Wally was an SSPU (Soaring Society of Princeton University and now the Soaring Tigers) FAA Certificated Flight Instructor at the Forrestal Campus runway.
In between instructing, Wally also had time to co-discover the
Area Rule
and the
Hayes Similitude Principle.
He also flew a highly-modified
North American Aviation
Navion
with perhaps one of the first
fly-by-wire
systems ever. The Navion had a joystick in the right seat and a 16-bit Hewlett-Packard computer
and associated hydraulic pump, valves and telemetry transmitter in the back seat, all to give the
joystick a purpose. Pitch, roll and yaw sensors all over decorated the aircraft and, best for last, the
Navion sported two very unique side force panels mounted mid-wing so it was, and is, the only
plane able to turn without banking!
When operating his Flying Laboratory
he would run a cable out his lab's window at the Princeton Flight Research Center and hook-
it up to the RS-232 serial port
(there was no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth back then!) on the Navion's right wing tip to load the flight characteristics
program-du-jour into the computer. Then he would take off and soon enough the program's differential
equations would come to life and do their thing to simulate the desired flight characteristics. You could
see the telemetry results printing-out in his lab in real-time by multiple waving needles on the telemetry
receivers' rolling paper drum. Rumour had it he was under contract from NASA to simulate the Space
Shuttle's flight characteristics on the Navion.
Wally was widely recognized as a world leader in
hypersonic
aerodynamics and an all-around highly-accomplished aeronautical engineer.
Born in Beijing to American missionaries, Wally attended the California Institute of Technology, where
he received bachelor's and doctoral degrees in physics. His thesis adviser at Caltech was Theodore
von Kármán, father of the U.S. missile program. He arrived at Princeton in 1954 and taught until 1989.
He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Wally also was an active member of the Sierra Club since 1942 and an avid outdoor sports enthusiast
that enjoyed rock-climbing, hiking, water sports, skiing and of course soaring. After fighting Parkinson's
for years, he left many friends behind when he took his final glide into eternity in 2001 at 82 years
of age. Farewell, Prof. Wallace D. Hayes!
More information about Wally can be found on
Wikipedia.