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Aviation History
1909
1909 - 0098.PDF
FEBRUARY 20, 1909. FLYING GROUNDS AT FAMBRIDGE. FAMBRIDGE FLIGHT GROUNDS.—General view on the land side of the aero dock and aero colony at South Fambridge, showing the huge aero dock on the right. IT is encouraging, to say the least of it, to be able to place before our readers this week some early particulars of a scheme that has been put on foot by one of our own countrymen with the express object of fostering the pro- gress of flight in England, and in a manner that compares most favourably with anything that has hitherto been developed in France. Across the Channel, as everyone knows, flight is already taken as a serious subject and a matter of national import by men of all ranks and classes, patriotic Frenchmen having come forward in their hundreds to do the little or the much of which they are capable in the furtherance of what they rightly deem to be a really great cause. As yet, on the contrary, it has been very difficult to get the same view of the situation accepted at all generally in England ; and hence it is all the more satisfactory that a first start is now about to be made. That, at least, is what Mr. N. Pemberton Billing has set himself out to do, he having already prepared the way for it by purchasing an almost ready-made flying- ground down in Essex that can be placed at the service of aviators by him. Mr. Billing is a sportsman, and is well known as such, especially in the yachting world. And he is a sportsman of the very type that is needed at the moment, since he has a thorough-going belief in the principle that the man of leisure should, if possible, make his pastime of value to his native land. Like a good many other people, he is very keen on learning to fly; and, like the rest of us, he is also anxious to see Great Britain in the van of aerial progress. In his opinion, the two ideas are comple- mentary aims which can and should be attained simul- taneously ; and it is in order to materialise these aspirations that he has taken the preliminary move of securing the vast tract of land to which we have referred. There it is his ambition to bring together other would-be aviators who, like himself, are primarily anxious to learn to fly, but are equally keen on the sub- sidiary object of placing the experience they thus acquire at the disposal of the country in any time of need. It would be premature to discuss the details of Mr. Billing's full scheme at this initial stage, but sufficient has been said to show that he is not merely launching forth this enterprise with his own money, but that his action is being swayed by motives which are, to say the very least of them, quite the reverse of selfish. FAMBRIDGE FLIGHT GROUNDS.—Nearer view of the big aero dock, carpznters' shop, drawing office. &c IOO
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