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Aviation History
1909
1909 - 0580.PDF
SEPTEMBER 25, 1909. PRACTICAL WAYS IT is a happy chance that brings it about that practically all the news we have to chronicle this week gives to the world for the first time valuable and first hand information as to the ways and means of making a practical start in riding the air on machines heavier than that element. Not the least important feature of this news, too, is the revelation it contains of the fact that to ride the wind is not a costly thing. This number of FLIGHT deals with the practical aspects of gliding, and the record will be very complete by reason of the latest achievements in Britain to-day being supplemented, commencing with next week, by a reprint of Messrs, Wilbur and Orville Wright's account of their gliding experiments which were first given to the world in this country through the instrumentality of the parent of this organ, The Automotor Journal. Such a number cannot fail to be as well of permanent as of practical interest for all who take a real interest in flight, for from a perusal of the following pages even those who can afford full-scale motor driven machines will be able to appreciate the very great and practical value of gliding as a preliminary to getting a notion of riding the wind with a power-driven machine. There are many reasons why this is the wiser method. The glider is lighter, gentler, less speedy, and we must remember that at this stage the risks that such brave pioneers as Lilienthal and Pilcher ran are not likely to be met with by the beginner, for the simple reason that the fruits of the labours of all the pioneers are available so that they have been embodied in the designs of the machines which we use, these instruments being controllable in ways and means that are common knowledge to all latter-day students of flying. The Ogilvie-Searight method of procedure, of which our account is concluded, should be pondered in more ways than merely to glance at the manner in which designs of known practical efficiency have been reproduced in little, for there is more in flying at the moment than mere engineering. Until we are many stages further advanced, the man aboard the machine must always be fifty per cent. of the efficiency of that machine. And we may draw many interesting deductions from what is recorded in the follow- ing pages. In the first place, these young British pioneers, who are following the business for sport at the moment, testify to the feeling of being absolutely lost that comes over one when first launched in the air in free flight. It is a feeling so overmastering that even men possessing the natural quickness, pluck and practical turn of mind that characterises your typical British sportsman, find themselves forgetting to do this or that or the other thing, and even when they attempt to do it they are apt to catch hold of the wrong part altogether. Or after a flight they forget entirely what they did with their rudder in a given circumstance, and so forth. You can see such men at starting hold the elevating control lever in the left hand, reaching down forwards to release the catch for the dropping weight, and immediately the machine leaps forward, either they will forget about the rudder and wing-warping lever for the right hand, which they will instinctively rest calmly on the knee of the right leg, or, remembering that they should be grasping such a lever, by mistake they will seize hold of one of the struts of their glider and wrench merrily at that throughout the aerial journey. And surely it is not the least encouraging sign of the comparative safety of this sport that it enables one to make this sort of mistake, while still learning to fly, without coming to grief. Another aspect in part bound up with this, is the fact that one is so over- whelmed with surprise at finding oneself actually doing as the birds do that at first one does not have any desire to do anything definite, but is over apt to act the spectator, for there is mingled withone's first sensations a feeling that the * machine has taken command of one, and knows 'a great deal more what ought to be done than the man aboard it. Of course, such an impression is wrong, but it is human ; and, surely, if one is learning that way, it is safer than with a full-size machine capable of carrying the weight of the motor and the additional complications of power applied to it. By beginning with the man-carrying glider, the machine can be an extremely small edition of any power-driven one, and is consequently lighter and cheaper; therefore one may find out an amazing amount from so sensitive an aerial vehicle concerning the ways of the wind, and how safely to employ them. The glider is to the power-driven aeroplane what the bone-shaker was, in the very early days, to the bicycle. All the sensations of the more perfect vessel are slightly exaggerated. It may be asked : Why exaggerated ? The answer is, because the craft is relatively so small, and glides nearer the ground than the power-driven one, so that it is subject to every local current, some of them, as when it passes over any " obstruction," like a bank, being of that directly vertical sort that time and again have provided such trying experiences for many men on power-driven aeroplanes when first they have met with such conditions. With a glider, may be learnt how to negotiate these drifts under relatively safer conditions, because at slower speeds and nearer the ground. Another very practical form of commencing is that of Mr. Parkes, whose experiments we have also been following with interest, and are now in a position to relate. Briefly, he began by building a biplane on an ordinary pedal bicycle, by taking the chain off the back wheel and coupling it up to a propeller with such success that at 9 miles an hour he sometimes left the ground for a yard or two. Then he went into the question of propellers by putting his air-cooled engine into a boat, which he had driven along with three passengers on board by air- I propulsion in place of water. Then he took this little engine and put it into a second biplane, and had what he modestly calls 40 feet jumps, which shows the simple, inexpensive and fascinating way in which you can develop into a flyer, for Mr. Parkes' experiments have not stopped short, but are being carried to a larger and still • more practical stage. These two accounts of learning \o fly in different parts . of Britain to-day, as also a communication from Major -.- G. H. Fink concerning scientific kite-flying, should prove invaluable aids to all those who are taking up ' aeronautics from the strictly practical point of view. -•! There is much work going on in this country of which we 1 are fully cognisant, and we shall hope at no distant date to '-* be able to give still further accounts of a like helpful nature to our readers, for the experiences of no one pioneer can be all-sufficing • each can learn so much, and, particularly, gain so much encouragement from reading accounts of what others have done and are doing. Meantime, thanks to the generosity of the gentlemen named, we are enabled in this number to present the first practical lessons in gliding as a step towards aeroplaning, not as it may be done merely, but as it has been and is being done in this country to-day. 584
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