MANLESS FLYING.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 77, 11 January 1928, Page 6

MANLESS FLYING.

THE REALISATION OF A DREAM. The pilotless flying machine is no longer a dream. It is a reality. For years it has been the aim to perfect automatic aircraft which, under wireless control, shall take off from the ground, fly any direction, •.and thenalight, all without a hand at their controls. To-day an uncanny success is crowning these latest efforts. In the latest secret researches France and the United" States are to the forefront, but our recent British official work, though the details of it are completely "hush-hush," is also assuming vital significance. What science is evolving, and builders are producing, are manless motordriven 'planes which do really and truly fly themselves. Such machines are not only making ascents anil descents, pilotless, but are performing automatic aerial journeys of appreciable, duration. Some of these -world assemblages of metal, /the subject now of further advanced experiments in America and France, have "brains," "nerves" and "muscles." They are inhumanly human.

The brain is a gyroscope, or. rather, two gyroscopes. One balances the 'plan* as it flies. The other, acting as a mechanical, pilot, maintains it on any given course. Pneumatically operated valves and tubes —the. "nerves" obeying the gyroscope "brain" —transmit energy to tiny, compressed-air motors. These' are the "muscles," and actuate the controlling surfaces, of the aeroplane. Its engine started!, the manless 'plane runs a short distance and then climbs exactly as though a pilot was in charge.. Up it ascends, balancing itself perfectly, till it is at a height which those launching it have decided upon beforehand. Whereupon, in a way which looks like witchcraft to anyone gazing from below, the little machine ceases to ascend and begins to fly out of sight on a level keel. A manless 'plane ean now be fitted with an automatic installation which while the. machine is passing through the air, sends wireless signals to ground stations, enabling opertaors to: plot out from moment to moment where the distant 'piano is in the sky. Following its unseen course mile after mile, they can transmit to it emergency signals which, over-riding the pre-arranged programme on which the machine's ''brain" is working, alter its course according to any last-minute plan of those in control. Wireless enters also into the way in which a pilotless 'plane alights..

As the craft nears the 'drome a wire-i less operator on the ground, by a given signal, stops its motor and causes it to j glide earthward 1 . Then, tapping out J another signal just before the ' plane j reaches ground, the operator causes a! wire, with a weight on the end of it, to unroll beneath the machine. This weight, touching ground while the 'pJaoe is still some little distance up in the air, causes the control-surf aces, to set themselves in such a way th»& the machine makes a smooth, safe contact with the ground. Primarily, the purpose of the pilotless 'plane is waylike, to act as a winged, engine-driven bomb, controlled by wireless and launched against distant objectives, but it has a peace-time scope also, seeing that plans are now maturing for using perfected manless 'planes a.s automatic carriers of urgent mails N