field from his home in Santa Clara. But his respect for aviation came when he served in the Civil Air Patrol, a youth auxiliary to the United States Air Force.

"I've always been an aviation junkie," says Dalberg, who's been flying since 1980 and now is a flight instructor

The floor of this aviation junkie's sport utility vehicle is littered with flight manuals and flying magazines. The ring tone on his cell phone is Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyries."

His affinity for flying has fueled his goal to demystify the concept of flight, to be sensitive to people's fears and to make flight more accessible.

"As a pilot I'm responsible for being an ambassador of the air," Dalberg says, "and I try to teach that to all my students."

His students tend to be retirees in their 40s and 50s, he says.

"There are lots of people who've always wanted to fly but never had the time or money until their retirement years," says Dalberg, who prefers teaching older students.

"I see a lot of young guys who only want to get behind the stick and start flying," he says, "but flying mostly involves a lot of time hitting the books, and too often they just don't want to study."

For those who do study, put in their required amount of flight hours and earn their wings, the pride can be compared to learning to drive or sail, Dalberg says.

"It's an interesting dynamic," he says. "The vigilance it takes to fly creates an incredible sense of accomplishment."

As pricey and time-consuming as learning to fly is, Dalberg tries to discourage the idea that flying is " a playground for the rich."

He knows several pilots who believe that with the knowledge of flying comes the responsibility to help other people. For example, he is friends with many pilots who are area members of Angel Flight, a network of pilots who fly medical patients to hospitals or deliver needed supplies and equipment to remote areas.

"Being a pilot can serve a purpose to the community," Dalberg says

Curt Frambes, a Willow Glen resident of 12 years, is one of Dalberg's more mature students. The 50-year old says he's wanted to learn to fly since childhood, when "astronaut" was becoming a household term and planes were still mass-produced with propellers.

For Frambes, the dream to fly was planted during a childhood visit to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

"I remember watching the recruits and thinking that they were training to fly the best technology the United States was making," he says, "and I knew that I wanted to be a part of that."

He would have learned to fly a long time ago, "but life got in the way."

Frambes has spent the better part of his professional career as a salesman, but in 1999 he finally began taking flying lessons.

"I didn't want to wait too long before I got too old," Frambes says.

He knew other friends who died without ever achieving their goals and didn't want the same to happen to him.

"One thing about learning to fly," he says, "you develop a greater appreciation for being a student, especially since I've spent so many years out of college."

During the last few years Frambes has logged about 45 flight hours and spent about $4,000. Yet despite the price and the risk, his wife, Lorraine, gave him her blessing.

"I was very supportive," she says. "I hope he can fly us to Mexico on vacation someday."

That may be some time, since Frambes still needs to earn his pilot's license. But it isn't required to fully appreciate the sensation of flight.

"It feels great, like riding a bike for the first time," he says. "When you're in control of a plane and flying so high, it really broadens your sense of the world."

Holly Albert didn't need to fly high or far to develop her affinity for flight, but she and her husband, Adam, do have a better appreciation for the Wright Brothers' ingenuity and perseverance.

The Willow Glen couple of six years will try for the third time to design and fly a human-powered apparatus at this year's Flugtag.

Flugtag (pronounced flu-tahg) is German for "flight day" and is an annual fall event sponsored by the Red Bull energy drink company. The tradition began in Europe and made its way to San Francisco in 2001. Teams build sometimes ingenious but usually absurd vehicles that are pushed off a pier. The Alberts won the 2001 award for best design, but none of the teams won for flight because the September 11 terrorist attacks prohibited any amateur flying as a precaution for national security.

The Alberts tried again in 2002 with a craft they called the Treasure Island Express. It was a harpoon-shaped fuselage with a 12-foot-tall circular airfoil wing, which encircled a large peddle-powered propeller.

For the Alberts, entering the Flugtag wasn't about novelty, but about the challenge of designing and flying something from scratch.

"Anybody can build something ridiculous and crash it into the water," Adam says. Other Flugtag entries have looked like giant martini glasses, chuckwagons and flying saucers.

"But for us there's something special about making the effort to design something that actually flies," Adam says.

The Treasure Island Express only flew about 27 feet off a pier before landing in the San Francisco Bay. But it was far enough for Holly, the craft's pilot, to understand what Orville and Wilbur were thinking when they tried getting their planes off the ground.

"Oh my gosh! What am I doing?" she remembers telling herself when she was in the pilot's seat on the pier of no return. But once off the pier and in the air, "there was this incredible sense of joy."

She had tried to conquer her fear of heights by paragliding, but she admits that piloting the Treasure Island Express was much scarier. The 2003 Flugtag, she says, will be different.

"I'll probably enjoy it more this time because I won't be as scared," she says.

This year's entry is another of Adam's new designs. The craft will again have a long fuselage but will have a 16-foot-diameter circular wing.

Adam says he knew very little about aeronautics and flight dynamics, but since their first Flugtag, his studies have sharpened his knowledge of flight designs.

"If it were possible, I'd say the perfect plane would be peddle-powered, go about 15 mph and go about as high as the treetops, like a flying bicycle," Adam says. "The problem is that the math doesn't work out because you'd need too large of a wing."

The Wrights knew that all too well, since they ran a booming bicycle-repair shop before switching navigational gears.

But not everyone who loves aviation feels the need to propel themselves off the ground.

Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer Wing Man: Bud Kanemoto closed his boat-repair business in 1989, and he took up model-airplane building in 1996. Since retiring he has built six model planes, which he flies at his flying club, the Tomcats.

The 40-year Willow Glen resident says that after he closed his boat-repair business in 1989, he took up radio-controlled cars but soon gave it up, as the hobby seemed to attract too many racers who wanted to race and compete.

"The competition got too stiff, and I just wanted to enjoy myself," Kanemoto says. "Model planes always intrigued me, so I took this up instead."

The transition from learning radio-controlled cars to controlling planes wasn't too difficult, he says. But the hobby has become very pricey since he began flying in 1996. He says he has six model planes that he flies in rotation with each visit he makes to his flying club, the Tomcats, which meets at the Santa Clara County Model Airplane Skyport in Morgan Hill.

At several hundred dollars per plane, plus the time to build, maintain and learn to fly them, the hobby would seem self-defeating, because most model planes can fly for only 20 minutes before they run low on fuel.

But just as the Wrights spent years making contraptions that would fly only a short distance, Kanemoto understands that those 20 minutes are worth all the hard work and frustration.

"It's just the neatest feeling," Kanemoto says. "To make great landings and takeoffs is very satisfying."

That sense of satisfaction may not have been fully realized by the Wright brothers during their lifetime, with an ever-skeptical public, legal problems, patent concerns and illness factoring into their lives. But the U.S. government made sure that no one would forget their contribution. In 1937, Congress passed a resolution designating May 28 as National Aviation Day to celebrate the United States' leadership in aeronautics development. That date was later changed to Aug. 19, Orville's birthday.