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Aviation History
1910
1910 - 0670.PDF
JyciiT) speed tests that brought him into such prominence did not really call for such skill at piloting as did his cross-country flight, for example, which did not attract very much attention in the Press, but which was really a particularly fine effort, especially for a novice. He did it at a very fast speed, but the reason he did not figure very high on the list was that on the return journey he was facing the sun and utterly lost his way. That occasion was the first on which he had ever risen to a great altitude. He estimated his maximum height to be well above 1,500 ft., and neaily 2,oco. In considering the quality of the flying at Lanark one must remember the vastly more difficult conditions that prevailed there than those which obtained at Bournemouth, for not only was the wind of greater force, it was also infinitely more tricky by reason of the contour of the ground. Captain Bertram Dickson, who always strikes one as being a very competent flyer, did not distinguish himself from his rivals to anything like the extent that he contrived to do at Bournemouth. Mr. McArdle did some very fine cross country flights, and so forth, but one noticed at Lanark how extraordinarily pronounced is the contrast between his mode of handling of a Bleriot monoplane and that of his partner in these matters, Mr. J. Armstrong Drexel. Mr. McArdle is quite the " jerkiest" flyer of those on the ground at Lanark. When he rises it is as though he were hopping upstairs, the lift being a series of jerks. When he comes to make a landing your heart is usually near your mouth. Yet he is a fine flyer beyond question, though one feels he would run considerably less risk if he would impart a little more finesse to his methods. As for Mr. Armstrong Drexel, apart altogether from his remarkable performance in altitude on the same machine with which Leon Morane made the highest flight—and it was no mean effort—at Bournemouth, the young American gave some of the finest exhibitions of riding the wind in those intervals when others would not go out on account of the force of the breezes. Once, on Friday, when the wind was very strong, he said that for the only time during the whole meeting he felt that the machine had blown over to an angle from which he could not recover her. Happily he did manage to do so, hence all was well. On another occasion—but of this he thinks nothing—just as he was concluding a flight he became aware that the gear for warping one of the wings had failed ; but again he landed without incident. As for his altitude performance, it is more remarkable than may at first appear from the mere data of the maximum height obtained. The last fifty feet took over four minutes to ascend, despite the fact that there was no lack of petrol. The difficulty was, of course, that one of the pilot's hands was absolutely numbed with cold, and that in the atmospheric conditions prevailing at that altitude the matter of carburation presented a very difficult problem. The risk of persisting was very great, for had the remaining hand lost the sense of feeling the pilot would have lost all control of his machine, which was difficult enough in any case during the oncoming darkness, when he could scarcely tell by glancing at the tips of his wings whether he was developing a list to one side or the other, to say nothing of the problem as to whether he was rising or falling. He did not desist, however, until he was compelled to do so by running out of lubricant. The rate of his glide is recorded in the barograph as being a sheer drop, for the needle marked a practically straight line from top to bottom with one dot to indicate where he put the Bleriot monoplane from a gliding to a flying angle to effect a landing on a farm at Coppinshaw. It should be added that Mr. Drexel does not cover either his hands or his face when flying, for he says that if he does he cannot manage his machine properly, whereas other high flyers are wont to protect head, hands and arms against the tremendous cold that is experienced in the course of such performances. As regards the really scientific phases of flying, which are not always brought out prominently at meetings of this sort merely because the very nature of the competitions is to please the populace as distinct from striving to bring out technical merit, quite one of the most excellent performances was that of Mr. Alec. Ogilvie on the Short-built Wright biplane, with which he made the slowest circuit neither by the obvious trick of rising all the way nor through evading the spirit of the competition by taking the widest possible course, but solely by throttling down the engine until she would only just lift the machine. By this means he beat the Bournemouth record of the late Mr. Rolls with a mean speed of 24 and a fraction miles an hour, and it is worthy cf note that the moment he had passed the finishing line he opened up the throttle and the biplane accelerated like a motor car until she had added over 30 per cent, to her speed. Of course, no machine on the ground could give gliding performances comparable with the beauti ful cushioning effect of the Wright biplane, which does not have to be dipped prow lowermost in spectacular fashion to prevent it coming by disaster through falling backwards when the power is shut off. Though the exigencies of space are imperative, it may be pointed out that whereas at Lanark there was no alighting competition there were introduced instead the first speed