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Aviation History
1914
1914 - 0043.PDF
EDDIES. VEDRINES seems to have made up his mind to be the champion " stunt" flyer of the age. Not content with his magnificent flight from Nancy to Cairo, his project now is to fly practically round the world. Should he carry out, and bring to a successful conclusion, his intentions, he will have passed over the following countries :—France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Servia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. This part of the journey being already accomplished, there remains:—Mesopotamia, Persia, Baluchistan, India, Burma, Malaya, Dutch East Indies, Australia, Chili, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States; surely enough to put up a record that will want a lot of beating, even when aeroplanes have become the recognised means of rapid transport. In addition, the National Aerial League have ask him to continue his journey from Cairo to the Cape, and the necessary supplies of motor spirit have already, I understand, been despatched to the proposed landing places, for if Vedrines does not feel inclined to proceed south, in view of his greater flight, another pilot, possibly Bonnier, will take his place. The route proposed is along the Nile to Wadi Haifa; follow the railway to Abu Hamed, whence the Nile will again be followed to Khartoum. After leaving Fashoda, the airman will have to cross the Bahr el Ghazal swamps, where for 250 miles there is no possibility of landing. The route will then lie over Lake Albert Nyanza, Port Florence, across the mountains to Mobasa, and thence down the coast by Zanzibar and Mozambique to Beira, from whence the railway may be followed to Cape Town. I don't think that awful swamp of Bahr el Ghazal ought to be crossed ! It is tempting providence. Even with the best machines we have to-day, little things will go wrong on occasion : petrol pipes break, oil pumps refuse to work, engines, even the best of them, give trouble sometimes, and 250 miles over a country such as this, where the slightest thing necessitating a landing means death, is rather too much, and I sincerely hope that no one will try it. We want our airmen to be brave and ready to face dangers, but there is no reason why they should unnecessarily court disaster and death. Seeing the old year out and the new one in, took on a new phase at Hendon, when Richard Gates and Reginald Carr went up in their respective machines a little before twelve last Wednesday week, and flew into 1914. I don't mean liter ally flew into the new baby - year, though our artist has depicted it that way. He says an artist must have licence ! I agree with him : but it ought to be some thing we could en dorse. I have seen the old year out in so many different ways, that this year I went to bed, and was just dreaming that the Lewis Automatic Gun was firing on the enemy's aero plane fleet, from the top ot No. 1 pylon, when some railway men on the line that runs near my house cele brated the passing of 1913 by running a truck over a few hundred fog signals. Gee ! as our cousins say. XXX Speaking of the new year, I see the Grahame-Whitt Company have again been first to get a pilot through his brevet tests under the new regulations. Mr. Lillywhite went up early on January 1st, and secured the coveted ticket in fine style, including the descent with the engine cut out. He made a fine glide from 650 ft., making a perfect landing with the " prop " stationary. XXX Oh ! Why did Ewen look so pleased On Saturday? And why did Baumann smile as well ? And J.C., better known as "Shell? Was it because the Caudron—? well It wasn't very hard to tell On Saturday. XXX An aeroplane that cannot capsize, and yet flies at 150 miles an hour, that is the latest by Dr. Robiola, of Turin. What with that, and the automatically-stable machine produced by the Orville Wright factory, I really think I shall have to go in for my own brevet. Fool proof—that's what my machine will have to be, but I fear I shall have to get measured for it. I'm rather hard to fit. XXX So Miss Trehawke Davies has been the first woman to loop the loop after all. Keen on it ? Well, she left a bed of sickness, drove to the aerodrome, looped the loop —or did the Apple Turnover, as they call Hamel's stunt down Hendon way—and was back in bed when the doctor called to perform a minor operation. Oh ! no, not keen ; meant to be first, that's all. XXX " What is really the matter with men and affairs at Hendon," asks the Daily Mirror. I don't know; nothing so far as I have noticed, unless it is that the gate eases off slightly sometimes, which they must expect at this time of the year, and that it is jolly cold, which is also in the nature of things as they must be. I don't think even Billikin, the god of things as they ought to be, could warm up an aerodrome in January. Speaking of cold, I wonder whether " Aunt" was as innocent as she pretended to be, when she sent " Nephew" a Christmas box of a pair of knitted knee - caps and a foot warmer, together with a letter that he ought not to have shown to his best friend; in which she said she had been informed that he always felt cold right up to his knees when flying. Mind you, I don't say this was at Hendon—though it might have been—there are others. 43
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