AERIAL NAVIGATION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 253, 23 October 1907, Page 6

AERIAL NAVIGATION.

.(From Our saecral' correspondent.)

LONDON, September 13. When you are able with the aid of a motor-engine to drive a balloon against the wind at the rate of 8 to 10 miles an hour, you are justified in assuming that your airship has solved the main problem of aerial navigation. It is, therefore, only natural that the British military authorities are highly elated over the results of the first trial trip of their first military airship. Emerging from the obscruity of a shed at Aldershot on Tuesday last, the airship rose to a height of three or four hundred feet, turned northwards for a few moments, then, circling with apparently perfect facility, she steered a southerly course, swerving constantly to test the efficiency of her steering gear. A minor mishap to the machinery stopped her progress after she had covered three miles at a speed of about nine or ten miles an hour, but this might have happened to any engine. The fact remained that the airship had proved that she could fly, answer her helm, travel against the wind, and carry a crew of three men. Tne new flying machine is 110 feet! long and 30 feet in diameter, and is shaped like a cylinder, with rounded ends. Is ia made of goldbeaters' skin, yellow and transparent, and ia filled with hydrogen gas. It appears to be rigged from four silk bands passing over the envelope supporting a graceful-look-ing framework of light steel ft and bamboo, whilst suspended from the bottom is the car. In the forepart of this car is the 50 h.p. motor driving the propellers, and in the stern of the framework is a huge six-sided cloth rudder, which is controlled by lines from the stern of the car. Amidships are two great flat wings, also of cloth, and the twin screws are fixed in the forward part of the frame work, one on either side. A Union Jack floats from the taffrail, and the great craft, as she towers aloft over sixty feet, with her pendant drapery of silk bands, cordage, and gleaming steel framework, is a picture to fill the eye and fire the imagination. The day was fine and beautifully clear when the new craft took her first airing. A light easterly wind was blowing over Farnborough Common. Colonel Capper, of the Balloon Department, took his seat in the stern of the car to do the steering and control the valves; Mr. S. Cody, the famous kite expert, took charge of the engine in the fore part; while Captain King, R.E., completed the "crew." It was 12.15 p.m. before all was quite readyi At that moment the motor was started again, and all the ropes freed. Away went the balloon dead to windward into the wind's eye, travelling in a breeze that ha,d freshened up some twelve miles an hour, going faster than a soldier could run for even a short distance. Opportunely, the North Staffords marchicg past, and their band played a lively air. Again and again the spectators cheered, as the airship, heading windward, at an altitude of 300 ft to 400 ft, crossed the Farnboroughroad, as for London. Then, circling to the west, it made a great sweep of over three miles, twisting and turning apparently under perfect control- "It rose and fell," says an eye-witness, "or rather lifted and dipped, as a brig would do in a lumpy sea. The broad wings swaying in the wind and the currents from the screws were mainly responsible for the heaving up and down. But, in returning to the point from which they had started, and within 400 yards of it, the driving band of the cooler fan broke, and the engine had to be stopped. As a man in swimming lifts in the water, so the aerostat, no longer going ahead, sank down. Ballast was thrown out, and to clear bushes and trees the motor was restarted for a half-minute, when it speedily squirted boiling water. But the trees were cleared, and the soldiers, running up, caught the rope 3, and laid hold of the ship, which was walked back into dock in the balloon-shed." A second trip was made in the afternoon, when the wind had increased to 20 miles an hour. The airship, as before, made headway straight against the breeze. It only ran, however, a few hundred yards when it had to be stopped to throw off some ropes dangling in the way. In coming down, the fore end of the keelson bumped the ground rather stiffly, and one of the steel depending frames was bent, but nothing was hurt or put out that could not be put right in an hour. Another turn or two of the engine was made, but the breeze had freshened up to, perhaps, over 24 miles an hour overhead. Colonel Capper, therefore, came down where he started, and the soldiers walked the huge airship back -within the shed. London .is now waiting -with eager curiosity the promised voyage of the airship from Aldershot to the War Office in Whitehall. [The Nulli Secundus was, unfortunately, -wrecked at the Crystal Palace during a severe gale about a fortnight ago.]