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Aviation History
1912
1912 - 0793.PDF
AUGUST 31, 1912. tarpaulin, the Bleriot presented a very workmanlike job of the busi ness of preparing for the road. It will be difficult to find roads wide enough for some machines, it seems to rne. Friday. A wet and windy morning gave the Amesbury camp a very fair excuse for indulging in a little conscious appreciation of the relative advantages of the interior of the George Hotel, and the inside of a tent. When one goes to bed at midnight after a discussion on " momentum in air " and really does get up at four the next morning, all the world seems grey and one's lot in life no better than that of the Lark Hill contingent who keep company under canvas with those interesting but undesirable denizens of the earth's cuticle that have a habit of taking the air when it is wet. Wet or fine, however, the conscientious but unimaginative night watchman at the "George" hammers at your bedroom door, and having thoroughly aroused everyone in the house goes on his way rejoicing, while the sleepy occupants of comfortable beds blink confidingly at the trees in the garden and succeed by natural lack of optical focus and the aid of a much warped pane of window glass to convince themselves that the leaves are moving vigorously or at any rate sufficiently to l>etray a dangerous wind to be blowing on Durrington Down. And as a rule it is these days, although never has such weather been seen on Salisbury Plain before. In the memory of man, I imagine, there has never been such an August anywhere, and that it should have occurred on an official aviation meeting, of all events, is nothing short of the height of irony. Nevertheless, it has afforded a wonderful opportunity for those who have cared to take it, and I am more than pleased to cancel my impression of the opening week, viz., that there was too much desire in some sheds to score marks rather than demonstrate the weatherliness of machines. Since then, the flying has been much more enterprising, and although the weather has been beyond the limit, every machine of note in these trials has put up some wind test very much to its credit, and a fair amount of difficult flying besides. Yesterday it was the flight of the Avro, to-day it is Pixton on the Bristol monoplane who has set tongues wagging. Just about noon, when everyone was weary of waiting for lunch, and the wind-gauge was steadily working itself into a kind of fit, Pixton and Capt. Hamilton suddenly surprised the very limited field by going up in No. 15. For a quarter of an hour Pixton fought the gusts, which ranged from 17 m.p.h. to 47 m.p.h. in velocity, and thus had a V- intensity of 290 to 2,200, or 7J to 1. It is not a steady wind that a pilot fears, but gustiness, and there was certainly enough of that on this occasion. Just after landing, the wind-gauge registered 50 mileslan hour, so there was no question of the conditions quieting down when the machine had once got into the air. Capt. Hamilton, who, as the pilot of the Army Dep.—which, I understand, has now [/JJGHT krd 23r-? August 1$V2. £ MP.H. J .« 50 1 . * -»5 40 55 SO 2,5 2.0 1 S 1 0 NOON M Flight" Copyright. Wind chart for August 23rd between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. At noon Pixton took the Bristol monoplane. No. 16, out for a flight, with Capt. Hamilton, of the Royal Flying Corps, as a passenger, and stayed aloft for IBtmlns. tj As a wind test, it may well be regarded as a record. Blackpool , 25L'X- Oct. I909. 3 p-m. 7 S •Flight" Copyright. Wind chart for August 7th on Salisbury Plain between the hours of 3 and 8 p.m., showing the period when most of the machines in the Military Trials did their wind test. "Flight" Copyright. Wind chart for October 22nd, 1900, at Blackpool, when Latham made bis famous flight, which then and for long afterwards stood as the pinnacle of skill and daring on the part of the pilot, and of weatherliness on the part of the Antoinette monoplane. At Salis bury Plain on August 7th Bell flew the Martin-Handasyde, which Is a machine of the Antoinette type, under very similar weather conditions. 793
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