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Aviation History
1909
1909 - 0677.PDF
Flight, October 30th, 1909. First Aero Weekly in the World. A Journal devoted to the Interests, Practice, and Progress of Aerial Locomotion and Transport. OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE AERO CLUB OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. No. 44. Vol. I.] OCTOBER 30TH, 1909. ("Registered at the G.P.O.l|_ as a Newspaper. J TWeekly. Price Id.L Post Free, ljd- AND THE first two flying meetings in Britain have passed into aeronautical history, but we are still in the midst of the aftermath of them. From the point of view of flying, it is perhaps to be questioned if either or both combined have done any direct good towards increasing interest in the science and sport of aviation. In the first place, the attitude of the public has been to dwell not so much on the flights that have been made as on those that were not made. There has been a disposition, as it were, of counting the number of sheds and the number of aeroplanes in them, the number of pilots on the ground, and to consider what a very small proportion of machines and pilots have flown at all during the period of these meetings, than to total up the duration of the flights. The fact that aerial navigation with a heavier machine than the viewless element it negotiates has been achieved to a greater extent than has ever been mani- fested before, has been overlooked entirely, probably because on the occasion of Latham's triumphant per- formance at Blackpool comparatively a mere handful of onlookers were on the course, and even among those some were so utterly unable to understand that the space into which they looked was a moving power of constantly varying force and speed, that they thought there was nothing worth looking at in the great flight, merely because when head to wind the machine did not come past them at a fast speed, and its rate of travel was not of a uniform regularity. Of course, anybody who begins to understand the elements of practical aviation will be aware that these very conditions and the successful combating of them have revealed that aeroplaning is many stages further advanced to-day than we had dared to hope. Various writers have made the mistake ot assuming that the monoplane rode out a constant wind of from 45 to 48 miles an hour. That might be consider- able, yet there would be nothing amazing in such an achievement. The whole point of advancement revealed was owing to the fact that the wind would be blowing one instant at 48 miles an hour and the next would suddenly subside to 12 miles an hour, so that the machine was not facing a steady and dependable opposition, but was being subjected to a series of buffetings and of sudden failures of opposing force ; while to have made a journey either head-on to a constant wind, or with the constant wind in the rear, at such a speed would not have been difficult by c jmparison with allowing the gale to attack the monoplane from every point of the compass. Some cheerful commentators, who appear neither to have visited Doncaster or Blackpool, have been observing that Blackpool is the more favoured course because Doncaster suffers from being sheltered by trees. One imagines that the Doncaster folk will rightly resent any such disparagement of the situation of their course from a flying point of view. The weather records during the period when both meetings were running concurrently certainly reveal that Doncaster was a more favoured course than was Blackpool, because the winds that blew off the sea were not steady as those commentators stated, but were gales such as have been already referred to. Paulhan came next in order of merit to Latham, for he flew on a biplane in a 24 miles an hour wind. Happily, Londoners are having an opportunity this week-end of seeing him conveniently near home at Brooklands. At the moment we are, perhaps, concerned more with the aftermath than with the performances at these meet- ings. Those who foretold that this is quite one of the most unsuitable seasons of the year for organising flying meetings in Britain have been amply justified, as have those who prophesied that the meetings would be merely an advertisement for the competency of foreign machines and foreign pilots, and an exposure of the incompetency of British machines and British pilots. With the financial aspects of the situation we do not propose to deal. That constitutes a chapter with which it is impossible to have overmuch sympathy. Perhaps the most important fact in view of the unfortunate controversy that these meetings have occasioned, is that that controversy has been created purely over the point of competition for awards, whereas if we look at the history of both meetings, there has not been a single competition in the proper sense of the term at either one. Thus the event has proven that there was absolutely no excuse for the promoters of the Doncaster Meeting not to have taken the advice of the Aero Club when they found that it was impractical to postpone the date of the Meeting, and have simply had exhibition flights such as Paulhan is giving and will give at Brooklands. Even when M. Roger Sommer challenged Mr. Cody as an independent act, the newly-made British citizen made excuses for not taking up the gauntlet, one of which was that his machine was not suitable for flying on a course where it would have to be turning fairly often, while as for the one about the engine not running well, naturally he would not be expected to compete until his engine was working satisfactorily. Be these things as may be we have the fact that there has been
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