tests for a flying mile AUGUST 20, 1910. and a flying kilometre. The ideal way to arrive at any scientific estimate of the speed of aeroplanes would be, of course, to have a triangular course ; but in aeroplaning, as in motoring, it is essential in certain matters to appeal to the public. The public understands a straight-away mile and a straight-away kilometre. It is interested in it, so that it was obvious that sooner or later such a test would be started. Thanks to the enterprise of Mr. A. V. Ebblewhite, the Lanark meeting was the first at which it was put into practice. There was a favourable following wind to help the speeds set forth in detail elsewhere in this issue, but this rystem of records, of course, cannot continue to be made under these circumstances, for it is plain that if anyone wants to surpass the Lanark performances in France, for example, all that would be necessary would be to wait for some day when there shall be a faster following wind than that which blew at Lanark on Saturday last. It may be said that the solution of the difficulty lies in making the aeroplanist take an out- and-return course, the mean speed only to count. That, however, would not be satisfactory in a real competition, for you would naturally have to allow the man to overrun the mark by a very wide margin on the outward tack that he might effect the turn and have got up full speed again before passing the starting-line on the homeward journey. If we work k out in practical fashion, it would be very prompt management indeed that would be able to despatch the machines at intervals of five minutes so that every competitor would have a fair chance, because there would be only one man in the air at once so that no question of propeller wash or what not could possibly be raised. Supposing there were only a baker's dozen of competitors and each went off at an interval of five minutes, an hour would have elapsed between the starting of the first man and the setting off of the last one. But we are to expect in little tests of this sort which can be indulged in by almost any flyer who can get off the ground, that there will be dozens and dozens of competitors at meet ings ; and in this country, at any rate, the wind is rarely travelling in the same direction and at the same speed for an hour at a spell. Plainly, whatever system may be adopted for conducting such tests in the future it must be one that will enable them to be carried out on practically any day in the year, for as each season passes it will be more and more difficult to arrange for aeroplaning performances " weather permitting." Those two words will very soon cease to appear on our programmes. Take it for all in all, the Scottish meeting has been a splendid success, not the least interesting part of the organisation being the manner in which the prize money was divided into a great number of small amounts, which had the desired effect of producing a maximum amount of flying, so that—for all that Mr. Cecil Graqe in his present mood considers the biplane to be unsuitable for competi tion in 1910, as instance his speech at the banquet given at the close of the meeting—nevertheless, his performances on a Farman biplane netted a larger amount of prize money than fell either to Mr. J. Armstrong Drexel or to Signor Cattaneo. Doubtless Mr. Grace was not aware of this phase of the situation when he spoke, but was referring only to speed perfprmances at this particular stage of development of the aeroplane. It is curious, of course, to note how utterly people's judgments are deceieved as each stage of aeroplane progress is revealed. Last year they would hear of nothing but the Farman biplane ; this year it is the Bleriot mono plane or nothing, and at each of those periods the curious thing is that they never seem to look ahead. Does it never dawn on them that no one type of machine, whether it is a Wright, a Farman, a Curtiss, a Bleriot, an Antoinette or a Voisin, can ever, or will ever, lead permanently or even for long ? The game of the competitor should be not to secure the current type but the coming one. It is merely the particular combination of a powerful light engine, namely, the Gnome, and a proportionately small monoplane, the cross-Channel Bleriot type, that has given quite a new character to the exhibitions of flying that we are seeing this year. We perceive these little machines literally leap off the ground, and in like fashion we see them wellnigh dart to earth. The one spectacle which the Scottish folk were robbed of, and which is, perhaps, the very latest form of "aeroplaning," is that of the superbly effective spiral descents which were made by Leon Morane at the conclusion of his high flights at Bournemouth. On the other hand, at Lanark there were afforded for a few brief moments the spectacle of the prince of flying machines for sheer beauty of flight, namely, M. Kiiller's Antoinette monoplane fitted with an E.N. V. engine and wooden Chauviere propeller. A final word as to the total amount of flying at the two meetings. There are approximately thrice as many figures in Mr. A. V. Ebblewhite's time books for the Lanark meeting as the total of those that fell to be entered at the Bournemouth one. That furnishes some idea of the great good fortune which attended the Scottish meeting, which undoubtedly is the more important of the two in its relation to aeronautical history, if only for the fact that a world's record for high flying was established over those northern moorlands.
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