CHARGE OF LOW FLYING

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26987, 12 March 1953, Page 10

CHARGE OF LOW FLYING

AUCKLAND PILOT FINED £2/10/“SIMPLE MISCALCULATION OF HEIGHT” “The Press” Special Service AUCKLAND. March’ll. An instructor of the Auckland Aero Club, Cyril Oswald Chambers, was convicted of low flying in a Tiger Moth aircraft and fined £2 10s in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday. When the hearing began on Monday Chambers pleaded not guilty. A witness then stated that Chambers’s plane dipped to go under the telephone wires at Water street, Otahuhu. The wires were afterward found to be broken. “I think this will amply meet the needs of justice,” said Mr J. W. Kealy. S.M., when he imposed Vie fine. “I am quite satisfied that there was no stunting and the incident was just a simple miscalculation of height. Chambers probably hit the wires without know- j ing it.” Chambers said he had held a pilot’s licence since 1931 and had served with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He had never before had .an accident while piloting an aeroplane. On the day of the incident he had been giving instruction in forced landings. This involved gliding down to a height of about 200 feet and was always done over open country. He had crossed the bottom end of Water street, where the power lines were, at a height of between 300 and 350 feet. Chambers denied hitting any telephone wires. The prosecutor (Senior-Sergeant H. L. Smith): Did you do any stunting? Witness: No. definitely not Lloyd Kenrick Burch, operations manager of an aerial topdressing firm, said he thought it inconceivable that any aircraft could hit telegraph wires without being damaged, unless it nit the w’ires with its wheels. In that case, he thought it would be certain to trash. The Magistrate said it seemed too ' great a coincidence that two telephone : wires should have broken through no j apparent cause about the same time as [the aeroplane passed over. “It ?s I something beyond the small boy with ' his catapult.” he said.