HOT AIR POWER

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 210, 18 June 1935, Page 8

HOT AIR POWER

STRANGE AEROPLANE STORY. BELGIAN'S ALLEGED INVENTION. PARIS, May 11. A new flying machine, without wings motor, propeller, or rotors, yet capable of doing all the things that a normal aeroplane or autogyro can do, is being ■ secretly tested by the French Government, it was learned to-day. The machine is the invention of the Belgian Avar veteran aviator, M. Paul Dupuys de Rolleghem, who three years ago was seriously injured in making his first test flight in the first model of his new , device. At present two models are being experimented with by the French Government at the Government testing field at Issy-le-Moulineaux. One is a two-seater with a total flying weight of 900 pounds, of which 600 is the load capacity. It is claimed that it has a vertical speed of 1500 feet a minute and a cruising speed of 120 miles an hour. The machine has not motor in the accepted sense of the' word. Instead, it has a series of burners, using either crude oil or gasoline, which develop a heat of 1200 deg. Centigrade (2,192 degrees Fahrenheit). Hot air is forced out of these burners at a v 50-pound pressure. » This hot air passes over a series of tiny four-inch wing-shaped "planes" an concentric circles. There are 15 of s these planes in front of the pilot's cockpit and one behind. The action of the hot air produces exactly the same aerodynamic effect through suction as air reaction on plane surfaces of a normal aeroplane. To get horizontal speed another series 'of wings is set in the nose of the ship>, where the propeller of a normal aeroplane would be. Suction created there pulls the machine forward. The whole affair looks like nothing so much as a large wooden shoe of a peasant except that it is made entirely of duralumin. The second model is larger and has not yet been tested so exhaustively as the smaller machine, but Government officials are hopeful that it will be as sucessful as the smaller one. The chief weakness, is the intense heat developed by the burners, which, it is feared, might melt some of the important parts of the apparatus. The inventor, however, has composed a special fireproof liquid which gives the necessary resistance, though in its present form it is soluble in water and experiments are still continuing. M. de Rolleghem has been ordered by the Government to t refrain from further private experiments with his ■'.-, and to co-operate with offi"cial engineers in perfecting the machine.