Botelho is taking a heavyweight partner: the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex), which will participate in the event promoting the Brazilian companies that make aircraft parts and also, of course, airline Embraer.

That is, apart from commemorating the centenarian of one of the most important feats of Brazilian history, Brazil is going to make use of the opportunity to promote national companies.

"Today, in the aeronautical sector, we already work with a group of 15 companies that started basically serving Embraer. They now also export to the American, Canadian and European markets," stated Juan Quirós, president of the Apex, yesterday, March 14, during the release of the Demoiselle Centenary Project.

In general, these companies, all small and medium, were established by former Embraer employees. "The group recently closed a sale of 36 million euros to the European Airbus consortium," he said.

Although Embraer is already among the most important producers in the world, exports of aeronautic parts and services are still recent for Brazil. In the last five years, according to the Apex, sector foreign sales have already grown 700%.

During the event in Le Bourget, in July, the idea is to show this know-how that Brazil has to further boost these sales. The Apex makes use of the opportunity to strengthen the Brazil brand abroad.

This is so true that the Agency does not intend only to promote aeronautical technology, but also other products like meat, cane spirit and even Brazilian music.

"We always make use of these events to promote various products with greater added value," explained Quirós.

Apart from companies, the most important research center in the area will also be promoted during the seven days of the fair in France, among them the Aeronautics Technology Center (ITA) and the General Command for Aerospace Technology (CTA). The event in Paris usually attracts about half a million people.

"We are going to show that Embraer has not grown by chance. We have aviation in our blood," stated Fernando de Arruda Botelho, creator of the Demoiselle Centenary Project and great enthusiast of the feats of Santos Dumont.

Flying Brazilians

The Demoiselle Centenary Project forecasts a year full of celebrations. Apart from participating in the event in France, various commemorative flights will take place in Brazil each month up to November, the month in which the feat by Santos Dumont, which took place in Paris in 1907, celebrates its 100th anniversary.

In the sidelines of the flights – which, incidentally, will be made by Fernando himself – the IAB is going to promote, throughout the year, a series of events to promote Santos Dumont's flight and provide incentives for Brazilians to follow the example of this small aviator (the inventor-aviator was just 1.52 meters (4.98 feet) tall).

Project "You can fly" intends to take replicas of the Demoiselle and teaching material to children in distant parts of Brazil.

Apart from that, ten social entrepreneurs who stand out for their projects were selected and will have their stories told on television during the breaks of program Domingo Espetacular, on television channel TV Record. According to Botelho, the idea is to show who are the true national heroes who make the country take off, as did Dumont.

Alberto Santos Dumont, born in 1873, is considered the father of aviation for having flown his famous invention, the 14 Bis, in 1906, at a demonstration in Paris.

There is a historic controversy regarding the fact that the Wright Brothers flew three years before. Anyway, it is impossible to talk about the history of aviation without mentioning the Brazilian.

His creations, which were only possible thanks to his family of coffee farmers, served as the basis for modern aviation. Santos Dumont ended his own life in 1932, in the city of Guarujá, at the age of 59.

Learn more at www.institutoarrudabotelho.org.br

Anba – www.anba.com.br

At the occasion, a replica of Santos Dumont’s Demoiselle – the second aircraft built by the Brazilian, not as famous as the 14 Bis, his first – will fly beside a replica of the Flyer, the aircraft developed by Orville and Wilbur Wright.

The novel event was only made possible due to the Wright Brothers Foundation, presided by Amanda Wright, great grandniece of the brothers, and of Arruda Botelho Institute (IAB) – which is responsible for the replica of the Demoiselle.

"In the United States, Santos Dumont is not very well known. He does not appear in their history books, in their museum. We are not going to fight about who was the number one, we just want to show the Americans the grandness of the Brazilian," explained Fernando Arruda Botelho, a businessman, president of the IAB and a great Santos Dumont enthusiast.

As the Americans are very good in marketing, the Wright brothers figure as the pioneers in flight in the United States, as is the case with other countries that speak the English language. Nobody saw the flight of the Flyer, in 1903, and the flight in 1905 was not ratified.

The famous experience by Santos Dumont, in turn, in his 14 Bis, in 1906, in Paris, was ratified and registered. Still, in American schools, students learn that the Wright brothers were the first to fly. There, many children have never even heard the name Santos Dumont.

The objective of Fernando Arruda Botelho is to try to follow the same track – although one hundred years late. To make the name of the Brazilian aviator heard abroad, the IAB has built three replicas of the Demoiselle.

Two already have specific destinations. One will be used at the event on September 30. The other will be exhibited at the Smithsonian National Air Space Museum – during an aviation event to take place in Washington, the US capital, between October 16 and 23.

According to professor Fernando Catalano, an aeronautical engineer at the University of São Paulo (USP) who assisted Botelho in the reconstruction of the Demoiselle, there is an intention of making use of the replicas to promote Santos Dumont’s projects in Brazilian schools.

"Another idea is to take the replica on a lorry and stop in various cities to make demonstrations," he said. "If the Americans don’t know about Santos Dumont, it is because we did not know how to promote him," he explains.

Gadget

To recreate the Demoiselle (which means both "lady" and "dragonfly"), Botelho and his team took little over a year to make the gadget fly. It all began in 2004. The aircraft was built using the same measurements as the original, based on material published in magazine Mecânica Popular, in 1910.

"We made some material adaptations, also due to the different weight of the pilot. Dumont was short and light, and his aircraft was made specifically for him," recalled Catalano.

The first attempt was almost successful. In October 2005, one year later, a second attempt got the Demoiselle off the ground. This time, Botelho improved the replica. Each one of the problems of the first was studied carefully and the parts were made by students at the National Service of Industrial Education (Senai), who spent four days drawing the aircraft.

Botelho, who is going to fly the replica on the 30th, at the event in Ohio, decided to remake the Demoiselle and not the 14 Bis because another Brazilian, pilot Alan Calassa, from Caldas Novas (in the midwestern Brazilian state of Goiás), had already made a replica of the more famous model.

"It made no sense to repeat something that has already been done, but it did make sense to join forces to help rescue this name that had been forgotten in history," says the idealizer of the project.

The president at the IAB is programming other flights with his replica. Next year, to commemorate the centenarian flight of the Demoiselle, he is going to cross the English Channel, the 36 kilometers that separate England from France.

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