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Aviation History
1913
1913 - 1041.PDF
before and turning on to his back, Pegoud warps his wings to the utmost limits of the control and rolls over sideways into an upright position. This is shown, as clearly as it is possible to do so diagrammatically, in Fig. 3. There remains yet one other " standard " accomplish ment, which this remarkable pilot may be expected to repeat on Saturday. He climbs steeply upwards until his machine comes to a standstill, and so he provokes a deliberate tail slide; the machine slips backwards, but instead of falling to the ground its rail gradually *' elevates " and swings the machine, pendulum-like, into a head down position. Pegoud allows this swing to repeat itself several times before he finally brings the machine into its normal line of level flight. Now, setting aside for the moment the natural curiosity •of the crowd in the sensational part of the performance, and in the prodigy of a man who does these things with such sangfroid, what is their serious or scientific aspect ? Although we have not actually seen the machine for ourselves, we have from Mr. Norbert Chereau, general manager of Bleriot monoplanes in England, an assurance that originally it was built as a standard 50 h.p. single- seater in 1911, and that the only alterations made for the purposes of these flights are as follow :— top front wires in a better position to reinforce the wing against the force of direct resistance. The tandem model tail is larger than that on the single seater, and gives the greater measure of control that is desirable for extraordinary feats of this description, but not necessarily so for everyday flying. We have, therefore, a perfectly normal aeroplane combined with a perfectly abnormal pilot, and the pilot is abnormal not in performing complicated and rapid movements of the control with the dexterity of a Paderewski, but in having the neive to sit still in the most trying attitudes while his machine continues pro perly to carry out the evolution on which he initially caused it to begin. If Pegoud got flustered and wiggled his control lever in nervous uncertainty, he would end up in a heap on the ground just as surely as any other pilot does in a similar plight. Pegoud is marvellous because he under stands precisely what his machine is going to do, and FLYING UPRI&HT^^^^T^ THE RECOVERY J& s «6l V^ J^s^ \ DIVING yHEAD FIRST \FORWARDS >X^ FIG. 4. CLIMBING SI STEEPLY _^"^ /,«, /SLI0IN& /TAIL FIRST / BACKWARDS /4 // * • fLYINfr UPRI&HT ^3 ^ 1. A new pylon made 12 ins. taller and placed 6 ins. further forward. 2. Substitution of the original tail by one used on a standard tandem-seated model. Neither of these alterations affects the principle of the machine or its "natural stability." It is apparent that the purpose of the taller pylon is to sat the top bracing wires to the wings at a less acute angle, and thereby to reduce the stress upon them. This is a very natural precaution in a machine that flies, so to speak, habitually on its back, and in which the top wires, therefore, so frequently take all the weight of the machine in the air. Ordinarily, the top wires merely support the weight of the wings when the machine is on the ground and their severest stress comes, generally, from a bumpy landing. On Pegoud's BleViot, however, they frequently support the entire weight of the machine in flight. Similarly, the advanced position of the pylon puts the knows precisely how long he desires it to keep on doing the same thing. In a word, Pegoud is the perfect human automaton. Instead of controlling the machine, Pegoud lets the machine control itself. From the standpoint of the scientific experimenter, he is the ideal pilot, for he has the intelligence to eliminate himself at the moment that the machine enters upon its appointed task. He flies it with the utmost skill to the desired altitude, he turns it head downwards towards the earth, he drops like a stone with it until he has acquired the momentum necessary to effect his purpose, and then he calmly and deliberately pushes forward his elevator lever and sits still while the machine flattens out on its back. The amazing thing is that the man himself can retain his composure in positions that are actually nauseating to the average person. It will be observed that Pegoud is always on the outside of the circle. Even when he 067
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