FLYING LIKE BIRDS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 49, Issue 200, 10 June 1929, Page 7

FLYING LIKE BIRDS.

NEW GLIDING DEVICES. Experiments which are to be conducted in Germany, France, and the United States aim at enabling pilots of motorless gliding machines to effect long cross-country flights without alighting. In light engineless machines with improved wing shapes and hulls, expert pilots can now remain aloft for hours in the neighbourhood of a gliding hill manoeuvring their craft from one to another of a series of ascending windstreams, which are plotted out beforehand on special maps. But in attempting a long -point-to-point glide (says the London “Daily Mail”) the airmen may, just when lie needs one, fail to find an ascending current which will restore the altitude of his graduallydescending craft. What are now to be tested are light man-power machines fitted with mechanism the pilot will operate with his arms and legs. Snch movements will actuate flapping extensions at the extremity of the wings. The idea is that the airman shall be launched into the air from some form of catapult mechanism. Then he will climb, by vigorous flapping, until he can manoeuvre his machine into an ascendin'- current. After this, gliding in rising currents and maintaining I bright by flapping, when no upward trend is available, the pilot will seek to emulate the soaring and flapping flight of birds.