FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1909
1909 - 0308.PDF
MAY 29, 1909. sixty men from the balloon section at Aldershot lending just that suspicion of a martial air that imparted to the effect a sense of official orderliness. It was not necessary to start the balloons from the polo ground this year, the green beside sufficing for the purpose. The work of inflation was without incident, for there had been no overnight rain to drench the ground and make the balloons heavy, as on a like occasion last year. Those competitors whose envelopes were filled first deemed themselves lucky because they got the lighter gas, whereas some of the later balloons found that the margin of lifting power was over-narrow when carrying the complement of passengers and ballast. Some authorities hold that with such a supply as is available at Hurlingham, when you get your gas matters little, the last filled being no heavier than the first, and that the real fault is with the present internationally accepted system of handicapping. Be these things as may be, the fact remains that perhaps the second balloon to be filled, the " Ziegler," found that, owing to leakiness, the lifting margin was so narrow that Dr. F. Linke had three bags of ballast sealed and, presenting his last passenger to an official appointed by the Aero Club to check the number of persons carried, asked whether he might take the ballast in place of one of his passengers and still be eligible for the competition, provided his sealed ballast was attested to on alighting. He states that he received permission to do so, having made it quite plain that if it were refused him he would chance being overweighted and carry the passenger. Again, still in connection with this weight problem, lack of ballast caused M. H. Demoor to have trouble with the " Belgica" at West Ham at a time when she was making a dead true line for the day's objective, which had been fixed at a point approximately thirty miles east-north-east from Hurlingham in a rye-field between Tye Common and Billericay. The " Belgica," however, was piloted uncommonly adroitly, a paltry matter of three tiles off a roof being the only tale to tell, and eventually she came down at Galley Wood, and was placed fifth. A German balloon, Dr. Hutz's " Moenus," that had drawn the number thirteen, also came down about half- an-hour after starting, and in much the same neighbour- hood. She was making a good line over Bow, but travelling very low over the Cygnet Brewery and Cook's Soap Works. The spot chosen for alighting was a piece of waste ground adjoining the canal at Warton Road. The space available being too cramped, the envelope swayed up against the side of a house, some of the gas escaping from the pulling of the rip drifting through an open window. A man named Belcher calmed an alarmed mother and child who were the only occupants of the room, and afterwards helped to get the envelope off the roof, having the ill-luck to scratch his hand rather nastily. " Stratford is not the best part of England," observed one of the competitors. " The people there are rather common, and keep asking for money." So much for premature descents. Mr. Rolls was able to take about the widest margin of ballast of any of the competitors, being over-greedy in that matter, so that the " Mercury " looked like coming down again before she had risen a dozen feet clear of the ground. A hasty jettisoning of a bag of ballast from a height of less than nine feet on to the. polo ground caused momentary alarm among about half-a-dozen fashionably-dressed people seated within a few feet, while some of the sand blew on to their clothes, which immediately occasioned the issuing of strict instructions to all subsequent starters to make sure that their balloons would be weighted so as to lift freely. On another occasion it will be desirable to clear a temporary space in the seats if there shall chance to be any so near to the actual starting point as were some of those on Saturday. It is rightly held, as well by the Hurlingham Club as by the Aero Club, that it is not desirable to run the risk of scattering particles of sand on fashionably dressed folk. I followed Mr. Rolls immediately, being one of Mr. Griffith Brewer's passengers on the "Vivienne," of 75,000 cubic feet capacity. She is the biggest balloon of the afternoon, and the one which M. Santos Dumont had for the first Gordon-Bennett Balloon Race. At half- past two o'clock it had looked as though the struggle would be chiefly to keep away from the mouth of the Thames ; but half the balloons had not been sent off when it became clear that the difficulty would be to prevent drifting too much north-west of the ideal imaginary line, which would have meant crossing the Thames about Lambeth and passing over Wapping, Limehouse, Plaistow, East Ham, Barking, Rush Green, Wingle Tye, Little Warley and Ingrave, and so to the white cross laid down in the marshy rye-field, where, in striking contrast to the fashionably dressed throng at Hurlingham, there were assembled a crowd of unso- phisticated villagers, greatly curious, delighted at the prospect of balloons descending in their midst, and discussing with bated breath this point and that con- ' cerning chances, and what it must be like to be up in a balloon, what time sundry enthusiastic aeronauts— including Mr. J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon, in the act of running up a ^3 taxi-cab fare—some Germans and a batch of Territorials discussed the situation among them- selves with a trifle more technical understanding. The only possibilities of excitement in a short distance competition of this sort are in the direction of having ta make involuntary descents for lack of ballast, or, when- finding a balloon very close on the objective, in dropping quickly and bumping badly in consequence, in order to- drift away from the mark as short a distance as possible* Had the wind continued more easterly there might have been some fun in the matter of landing between the wrigglings of the winding Thames towards its mouth. Our log shows us to have been fortunate in keeping low over London in a twelve to thirteen mile an hour breeze that was blowing a point more to the north than we desired when ascending at ten minutes to four. Thanks to Mr. Brewer's insisting on the envelope being immediately over the basket in the course of its swayings during the trying of the lift of the balloon, we were able to carry easily two more bags of ballast than they were minded to have let us. Consequently, we were at no time troubled for spare sand throughout the journey, having three full bags when we alighted ; also the carrying of the two additional bags doubtless accounted in large measure for our being able to drift three-quarters of the way over London at a height of not more than 600 feet. We were a little north of our course, with King's Road below us, then Fulham Road, along which our shadow followed a motor 'bus steadily for quite a while. At this low altitude the view was nevertheless over a vast stretch of country, all which appeared flat as a billiard table. For example, the Crystal Palace seemed to lie as low as Ludgate Circus, while Hampstead Heath seemed on a level with the Mall. We are wont of speak of London as a straggling sort of city, nor does one realise how amazingly regular and neat any town is until you float over it in a balloon. We needed to be up another couple of thousand or three thousand feet, as I was on an equally 310
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
