DROPPING INTO SPACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 215, 11 September 1925, Page 8

DROPPING INTO SPACE.

* » ■ TO FALL A*MILE. PARACHUTE TESTS. The parachuting that every airman in America has to do, before he can win his diploma, is a fair test of nerve. The student is not learning how to fall— that hardly requires teaching—but how to float gently downwards from an airplane, and land without accident. In still air, the man with the parachute drops at the rate of about 10ft per second. It will readily be understood that when the wind is blowing at the rate of from twenty to thirty miles an hour, the experiment becomes somewhat complicated. What follows is a description of the manoeuvre from the article in "Popular Mechanics": "For unequalled simplicity in graduation exercises, the U.S. Army parachute school at Chanute Field, Rantoul, Illinois, probably takes the world's prize. To win the coveted ; diploma at the end of six weeks' inten- ! sive course, the student is required to do I but two things—and neither of them is j writing an essay or speaking a piece. I "Instead, he folds up a parachute and j takes his stand on the wing of a giant j Martin bomber. The plane climbs a mile iin the air, and, at a signal from the instructor, the student pulls the rip cord of his chute and is yanked oft* into space. Some two minutes later the ground rises up and bumps him—and the first half of his graduation exercises are over. "The second half consists of refolding the parachute and taking a seat in the after cockpit of a De Haviland plane. The craft goes up a mile, and at a signal from the pilot, the student climbs over the side of the fuselage, takes a deep breath, lets go of the ship, gives a lusty kick with his feet and falls backwards into space. After sufficient time has passed to ensure that he is clear of the airplane's tail, he pulls the rip cord, the parachute, if properly folded, opens, and some two minutes later the ground rises up and hits the student again. "Parachute jumping is not dangerous, at least anyone connected with the school will tell you so, and some of them have jumped so many times they have lost count of the total. There is no loss of consciousness at any time during a jump, even on the first trial. The sensation, all jumpers agree, is that of settling back into an incredibly deep and soft feather-bed. No feeling of falling accompanies the drop, and when the parachute snaps open there is no jerk. Instead, the harness tightens and the juniper, who is usually falling in a horizontal position, or head down, is righted. A slow oscillation, like that of a giant clock pendulum, follows. "The army parachute costs £150, measures 24ft across when open, and is attached to the wearer by 25 stout silk ropes, twelve of the shrouds going down to one shoulder, where they are sewn in the harness, and thirteen to the other. The thirteenth is red, while all the others are white, the red one being used as a dividing mark in folding the parachute, and also to "spill" the wind out of it after a landing. "Everything depends upon the way in which the chute is folded. The parachute is stretched out on a fifty-foot table, with the pack and harness at one end, and the little pilot chute hanging over the other. The pilot chute, two feet across, is built with the ribs like an umbrella, but with a spring arrangement which causes it to fly open unless held under pressure. When the rip cord is pulled and the pack opened, the little chute flies out, catches the. wind, and pulls the big parachute after it." It all sounds most interesting, but most readers, doubtless, would prefer to read about these parachute stunts, rather than to be the subject of the experiment.