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Aviation History
1934
1934 - 1292.PDF
1296 FLIGHT. DECEMBER b, 1934. (Above) Le Bourget from the air; an Imperial Air- ways H.P.42 can be seen on the tarmac. (Right) The palatial book- ing hall in the Airport building at Lyons. The mural air-route map is carried out in figured-wood veneers. which touring aviators get from the French Government. There is a large hangar and tele- phone for weather reports, which in this case could be obtained from the radio station erected for the dissemination of these reports and situated only a short distance from the aerodrome. The president of the local Aero Club came out to see if there was anything he could do for us, and, on seeing our carnet, the caretaker readily supplied us with Shell petrol " • without our having to pay cash. The Shell carnet system has to be seen to be believed. Almost everywhere you go there are facilities for the holders of these carnets. You just present the carnet and the company's officials, figuratively speaking, present arms. They jump to do your bidding, and if you play fair there is little that cannot be done in the matter of getting help, whatever form it may take, when you are flying under their care. We went into the Hotel de Bourgogne for a meal, but it was not very good. We managed to get some of the food the flies left us but, on the whole, were not sorry when everyone had finished and we were ready to go back to the aerodrome. There we found that one of the wire- less officials who spoke English had come out from the station to help us. He explained the local weather and showed us, with the help of the president of the Aero Club and his maps, the best routes in the present rather bad circumstances. As we had waited over an hour and a half we thought there was a good chance of " Archibald " having moved over the mountains. He hadn't, and, after poking into several valleys south of Nevers, we were forced to turn back and land at Paray le Monial, quite convinced that flying through the southern parts of France in October was a mug's game. Morton certainly thought it wasn't good enough, because he had once been caught in a valley farther south when the clouds were right down on the top of the hills and he had to fly underneath a high-tension cable to get out again! The French have a nasty habit of spanning their large valleys with cables, and often they are not marked on the map. Paray aerodrome is on the top of a hill, so from it we could get a good view of the distant mountains, which we could see were covered with low cloud. The aerodrome is amply long for the " Dragon " in the direction of the prevailing wind, though the take-off is slightly uphill. Across the shorter way in which we had to take off later it is not really quite long enough for a heavily loaded "Dragon," and it was here that we first instituted our " take-off by numbers " procedure, which amused many people at subsequent aerodromes. Morton would taxi to the extreme end of the aerodrome, then, at the command " One! " we all got well forward so that he could get the tail up easily; when he shouted '' Two! " we eased back in the cabin so that he could get the tail down ; and, finally, we slipped into our seats quietly aiter he was climbing steadily. We weren't really overloaded, but it made things easier for Morton, especially later on when we got to where it was really hot and the air rather thin. Paray is run by a family. Father stands round in clogs and directs ; the son dons over- Ells and generally lends a hand ; the daughter runs the office, collects the 14.40 francs for landing and the 6 francs for housing, as well as keeping the books, signing the log book, yetting weather reports, and so on; and, finally, mother keeps the fires going and asks you into her sitting room when you want somewhere warm, where you can spread your maps out and discuss the various routes The magnificent airport building at Lyons seen lrom the air. through the mountains. One snag about Paray is that there is no Shell service, so we had to get Stanavo and pay for it on the spot. Later that atternoon we had another shot at getting further on our journey, but we couldn't get through to Macon, where there is a small aerodrome, although we hoped that if we got as far as that we could get further down the Rhone valley to Lyons for the night. We tried going down the Loire valley, hoping to get over by St. Etienne, but couldn't get much further than Roanne. There is an aerodrome there, and we had a good look for it but missed it—luckily, as it turned out, because when we got back to Paray again two French officers flying to Lyons to join the fleet of French prototypes which were then assembling for a mass flight to Morocco told us that
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